How Once Upon A
Time The Swedes
Built A Fort.

SPRING had come again. The sun shone as bright and clear as when, seven years before, DeVries and his Dutch settlers had sailed up the Delaware and landed on its shores.

That was in 1631. Now it was the year 1638, and two other vessels[1] were sailing up the broad river. But these ships were not Dutch; they carried the colors of Sweden, and the men who crowded to the sides of the vessels to gaze at the unknown shores were Swedes.

Six months before, these men, fifty in all, had started out from Gottenburg to journey across the sea to this new land. For six months they had been tossed and beaten by many storms upon the ocean, but now at last they had reached the promised land.

Slowly they sailed up the river and past the mouth of the Hoornekill.[2] The colonists stared in silence at the spot where the little settlement of Zwannendael had once stood. Nothing marked the place now but a few blackened ruins; and these, wind and storm were slowly eating away.

The Swedes did not stop there, but sailed on up the river. Their commander, Peter Minuit, had once been with the West India Company at New Netherlands, and knew something of the country and had a clear idea of where he wished to start his colony. Some miles above the Hoornekill, Minquas Creek (now our Christiana) emptied into the Delaware. Two and a half miles from its mouth, a point of rocks[3] jutted out into the stream and made a sort of natural wharf. It was upon this point that the Swedes made their landing.

Stores and implements were carried to the shore, and soon the silence of the new land was broken by the sound of the ax and the voices of the settlers talking and calling to one another.

Lonely and deserted as the country had seemed to the new settlers, their coming was quickly known to both the Indians and the Dutch.

The first to visit them was an Indian Chief named Mattahoon. He and some of his braves stalked in among the colonists one day, with silent Indian tread, and stood looking about them with curious, glittering black eyes. Minuit gave them some presents, and they seemed much pleased. Then Mattahoon told Minuit that the land belonged to him and his braves.

Minuit wished to buy it from him, and the Sachem agreed to sell it for a copper kettle and some other small articles. These were given to him, and he and his braves went away, well content with their bargain.

The next visitor to come to them was a messenger from New Amsterdam. He told them that Director General Kieft, the Dutch Governor, had sent him to ask why they had settled on land that belonged to the Dutch. The Dutch had bought it from the Indians long ago, at the time DeVries had settled on the river.

Minuit answered the messenger very civilly. He gave the Dutchman to understand that he and his Swedes were on their way to the West Indies, and had only landed on this shore for rest and refreshment.

The messenger believed what Minuit said, and was quite satisfied, and the next day he returned to New Amsterdam and told Kieft there was nothing to fear from these strangers; they were only passers-by and had no wish to settle upon the river.

However, not long after this, a Dutch ship sailing up the river saw that the strangers were still there. Moreover, they were building houses and something that looked like a fort, and gardens were laid out.

Kieft, the Dutch Governor was very angry when he heard this. Again he sent a messenger in haste, to ask why the Swedes were building, and to demand that they should re-enter their ships and sail away.

Minuit paid but little attention to this second messenger. He was very busy. The fort was almost finished. Reorus Torkillus, a clergyman who had come from Sweden with him, had already held services in it, and had prayed for the welfare of their little settlement of Christinaham, for that was what they had named it. The fort itself was called Fort Christina, in honor of the Swedish Queen, and the name of the creek was changed from Minquas to Christina.

It was of no use for the Dutch to send messengers now. The Swedes were well established. Moreover, they had made friends with the Indians. Minuit had given them a number of presents—kettles, cloth, trinkets, and even fire-arms and ammunition.[4]

With these presents the savages were delighted; and they signed a paper with their marks, giving to the Swedes all the land from Cape Henlopen to Santican, or what is now called the Falls of Trenton. When the Dutch heard this, they were indignant for they claimed that all that land had already been sold to them.

Reorus Torkillus, the Swedish minister for the little settlement, did what he could to keep peace with both the Dutch and the Indians. He was an earnest, pious man, and his great hope was that he might convert the savages to Christianity. He regularly held Divine service in the fort. He also had a plot of ground fenced off to serve as a burying ground when such might be needed.[5]

The Indians understood but little of the teachings of Torkillus; but there