Outrage at Esopus.--New Indian War.--Its Desolations.--Sufferings of both Parties.--Wonderful Energies of the Governor.--Difficulties of his Situation.--The Truce.--Renewal of the War.--The Mohawks.--The Controversy with Massachusetts.--Indian Efforts for Peace.--The Final Settlement.--Claims of the English upon the Delaware.--Renewed Persecution of the Quakers. The exploring party from Massachusetts, which had ascended the North river, found a region around the Wappinger Kill, a few miles below the present site of Poughkeepsie, which they pronounced to be more beautiful than any spot which they had seen in New England. Here they decided to establish their settlement. Stuyvesant, informed of this, resolved to anticipate them. He wrote immediately to Holland urging the Company to send out at once as many Polish, Lithuanian, Prussian, Dutch and Flemish peasants as possible, "to form a colony there." It would seem that no experience, however dreadful, could dissuade individuals of the Dutch Colonists from supplying the natives with brandy. At Esopus, in August, 1659, a man by the name of Thomas Chambers employed eight Indians to assist him in husking corn. At the end of their day's work he insanely supplied them with brandy. This led to a midnight carouse in which the poor savages, bereft of reason, howled and shrieked and fired their muskets, though without getting into any quarrel among themselves. The uproar alarmed the garrison in the blockhouse. The sergeant of the guard was sent out, with a few soldiers, to ascertain the cause of the disorder. He returned with the report that it was only the revelry of a band of drunken savages. One of the soldiers in the fort, Jansen Stot, called upon some of his comrades to follow him. Ensign Smith, who was in command, forbade them to go. In defiance of his orders they left the fort, and creeping through the underbrush, wantonly took deliberate aim, discharged a volley of bullets upon the inebriated savages, who were harming nobody but themselves. One was killed outright. Others were severely wounded. The soldiers, having performed this insane act, retreated, with the utmost speed to the fort. There never has been any denial that such were the facts in the case. They help to corroborate the remark of Mr. Moulton that "the cruelty of the Indians towards the whites will, when traced, be discovered, in almost every case, to have been provoked by oppression or aggression."