George Lamberton, a New Haven merchant, who, sailing along the coast on a trading venture to Virginia in the winter of 1638-39, discovered that there was a profitable fur trade on the Delaware.1 This discovery resulted in the establishment at New Haven of a Delaware Company to exploit the trade of that region. Among the members of the Company were Lamberton, Governor Eaton, the Rev. John Davenport, and other leading men of New Haven. Indeed so closely was the Company identified with the colony that it assumes almost the aspect of a corporate enterprise.

In the spring of 1641 the Company sent Lamberton and Captain Nathaniel Turner to the Delaware to purchase land of the Indians and otherwise prepare the way for settlement, for, if the primary motive of the Company was the fur trade, a strong secondary motive was the desire to secure an outlet for the growing population of the colony. Regardless of the rights of the Dutch and Swedes, two large tracts of land were purchased in southern New Jersey and another tract on the future site of Philadelphia. The colony of New Haven extended its jurisdiction over this territory and lent the Company its full support. A settlement was made the same year at Varkens Kill (Salem, New Jersey), but as it was below the Dutch and Swedish posts and therefore unfavorably situated for the fur trade, a trading post was erected the next year near the mouth of the Schuylkill and above the rival posts.

So seriously did this new post interfere with trade that the Dutch, probably with the aid of the Swedes, destroyed the fort and took away the settlers to Manhattan. The settlement at Varkens Kill was not disturbed, but it amounted to little. Some of the settlers perished of disease, some straggled back to New Haven, and a few stayed on, submitting themselves to Swedish rule. So complete was the failure of this first English attempt to gain possession of the Delaware route to the interior, and so heavily did the losses of the Company bear upon the colony of New Haven, that murmurs were heard against the promoters. Davenport was accused of trying to conceal his share in the

1 C. H. Levermore, Republic of New Haven, p. 90.

2 No attempt is here made to describe this episode in full. Amandus Johnson (Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, i. 208–217) gives a detailed account with references to the sources. His account supersedes that of Levermore (Republic of New Haven, pp. 90 ff), which is condensed and uncritical and has minor inaccuracies.

enterprise, and one Luke Atkinson was fined for saying that "Mr. Davenport's name had bin very pretious, but now it was darkned." The failure of the enterprise and the consequent recognition of the necessity for support from the other New England colonies probably had a good deal of influence in persuading New Haven to join the New England Confederation.1

Not only was the fur trade important in the history of American expansion; it was also an influential factor in the various attempts at colonial union. It was no accident that control of the fur trade was one of the subjects discussed at the Albany Congress in 1754. The only thing, down to the time of the outbreak of the struggle with Great Britain, which could induce the several colonies to lay aside. their jealousies even temporarily was the occasional necessity for union against their Indian and foreign enemies. To control the fur trade, friendship with the Indian was necessary, but that control and that friendship could only be secured as the result of a successful struggle with foreign rivals. Here again the smaller world of New England was no exception to the rule. Perhaps the leading motive for the formation of the New England Confederation in 1643 was the fear of trouble with the Indians and the neighboring Dutch and French colonies, and the further realization that in the event of such trouble little help could be expected from the mother country, then on the eve of civil war. It is abundantly clear, from the above recital of events, that hostile collision had resulted in the past from rivalry over the fur trade and was likely to do so again. Thus, in a double sense the fur trade was a cause of the formation of the New England Confederation. On the one hand the necessity of a united effort to push the trade in the face of French and Dutch rivalry was recognized; on the other, the dangerous consequences which might ensue if any one colony attempted to push the trade alone.2

This becomes increasingly evident when we consider some of the early deliberations of the Confederation. In 1644 the United Commissioners proposed the formation of a joint stock company to carry on the Indian trade. The scheme was approved by Massachusetts and Connecticut, the colonies which at that time had the least interest

1 Levermore, p. 95.

2 See McIlwain, p. xxxi.

Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 22-23.

in the fur trade, but was rejected by Plymouth. No record of any action by New Haven appears upon the pages of the published records of the colony.1 But although this attempt at joint prosecution of the trade fell through, the Confederation did give its moral support to New Haven in its efforts to secure a foothold upon the Delaware.

The negotiations between the Dutch and Swedes on the one hand and the Confederation on the other may be followed in the Acts of the Commissioners of the Confederation. They are chiefly interesting as showing how this attempt to get a share of the western fur trade brought the Confederation to the verge of war with the Dutch. For a time after 1643 New Haven seems to have been too exhausted by her previous failure to renew the enterprise, and when in 1649 the New Haven Commissioners again brought the matter to the attention of the United Commissioners that body showed its lack of interest by refusing to encourage another attempt at settlement. The necessary encouragement was supplied by the Treaty of Hartford in 1650, which was a sincere attempt, at least on the part of the Dutch, to adjust all matters in dispute between them and the New England colonies. The arbitrators chosen on that occasion were unable to arrive at a definite agreement concerning the rights of the respective parties upon the Delaware, but recommended that both, according to the status quo prius, be free to "Improve theire Just enterests at Delaware for planting or Trading as they shall see Cause; onely . . . that all pseedings there as in other places may bee Carried on in love and peace tell the Right may bee further Considered and Justly Issued either in Europe or heere by the two States of England and Holland."4

...

Despite this agreement, when a ship-load of fifty settlers for the

1 Weeden, i. 42; Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 86; Connecticut Colonial Records, i. 113; Plymouth Colony Records, ii. 82. J. A. James (English Institutions and the American Indian, Johns Hopkins University Studies, 12th Series, x. 25–26) makes the mistake of supposing that this proposed company went into operation. The references which he cites in proof of his statement refer to the activities of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians.

2 Plymouth Colony Records, ix and x. Johnson gives an account of the efforts of the English to get a foothold upon the Delaware from 1643 to 1653 with full references to sources (vol. i. chap. xxxvi). Levermore must be relied upon for the rest of the history of the New Haven Delaware Company (pp. 98-99). 3 Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 140-141.

4 ix. 189.

Delaware set out the following spring from New Haven, Stuyvesant protested vigorously and by threats forced them to turn back. Incidentally it appears that this attempt at settlement was due quite as much to a desire on the part of some to escape from narrowing quarters as to a purpose to carry out the original plans of the Company. The petition of the aggrieved would-be settlers speaks of their being "streitened in the Respectiue plantations," and lays stress upon the fact that there was no other opportunity within the limits of New England for expansion, saying that the Delaware was a "place fitt for the enlargment of the English Collonies at present and hopfull for posteritie." The ever expanding population of the English colonies made them less successful in the fur trade than the French and Dutch, who with a smaller and less rapidly increasing population, were not so much troubled by the problem of reconciling the rival interests of the fur trader and the settler.

The patience of New Haven was completely exhausted by this new interference with her plans, and for once the Confederation, though still cautiously, prepared to support her. Eaton wrote to Edward Winslow, who was at this time looking after New England interests in London, and the United Commissioners followed his letter with another, asking him to sound Parliament and the Council of State upon their attitude toward the Delaware question, and to find out "how any engagement by the Collonies against the Duch vpon the formencioned occasion willbee Resented by the Parliament." 2 The question of war against the Dutch was, therefore, being discussed and doubtless New Haven was urging drastic action. The Commissioners were not prepared to go that far, but did agree that if the petitioners, with the approval of New Haven, would send within a year 100 or 150 well-armed men with a good vessel and plenty of ammunition to the Delaware, and if while behaving peaceably they were opposed by the Dutch or Swedes, the Confederation would support them by sending soldiers, provided the Company pay the charges of the expedition. They further sent a letter of protest to Stuyvesant charging him with being "the sole auther and cause of all such inconveniencies and Mischeifes as may follow thereupon." The

1 Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 210-212; Johnson, i. 402.

2 Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 199.

3 ix. 213-215.

Company could not meet these many conditions and no further action was taken at this time.

A year and a half later, in the spring of 1653, all New England was stirred by reports that the Dutch were uniting the Indians in a great conspiracy to attack the English. These reports gave New Haven and Connecticut another opportunity to urge upon the Confederation a declaration of war against the Dutch. The time was further opportune because England and Holland were then at war. The Commissioners of the Confederation met in extraordinary session; all the old questions in dispute with the Dutch were once more discussed; the two western,colonies urged war. Prominent in the list of fifteen grievances against the Dutch was the treatment of New Haven traders and settlers on the Delaware. The attitude of Plymouth and Massachusetts toward this particular class of grievances is instructive alike of the weakness of the Confederation and of its unwillingness to push matters to an open rupture with the Dutch. The Plymouth Commissioners protested that five or six of the grievances had to do with events which had occurred before the formation of the Confederation; while the Massachusetts elders, in their statement of the case which did so much to influence that colony to decide against war with the Dutch, gave it as their opinion that many of the grievances alleged by the two western colonies were awaiting diplomatic adjustment and therefore were not clear ground for war. The Delaware question would certainly fall within that category.1

How New Haven, blocked in her efforts to drag the Confederation into war with the Dutch, appealed to Cromwell, how Cromwell sent a fleet to capture New Amsterdam, and how the news of peace in Europe put an end to the undertaking, are matters which cannot be considered here. At the 1654 meeting of the Commissioners Eaton again pressed the Delaware business and there was talk of a large migration from New Haven to the Delaware, but the Dutch conquest of New Sweden, the death of Governor Eaton, and other events put a quietus upon the ambitions of New Haven to find an outlet for her surplus population and to break down the Dutch control of the western fur trade by establishing a colony upon the Delaware. Among the causes which brought the Confederation to the verge of war with

1 Plymouth Colony Records, x. 13, 14, 15, 32-33, 56.

2 x. 127; Levermore, pp. 98–99.