Pelts and palisades: The story of fur and the rivalry for pelts in early AmericaHale, Nathaniel C. (Nathaniel Claiborne)
History
Pelts and palisades: The story of fur and the rivalry for pelts in early America
Hale, Nathaniel C. (Nathaniel Claiborne)
Fur trade -- Canada; Fur trade -- United States; United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
Lamberton, however, like most English traders, was a man of tenacity
and courage. Certainly he was persistent when he thought he saw a good
thing. The very next year he was back in the river again. This time,
unfortunately for him, the atmosphere was even more hostile. That
hot-tempered, national-minded Governor of New Sweden, Johan Printz, had
arrived in the meantime--all four hundred imperious pounds of him!
“Big Belly” Printz, as the Indians called him, came with the fire of
patriotism in his eye. He was not one to stand for any nonsense from
foreigners. As a good diplomat he maintained a neighborly friendship
with the Dutch, as he had been instructed to do, that is, so long as
they were no military threat to New Sweden and so long as they could be
outwitted in the Indian trade. But the English--those aggressive and
stubbornly nationalistic colonizers--were another matter.
So, in 1643, when George Lamberton once more sailed up the Delaware in
his pinnace, he was to find himself in real trouble.
Intercepting some Minquas en route to Fort Christina with their furs,
Lamberton induced them to trade with him. Whereupon the Swedish
governor invited him to dinner in order to arrest him, the charge being
that of having bribed the Minquas with cloth and wampum to massacre the
Swedes and Dutch. For a while it looked as if the Englishman might have
a short life.
But, although “Big Belly” set himself up as inquisitor, prosecutor
and judge, he couldn’t make his accusation stick before a mixed court
of English, Dutch and Swedish commissioners in the face of 400 beaver
skins Lamberton produced as evidence of his peaceful barter. In the
end Printz could only fine the New Englander double duty on the beaver
skins he had taken in trade and let him go. As a parting threat
however, he told Lamberton that his pinnace would be confiscated if
ever he traded again in New Sweden without authorization.
Then the corpulent but vigorous governor turned his full attention to
tightening Swedish control of the river, with a view toward gaining a
monopoly of the fur trade for his company.
On the east side of the Delaware, where he pretended to the same land
claimed by the New Englanders, he constructed a stronghold which he
named Fort Elfsborg. It was an imposing earthwork, emplaced with 8
twelve-pound guns and a mortar. Located on waterside just below Varkens
Kill and garrisoned by thirteen men, Fort Elfsborg not only asserted
Printz’s authority over a sickly remnant of the New Haven Englishmen
still there, but gave him military control of the river. Even Dutch
vessels on their way up to Fort Nassau were compelled to lower their
flags before the guns of the Swedish fort, their skippers no doubt
muttering curses against “Big Belly” who now “held the river locked for
himself.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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