38 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

claimed to have followed. The indignant burghers, however, reminded him that he had dissolved the Board of Twelve and forbidden all assemblies of freemen.

“Meanwhile,” says the historian,1 “the Long Island Indians had begun to relent. Spring was at hand, and they desired to plant their corn. Three delegates from the wigwams of Penhawitz, their ‘great chief,’ approached Fort Amsterdam, bearing a white flag. ‘Who will go to meet them?’ demanded Kieft. None were willing but De Vries and Jacob Olfertsen. ‘Our chief has sent us,’ said the savages, ‘to know why you have killed his people, who have never laid a straw in your way, nor done you aught but good? Come and speak to our chief upon the sea-coast.’ Setting out with the Indian messengers, De Vries and Olfertsen, in the evening, came to ‘Rechqua-aike,’ or Rockaway, where they found nearly three hundred savages, and about thirty wigwams. The chief, ‘who had but one eye,’ invited them to pass the night in his cabin, and regaled them with oysters and fish. At break of day, the envoys from Manhattan were conducted into the woods about four hundred yards off, where they found sixteen chiefs of Long Island waiting for their coming. Placing the two Europeans in the centre, the chiefs seated themselves around in a ring, and their 'best speaker' arose, holding in his hand a bundle of small sticks. ‘When you first came to our coasts,’ slowly began the orator, ‘you sometimes had no food; we gave you our beans and corn, and relieved you with our oysters and fish; and now, for recompense, you murder our people;’ and he laid down a little stick. ‘In the beginning of your voyages, you left your people here with their goods; we traded with them while your ships were away, and cherished them as the apple of our eye; we gave them our daughters for companions, who have borne children, and many Indians have sprung from the Swannekens; and now you villainously massacre your own blood.’ The chief laid clown another stick; many more remained in his hand; but De Vries, cutting short the reproachful catalogue, invited the chiefs to accompany him to Fort Amsterdam, where the director I would give them presents to make

1 Brodhead, 1. 358, 359