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Whereas sad experience has demonstrated from time to time that, because of the separate residences of the country people, (completely contrary to the order and good intention of the honorable Company and its high administration posted here in the countryside at various spots and locations) many cases of manslaughter, murder, and the destruction of livestock, and the burning of houses have been committed and perpetrated by the Indians, natives of this land, which might have been mostly avoided and prevented, with God’s help, if the good inhabitants of this province had settled down together in the form of villages, neighborhoods, and hamlets, as have our neighbors in New England, who, because of their compact settlement, have never been subjected to the same, at least not to such manifold and general misfortunes as we and our nation; besides the righteous chastisement of God on account of our sins, caused and encouraging the savage barbarians thereto, by the separate dwellings of the country people who are unable in time of need to come to the assistance of the one and the other because of the distance between places, making it impossible for the director general and council to provide each separate remote house with a security guard. Whereby, in addition to the aforementioned murders, injuries, destruction of various persons’ farms and and plantations already suffered, also the most recent [ misfortune ] has been the cause of significant damage and degeneration of the country and of the good inhabitants themselves; and it is to be feared and expected to happen again in the future, no less now than previously, unless the good inhabitants have learned to be wiser and more careful as a result of injury to themselves and others, and place themselves at the disposal of good order, as they are obliged to be, by forming communities at suitable places in the form and manner as the director general and councilors or their deputies shall indicate to the inhabitants, at which time the director general and councilors will be able to assist and maintain their subjects with the power intrusted to them by God and the high authorities. Li order that this may be the better executed and obeyed in the future, the aforesaid director general and councilors do hereby not only warn but also order and command their good subjects to concentrate themselves in the form of villages, neighborhoods and hamlets by next spring, so that they may be better protected, maintained, and defended by one another and by the military entrusted thereto by the director general and councilors against any assaults and attacks of the barbarians, with the warning that whosoever, contrary hereto, shall remain on their separate plantations hereafter, do so at their own risk, without the assistance of the director general and councilors in time of need; and in addition they shall annually be fined the sum of 25 guilders for the benefit of the general welfare. Furthermore, the director general and councilors order, in order to prevent a sudden conflagration, that from now on no house be covered with straw or reed, and no chimney be made any longer of clapboard or wood.

Thus done, resolved, resumed, and enacted at the session of the director general and councilors held at Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland, ady ut supra. (Was signed:) P. Stuyvesant, Nicasius de Sille, La Montagne, Cor. van Tienhoven.

PUBLISHED ADY UT SUPRA ^[1]

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References

Translation: Gehring, C., trans./ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. 6, Council Minutes, 1655-1656 (Syracuse: 1995). A complete copy of this publication is available on the New Netherland Institute website.