They sailed about two and a half miles through its delta marshes to some rocks which formed a natural wharf and which still stand today at the foot of Sixth Street in Wilmington.This was the Plymouth Rock of Delaware.Level land, marshes, and meadows lay along the Christina, the remains of the delta which the stream had formed in the past.On the edge of the delta or moorland, rocky hills rose, forming the edge of the Piedmont, and out of them from the north flowed a fine large stream, the Brandywine, which fell into the Christina just before it entered the Delaware.Here in the delta their engineer laid out a town, called Christinaham, and a fort behind the rocks on which they had landed.A cove in the Christina made a snug anchorage for their ships, out of the way of the tide.They then bought from the Indians all the land from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of the Delaware at Trenton, calling it New Sweden and the Delaware New Swedeland Stream.The people of Delaware have always regarded New Sweden as the beginning of their State, and Peter Minuit, the leader of this Swedish expedition, always stands first on the published lists of their governors.
On their arrival in the river in the spring of 1638, the Swedes found no evidences of permanent Dutch colonization.Neither Fort Oplandt nor Fort Nassau was then occupied.They always maintained that the Dutch had abandoned the river, and that it was therefore open to the Swedes for occupation, especially after they had purchased the Indian title.It was certainly true that the Dutch efforts to plant colonies in that region had failed; and since the last attempt by De Vries, six years had elapsed.On the other hand, the Dutch contended that they had in that time put Fort Nassau in repair, although they had not occupied it, and that they kept a few persons living along the Jersey shore of the river, possibly the remains of the Nassau colony, to watch all who visited it.These people had immediately notified the Dutch governor Kieft at New Amsterdam of the arrival of the Swedes, and he promptly issued a protest against the intrusion.But his protest was neither very strenuous nor was it followed up by hostile action, for Sweden and Holland were on friendly terms.
Sweden, the great champion of Protestant Europe, had intervened in the Thirty Years' War to save the Protestants of Germany.The Dutch had just finished a similar desperate war of eighty years for freedom from the papal despotism of Spain.Dutch and Swedes had, therefore, every reason to be in sympathy with each other.
The Swedes, a plain, strong, industrious people, as William Penn aptly called them, were soon, however, seriously interfering with the Dutch fur trade and in the first year, it is said, collected thirty thousand skins.If this is true, it is an indication of the immense supply of furbearing animals, especially beaver, available at that time.For the next twenty-five years Dutch and Swedes quarreled and sometimes fought over their respective claims.But it is significant of the difficulty of retaining a hold on the Delaware region that the Swedish colonists on the Christina after a year or two regarded themselves as a failure and were on the point of abandoning their enterprise, when a vessel, fortunately for them, arrived with cattle, agricultural tools, and immigrants.It is significant also that the immigrants, though in a Swedish vessel and under the Swedish government, were Dutchmen.They formed a sort of separate Dutch colony under Swedish rule and settled near St.George's and Appoquinimink.Immigrants apparently were difficult to obtain among the Swedes, who were not colonizers like the English.
At this very time, in fact, Englishmen, Puritans from Connecticut, were slipping into the Delaware region under the leadership of Nathaniel Turner and George Lamberton, and were buying the land from the Indians.About sixty settled near Salem, New Jersey, and some on the Schuylkill in Pennsylvania, close to Fort Nassau--an outrageous piece of audacity, said the Dutch, and an insult to their "High Mightinesses and the noble Directors of the West India Company." So the Schuylkill English were accordingly driven out, and their houses were burned.The Swedes afterwards expelled the English from Salem and from the Cohansey, lower down the Bay.Later the English were allowed to return, but they seem to have done little except trade for furs and beat off hostile Indians.
The seat of the Swedish government was moved in 1643 from the Christina to Tinicum, one of the islands of the Schuylkill delta, with an excellent harbor in front of it which is now the home of the yacht clubs of Philadelphia.Here they built a fort of logs, called Fort Gothenborg, a chapel with a graveyard, and a mansion house for the governor, and this remained the seat of Swedish authority as long as they had any on the river.From here Governor Printz, a portly irascible old soldier, said to have weighed "upwards of 400 pounds and taken three drinks at every meal," ruled the river.He built forts on the Schuylkill and worried the Dutch out of the fur trade.He also built a fort called Nya Elfsborg, afterward Elsinboro, on the Jersey side below Salem.By means of this fort he was able to command the entrance to the river and compelled every Dutch ship to strike her colors and acknowledge the sovereignty of Sweden.Some he prevented from going up the river at all; others he allowed to pass on payment of toll or tribute.He gave orders to destroy every trading house or fort which the Dutch had built on the Schuylkill, and to tear down the coat of arms and insignia which the Dutch had placed on a post on the site of Philadelphia.The Swedes now also bought from the Indians and claimed the land on the Jersey side from Cape May up to Raccoon Creek, opposite the modern Chester.
