Fight, Fight, Fight...

               During the time of Dutch settlement in New Netherlands there were no major land conflicts between the Dutch and the different Indian tribes. This was due to no significant population expansion until New Netherlands had already become an English colony. Ft. Orange was one of the most important trade posts of the colony and for the same there were friendly relationships between the whites and the Indians as well as in the Delaware River Valley. But like every rule there is always an exception. The Algonquian tribes lost most of their fur trade significant that they had and this brought conflicts between them and the Dutch. Disputes were for different causes: because both (the Dutch and the Algonquian) were agrarian societies, the dispute for land was very common. When the Dutch arrived to the New World they recognized prior Indian ownership, but this was just in paper.  Abuses for the fur trade, alcohol and armament were also very common frictions. After New Netherlands became New York there was no major colonist- Indian conflicts, this was because the Dutch had already established that the Europeans were the major power.

                Now, let’s talk about how the Dutch set up the concept of European supremacy in the colony. There were three major Indian Wars fought by the Dutch. The major one of them was Governor Willem Kieft’s war of 1643-1645. The Dutch were the victorious side in the conflict, the surrounded about 11 Indian bands. The beginning of this conflict is not quite clear yet, just like the Peach War of 1655, but in the last one it seems possible that the whites were the ones provoking the hostilities. The Usopus Wars motive is perhaps most clear. It was the Indian resentment at white settlers for taking over their lands. It has to be noted that all of these conflicts took place during the second phase of the Dutch colonization of New Netherlands, when immigration became even greater and the ethnicities of the colonies even more diverse.            

B: Trelease, Allen W. "Indian-White Contacts in Eastern North America: The Dutch in New Netherlands." Ethnohistory 9, no. 2 (1962): 137-144.