New Sweden Part 2: The Tough Guys Arrive

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We are back in New Sweden. In 1638, shortly after establishing Fort Christina at the site of today’s Wilmington, Delaware, Peter Minuit would die in a hurricane on the way back to Sweden. The settlers left behind would go a year and half before another supply ship came, but they would survive with remarkable pluck. They were well-housed, because the Finns among them would introduce the log cabin to these shores, and they would trade effectively with the Lenape and Susquehannock nations. Then in 1643 a new governor would arrive, Johan Printz, a 400-pound giant of a man who would boot out the New English who tried to settle on the Delaware, and keep the pressure on the Dutch who also claimed both sides of that river. Under Printz’s authoritarian and also competent administration, New Sweden would prosper, go on a building boom, and explore the interior of Pennsylvania, all in spite of very little help from home. The Dutch under Willem Kieft – we’ve met him before – wouldn’t challenge New Sweden in this period because they were under pressure from the New English to the east and the Indian groups around Manhattan. Then, in 1647, Pieter Stuyvesant would arrive to govern New Netherland, and everything would change again.

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Selected references for this episode

“The Founding of New Sweden”

C. A. Weslager, New Sweden on the Delaware 1638-1655

Carl K. S. Sprinchorn and G. B. Keen, “The History of the Colony of New Sweden,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1883.

Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America–The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675

“America’s Oldest Log Cabin Is for Sale”