The Fulkerson Family Pages
Cornelis Van Tienhoven, Monster and Murderer
Van Tienhoven then turned to his troops, told them that he would not be responsible if they violated his orders, and began to walk away. He hadn't gone far when the soldiers acted on his hint and suddenly attacked the Raritans by surprise, killing a few and capturing several others.
One captive, the chief's brother, was tortured "in his private parts with a split piece of wood."
Within six weeks the Raritans responded with an attack on Staten Island colonists, killing four and burning a house and some tobacco sheds.
Never at a loss for deviltry, Kieft responded to the Raritans' bid for vengeance by contacting several other tribes, letting them know he would pay a large bounty in wampum for every head of a Raritan they brought to him. The Raritans made peace with the Dutch before the year was out.
As if Van Tienhoven's callousness had not produced misery enough, one of the most shameful acts of the New Netherlands colonists took place in February 1643, when two starving and homeless bands of Algonquins, fleeing attacks of their enemies (and fellow Native Americans) the Mohawks, tragically sought refuge near New Amsterdam.
Rather than meeting with mercy, the Algonquins found a Director Kieft delighting in an opportunity to kill some more "savages."
With Kieft's blessing, Cornelis Van Tienhoven approached his father-in-law Jan Jansen Damen and brother-in-law Abraham Ver Planck (husband of Christine and Rachel Vigne's sister, Maria). Damen and Ver Planck, both members of the City Council, became convinced over a hearty dinner, supplemented with a LOT of liquor, to sign a petition instigating an attack on these Indians.
Van Tienhoven then led 80 soldiers across the Hudson at night to Hoboken, where they massacred a camp of sleeping Indians (the Pavonia Massacre). The killing continued through the next day, even of survivors who struggled out into the open to beg for food or warmth.
One witness who was opposed to the attack wrote:
Infants were snatched from their mothers breasts, and cut to pieces in sight of the parents, and the pieces thrown into the fire and into the water; other sucklings were bound to wooden boards, and cut and stuck or bored through, and miserably massacred, so that a heart of stone would have been softened. Some were thrown in the river, and when the fathers and mothers endeavoured to rescue them, the soldiers would not let them come ashore again, but caused both young and old to be drowned. . . Some came to our people on the farms with their hands cut off; others had their legs hacked off and some were holding their entrails in their arms.
Within a few weeks eleven of the surrounding tribes joined in retaliation against the colonists. A series of mutual attacks ensued, which escalated into the conflict historians now call Kieft's War.
Farms in Brooklyn were burned. Most of Manhattan was burned and looted as well. The colonists, numbering only about 500, huddled in their dilapidated Fort Amsterdam at the tip of Manhattan until the Indians left.
A truce was signed in April, but that lasted only five months. Most of the tribes felt New Amsterdam's reparations [in wampum] for the massacred Indians were not sufficient to even the score. In September, 1,500 Indian warriors from seven tribes attacked and sezed most of Manhattan and Long Island. The colonists were forced to remain in the shelter of their fort for several months.
The Dutch ended the immediate threat to Manhattan several months later, with the help of English mercenaries, in the same bloodthirsty manner in which the war had started. Colonists attacked a village near Stamford, killing 20 Indians, then moved on to a Canarsie village where they killed 120.
Near Greenwich they attacked and burned a big village at night, killing more than 500 Indians, most of them by fire. More than two years passed before peace was restored.
In 1645 when Kiefts War (a.k.a. the Wappinger War) ended, it proved a terrible setback for the New Amsterdam and Long Island colonies. Manhattan's population dwindled to 250, less than it was in 1630. Director Kieft was recalled to Holland, but his ship struck a reef near the English coast, and he never reached home.
Van Tienhoven could not give up the role of instigator. September 1655, Director Peter Stuvesant (Kieft's replacement) was on a visit to the Dutch colony in Delaware, so Van Tienhoven used the occasion to begin yet another calamitous war with the Indians.
Members of the Esopus, Hackensack and Mohican tribes in 64 canoes stopped at Manhattan on their way to settle some old scores with the Canarsie tribes on Long Island--they landed to get food, some planning on buying it and others on taking it. A number raided the colonists' orchards. When Hendrick Van Dyck shot an Indian woman taking some peaches from his garden-- "The Peach War" began.
Hundreds of tribesmen swarmed throughout the city the next day, harassing the citizens and trespassing in their homes. One found and wounded Van Dyck with an arrow. In the evening a band of Indians were gathered at the shore. Van Tienhoven led a contingent of armed citizens to their location and called out, "Murder the savages who kill the Dutch." Shots rang out and the Indians fled in their canoes, but not before returning the fire and killing several of their attackers.
The Natives did not go far. Across the river at Staten Island they spent the night putting fire to houses and farms. Over the next three days, Indians swept through the Dutch settlements along the East River and the Hudson, driving the Dutch from their homes and farms.
Stuyvesant returned to New Amsterdam at the end of September to find almost the entire population of New Netherlands in and around Fort Amsterdam. Forty colonists had been killed, and a hundred more were prisoners in Indian camps. Hundreds of houses and farms were reduced to ashes and ruins.
By the end of October, the Indians released 70 of their prisoners in return for powder and lead. It was two years before they finished extorting Stuyvesant for the return of the remaining 30.
Back in Holland, the Dutch West India Company's directors received evidence that Van Tienhoven had committed a series of improper actions in his former role as Secretary, including embezzlement. The "Peach War" was the last straw.
Peter Stuyvesant tried to defend Van Tienhoven, saying the war was not Van Tienhoven's fault. The company responded by ordering Stuyvesant to remove Van Tienhoven and not to defend him, "as we are confident that the charges are true. Whoever considers his last transactions with the savages, will find that with clouded brains filled with liquor, he was a prime cause of this dreadful massacre. " By June 1656, Van Tienhoven had been dismissed from office.
DROWNED, or Partying in Barbados?
Van Tienhoven's hat and cane were found floating in the river on November 18, 1656. He was presumed drowned, but there was reason to be suspicious that this was a planned disappearance. The "drowning" occurred while he was pending an appearance before a court of inquiry. As his equally devious brother had disappeared to Barbados, speculation has been Van Tienhoven abandoned Rachel and their children, and his life in New Netherlands, for the tropical islands, but no evidence has ever been found.
