Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| in numbers of the whites, and the whites became tired of having a horde of lazy, filthy, cruel beggars always crowding into their houses, killing their cattle, and by their very presence threatening their families. A strong and discreet man might have preserved peace; but Kieft was rash, cruel, and irresolute, and precipitated the contest by ordering a brutal vengeance to be taken on the Raritan tribe for a wrong which they probably had not committed. They of course retaliated in kind, and there followed a series of struggles, separated by short periods of patched-up truce. Kieft took care to keep shut up in the fort, away from all possible harm, whereat the settlers murmured greatly. All their wisest and best men, including the Patroon de Vries, the councilman La Montagne, and Dominie Bogardus, protested against his course in bringing on the war. |
| Early in 1643, he caused by his orders, one of the most horrible massacres by which our annals have ever been disgraced. The dreaded Mohawks had made a sudden foray on the River Indians, who, like the other neighboring tribes, were Algonquins; and the latter, fleeing in terror from their adversaries, took refuge close to the wooden walls of New Amsterdam, where they were at first kindly received. On Shrovetide night, Kieft, with a hideous and almost inconceivable barbarity and treachery, as short-sighted as it was cowardly, |