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Member Article: Governor Kieft's Personal War
by Walter Giersbach
Americans today know little about the Dutch influence in the New York region except for odd place names like Harlem, Yonkers and Spuyten Duyvil. Or, the tale of Rip Van Winkle. Or, the bargain in which Pieter Stuyvesant bought an entire island for $25 worth of trinkets.
For a brief period, the Dutch managed one of the most democratic, tolerant and
socially liberal settlements in the New World. In contrast, one of its
governors, Willem Kieft, will forever be known as the spiteful tyrant of New
Amsterdam. In the wake of his administration lay more than a thousand dead
Indians—men, women and children.* Such was the viciousness of his warfare that a
contemporary complained to authorities in Holland that the Indians were being
decapitated and burned alive by Kieft's soldiers. "Young children, some of them
snatched from their mothers, were cut in pieces before the eyes of their
parents, and the pieces were thrown into the fire or into the water; other babes
were bound on planks and then cut through, stabbed and miserably massacred so
that it would break a heart of stone."
Member Article: Philip's War: America's Most Devastating Conflict
by Walter Giersbach
King Philip's War (1675-76) is an event that has been largely ignored by the
American public and popular historians. However, the almost two-year conflict
between the colonists and the Native Americans in New England stands as perhaps
the most devastating war in this country's history. One in ten soldiers on both
sides were wounded or killed. At its height, hostilities threatened to push the
recently arrived English colonists back to the coast. And, it took years for
towns and urban centers to recover from the carnage and property damage.
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