The Peach Tree War of 1655: When the Dutch Bought New Jersey for a Price

  Dozens of war canoes of the Susquehannock Nation, long hollowed out tree trunks, gather on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River.

On the night of September 15, 1655 the unsuspecting residents of New Amsterdam across the Hudson, the river they call the North River at the time, have no idea what awaits them as the morning approaches.

Six-hundred Susquehannock warriors armed with flintlock muskets, tomahawks and flaming torches fill the dozens of war canoes and resolutely row them towards the tip of lower Manhattan and Staten Island.

The warriors are seeking retribution and recompense for what the Dutch have just done.  Only days before the Dutch under the command of Peter Stuyvesant had conquered the Susquehannock’s largest trading partner in the area, the colony of New Sweden and now they control not only New Amsterdam and all European settlements along the Hudson River, but the Netherlands can also claim all of present day southern New Jersey for their burgeoning colony in North America as well.

Dutch hegemony over both the Hudson and Delaware Rivers limits the trading partners available to the Susquehannock nation and since, like with all Native American peoples, the Susquehannocks have become accustomed to European goods, they now face economic ruin.  Not only that, but since the Dutch are so closely allied to the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy to the north, the Susquehannocks view the rise of the New Netherland colony as an existential threat to their survival as a people.

These six-hundred Susquehannock warriors are about to invade New Amsterdam to send the Dutch a message.  With their own army under Peter Stuyvesant busy along the banks of the Delaware River conquering the Swedes more than one-hundred miles away, New Amsterdam and its environs are almost completely defenseless.

Map of New Netherlands and New Sweden

First, the Susquehannocks storm ashore on Staten Island and burn crops and lay waste to farmland and livestock.

Over the past decade Staten Island has been home to a score of Dutch families who have turned the island into a thriving agricultural community.  Within a matter of minutes the Susquehannock warriors are able to completely ravage the landscape and capture the few remaining men, women and children who are left alive.

Almost simultaneous with their assault on Staten Island, Susquehannock warriors land on the island of Manhattan, then home to New Amsterdam the capital and largest city in the North American colony of the New Netherlands, with over nine-thousand residents.

The Susquehannocks torch the wooden buildings that line the narrow streets and run rampant throughout the entire city plundering and killing almost at will.  Dutch resistance in the form of hastily assembled citizen militias is feeble and sporadic at best.

Before it is all over the Susquehannocks will capture over one-hundred and fifty hostages, mostly women and children, and transport them back across the Hudson River to a place that the Dutch call Pavonia--roughly the location of modern day Hoboken and Jersey City.

The hostages will be held on a narrow and barren spit of sandy land that juts out into the Hudson River called Paulus Hook.

In New Amsterdam survivors of the Susquehannock attack will barricade themselves inside Fort Amsterdam, a fortified blockhouse surrounded by a wooden palisade, located at the lower end of Manhattan.  With their back’s to the sea the Dutch frantically dispatch urgent messages for help to Stuyvesant and his army encamped in southern New Jersey.

When word reaches Stuyvesant and his army along the banks of the Delaware, fresh from their victory over New Sweden, he immediately high tails it out of his headquarters in the vicinity of Burlington, New Jersey, and heads back north to relieve the garrison besieged at Fort Amsterdam.

He arrives back at the capital of the New Netherlands colony three days later, just in time to see the still smoldering ruins of the city that the government back home in Holland depends on him to defend.

In the immediate aftermath of the devastating Susquehannock attack on New Amsterdam it is interesting to note that the Dutch have completely no idea of the real reason why it could ever have happened.

Peter Stuyvesant (center) negotiating with Native Americans

After holding an emergency council to discuss plans for freeing the hostages being held in Pavonia, and to determine what an appropriate response to the attack should be, Dutch councilmen and military leaders conclude that the Susquehannock’s must have become enraged by the recent murder of a native woman at the hands of a drunken Dutch settler on Manhattan Island and that they must have launched the attack in retaliation.

A few weeks earlier, an intoxicated Dutchman named Cornelis Van Tienhoven had shot and killed a young native woman in the back when he had discovered her eating a peach on land that he claimed was part of his orchard.  For this reason the Dutch of the New Netherland Colony referred to the Susquehannock attack of September 15, 1655, and all subsequent events related to that attack, as the Peach Tree War.

A resolution drafted by Stuyvesant and the Dutch council at the time stated, “Whoever considers only his last transaction with the savages will find that, with clouded brains filled with liquor (Van Tienhoven) was the prime cause of the massacre...and has given the most offense by killing one of the squaws for taking some peaches.”

Apparently, it never occurred to the Dutch that such “savages” as the Susquehannock would ever be capable of even considering such lofty issues as trade or self defense prior to launching an attack.  In the eyes of the Dutch, all of this killing and hostage taking by the uncivilized natives must have been done out of revenge for a murder over some stolen peaches.

        Not wanting to become involved in a protracted military campaign against a numerically superior native population Peter Stuyvesant immediately sets about negotiating a release for the one-hundred and fifty hostages being held on Paulus Hook.

After agreeing to pay a ransom, the hostages are all released within a matter of days.  But seeing that the Susquehannocks are amenable to negotiation, not to mention a little bit strapped for cash, Stuyvesant goes even a step further.

He agrees to buy all of the Susquehannock land west of New Amsterdam, between the Hudson and Hackensack Rivers, in exchange for an immediate cessation of all hostilities and a promise by him that the colony of the New Netherlands will not launch any attacks against the Susquehannock people.

A treaty between the colony of the New Netherlands and Susquehannock Nation was signed on March 6, 1660 that officially ended the Peach Tree War.  Stuyvesant renames the land between the Hudson and Hackensack Rivers that he purchased from the Susquehannocks (the site of present day Bergen County, New Jersey) Fort Bergen.  He then immediately orders all Dutch settlers in and around the area of Pavonia to the south to abandon their settlements and move north to the more fortified settlement of Bergen.

The Peach Tree War is the last hostile encounter between the colony of the New Netherlands and Native American peoples.  Cornelis Van Tienhoven is never brought to justice for killing an innocent member of the Wappinger people in cold blood over a stolen piece of fruit.  The court deems that he was not right in the head due to the amount of liquor he had consumed and that the killing of a squaw under such circumstances is in no way consummate to murder anyway.

Less than ten years after the Susquehannock attack on New Amsterdam on September 8, 1664, without the firing of a single shot, Peter Stuyvesant surrendered the city to the British who will rename it New York and promptly begin hostilities with the Susquehannock people once again.

By waging their assault on New Amsterdam in 1655 the Susquehannocks did send a clear message to European settlers in the New World.  That message was that indigenous peoples in North America weren’t going to allow themselves to be disrespected and pushed around without a fight.  But with their equally pragmatic, yet misguided response to the Peach Tree War, the Dutch sent an equally clear message that unfortunately still resonates in the world today and that message is that anything, even including New Jersey’s most populous county, can be bought for the right price.