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Log Cabins, Peter Minuit, Gustavus Adolphus… and American Liberty?
The
“Forest Finns” built them better than anyone.
The Finns had perfected the art in the Old Country and brought them to
New Sweden in America on the Delaware River, south of the Dutch settlement at
New Amsterdam.
From
there they—the log cabins, that is—spread throughout America and were found
from Maine to Oregon to Alaska.
Silver-haired daddies “fought the battle of time in them” and they were
the “little homes” in Tennessee that some people dreamed about every day but
never went back to.
For
several generations after Abraham Lincoln famously learned to read and write in
one by the light of the fireplace, it became almost a necessity for anyone,
especially a candidate for president, to be born in one, have a relative living
in one, know someone who did, or pretend that he did. It was difficult to be credentialed as a “man
of the people” without one of them somewhere in your pedigree.
When
this writer was a boy, maple syrup was even sold in tin containers shaped to
look like log cabins and pancakes always tasted best if the syrup had come out
of one of those cans.
Many
people may not know the connection of the Reformed in Germany to log cabins in
America. But there is a connection and
it also has something to do with religious persecution and liberty. People who built and lived in log cabin had
something special about them.
The
first Reformed elders in America were Peter Minuit and Peter’s brother-in-law
Jan Huygen. In
fact, according to Rev. James Good, Peter Minuit held the first Reformed
worship in America in the upper story of the fort that the Dutch had erected to
defend their settlement on the Hudson River at New Amsterdam [now New York].
Peter
Minuit is a shadowy figure in history.
We have no painting or representation of him. The painting of William Ranney
at Rutgers University that shows Peter purchasing Manhattan Island from the
Indians is pure imagination, made up out of whole cloth some two hundred years
after the event. But it has appeared in
magazines, newspapers, and even school textbooks as a depiction of the real
thing. The picture did depict a real
event, but the picture isn’t true.
We
don’t even really know how to pronounce his name. This writer learned it as MIN-u-it as did
thousands and thousands of school children in America. It was pronounced that way by the Dutch
settlers and stuck. It might even have
been right. But some, maybe because some
have a tendency to think that they know better than the rest of us—have lately
come to think it should have a French pronunciation “MIN wee.” Nobody knows for sure about some things, but
it seems certain that Peter Minuit was a Walloon, born in the Rhineland city of
Wesel about the year 1589. His father
was Jan Minuit who came to Wesel from what is now Belgium to escape Spanish
persecution during the Thirty Years’ War and purchased citizenship in Wesel in
1584 and married Sarah Breil of Kleve [the German for
Cleves, the home of one of Henry VIII’s unfortunate wives].
Peter’s
marriage to Gerdruudt Raet
on August 20, 1613, was recorded in the Dutch Reformed Church [now Lutheran] in
Wesel. His name is spelled “Myniewit.” We also
know that Peter became an elder in the French Reformed Church of Wesel.
The
Dutch had claims on land in the New World because of their sponsorship of the
exploration of the Hudson River by Henry Hudson. In order to exploit these claims a trading
company was formed to take advantage of the immigration of Walloons from the
Netherlands to the New World. Peter
Minuit is most famous to American school children because of his purchase of
Manhattan Island from the Indians for a few trinkets. In modern times they are taught that this
began the exploitation of native peoples by evil white men. It was nothing of the sort, if course, for the
Indians had no European idea of land ownership, no concept of the transfer of
property rights, nor did the Dutch think of such things. Neither side thought of a transfer of
property. It was a treaty of friendship
where both could continue to use the land.
If liberals were smarter they could use the term “share” and turn the event
into a positive learning experience for their post-modern off-spring. But the myth continues to be taught to serve
a broader agenda. Betrayal of the
Indians would come later, but not by Peter Minuit and not at that time, and it
was a betrayal based mostly on ignorance of Indian ways, rather than greed or
malice.
This
story, though, is about log cabins, not the Dutch at New Amsterdam. Relations between Peter Minuit and the East
Indian Trading Company soured over the Company’s insistence on developing the patroon system, which reserved the land for a few wealthy
landowners and brought oppression to the common farmer. Peter returned to Germany looking for new
opportunities. The Thirty Years War was
raging in Europe at that time and Gustavus Adolphus, the great Protestant King of Sweden, was
victorious everywhere and all of Germany was coming under his authority.
The
king was ambitious to plant a Swedish colony in America, but he met an untimely
death in battle, much to the dismay of Protestants everywhere. His successes in Europe were soon
reversed. The invasion of the Rhineland
by the Spanish was followed by Roman Catholic slaughter of the Reformed people
and the suppression of their churches.
The
death of Gustavus ended the Swedish occupation of
Germany but did not cure the Swedish government’s desire to found a colony in
the New World. It was a delicate
operation, for both the Dutch and the English had claims to most of North
America and maintained peace on the most delicate of terms. Later on, one of the first graduates of the
new college at Harvard would betray his college and his faith and deliver New
Amsterdam to the British crown, but that is yet another story. The English would write the history of New
York, Washington Irving would lampoon the “Knickerbockers,” invent the myth of
the “flat earth,” and tarnish the reputation of Dutch in the new world.
Peter
Minuit was not only looking for new opportunities but he was greatly moved over
the accounts coming out of the Rhineland about of the plight of the Reformed
German farmers. Spanish and Austrian
Catholics had taken turns wasting their farms, confiscating their wealth,
destroying their churches, killing and looting.
Peter wondered if he could find a way to plant a colony that would
satisfy the Swedish desire for expansion with his compassionate desire to
deliver his German countrymen from oppression and persecution. Could he plant them in the New World and get
the Swedes to pay? Indeed, he could and
he did.
In
1637, after delicate negotiations designed to allay Dutch suspicions and
English jealousies, the New Sweden Company was formed of Swedish, German, and
Dutch stockholders. Peter set sail the
same year with two ships, the Kalmar Nyckel and Fogel Grip, bound for the Delaware River. The result was the founding of the first
European Settlement in the Delaware Valley, named Christina [now Wilmington]
after Sweden’s twelve-year old queen.
During the next seventeen years more ships came from Europe, bringing
Finns and Swedes. These Germans, Swedes,
and Finns spread along the Delaware River into what is
now Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
As
we saw before, no one could build log cabins like the “Forest Finns” and cabins
were built after the Finnish art throughout the frontier and into the
West. The log cabin was the center of
the Lincoln legend and provided enough sentimental journeys to satisfy many
generations.
Peter
Minuit died in a hurricane in the Caribbean the next year and fades from
history, but is remembered in the lore of New York. In 2006 school children from the Peter Minuit
School learn to “share” and play in the Harlem Park named after him. Many people still think he cheated the
Indians.
The
fresh breath of liberty in the New World was exhilarating to the settlers of
New Sweden. Sweden did not long maintain
their foothold there. Like New
Amsterdam, the government of New Sweden would pass to the English Crown. Before either of those happened, the spirit
of liberty in New Sweden was nourished in those log cabins that spread through
Appalachia, meeting up with other German Reformed in Pennsylvania and New York,
mixing into the stew of religious and economic liberty that was blossoming in
New Amsterdam, and especially making common cause with the Scotch-Irish
immigrants who had made their way from the Border to America by way of Ireland,
spreading into Appalachia, into the South, and throughout the Midwest. They adopted the log cabins and built them in
the mountains and were proud that they had never been defeated by the Romans or had their spirit quenched by Edward Longshanks
of England, the Hammer of the Scots.
After the English destroyed their homes in the Border, they fled to
Ireland and formed the bulk of William III’s army that defeated James II at the
Battle of Boyne, which secured the British crown for William and Mary. Not all the Irish were Roman Catholic and not
all the Scots were dependable Presbyterians, especially if those Presbyterians were
English Presbyterians who could persecute like the Church of England.
These
Scots were Calvinists who carried their Bibles with them and were equally adept
at shooting the eyes out of squirrels and the hearts out of Episcopalians. Thousands of them immigrated to America after
what they thought was a betrayal by William and Mary. The Episcopalian aristocrats of Eastern
Virginia welcomed them. The Virginians
even relaxed their laws against non-conforming churches to allow the
Scots-Irish to build their log cabins in the western mountains. They were useful to the Virginians because
they were even better at shooting Indians than they were at shooting
Episcopalians. Their rugged souls were
the stuff warriors are made of. They
were always a bit too unruly to suit the taste of the German and Dutch Reformed, but their love of liberty and hatred of
persecution gave them a common bond.
Virginian
aristocrats like the Byrds thought them a bit
disorderly and smelly, but they showed their worth against Cornwallis. The English insulted them, called them
“mongrels” and promised to burn their cabins.
By the thousands they poured out of their cabins in Tennessee, Virginia,
North Carolina and parts west to break the back of the English at the battles
of King’s Mountain and Cowpens to drive Cornwallis back to Yorktown,
encirclement, and surrender. James Webb,
perhaps, did not exaggerate when he said that Colonial America, with its
European forms of propriety died with the British soldiers on King’s Mountain,
replaced by something that the Atlantic coast aristocrats could not understand
or even define.
After
doing their job at King’s Mountain and Cowpens, these sturdy folk simply went
home to take care of their crops, their families, and their cabins. There were Indians to fight and more cabins
to build. Their descendants drive
pick-up trucks adorned with gun-racks to NASCAR races and volunteer by the
thousands to the military services to defend America’s freedom. Some have bumper stickers, “God, guns, and guts…”
Germans
from the Palatinate, the settlers from New Sweden, the Dutch in New Amsterdam
and Englishmen who had fled from James I all knew what religious oppression
was, for they had all suffered immensely from it. In America they all found precious liberty,
economic, political, and religious. In
the precious breath of freedom they learned what it was to be
real men, slaves to no one. These
were a new band of warriors. It was not
for them to march without question into a valley of death to die on the whim of
an aristocrat. They would rather create
their own valleys of death for the aristocrat who threatened their homes, their
families, and their faith. Luther’s
doctrine of the priesthood of the believer that wrought havoc with the pious
tyranny of Rome had become secularized in America. They were willing to die for their country,
but would much rather make the other guy die for his.
So it was inevitable. Once the genie of liberty is loosed from the bottle it cannot be put back. According to James Webb, these Border Scots had been telling bishops and other political and religious bosses to “go to hell” for over fifteen hundred years and they were not about to submit to the English variety in America. The history was too long, too bitter, and too bloody. Neither would the Dutch, English dissenters and the Germans have any use for tyranny, for they had their own long and bitter experiences.
One
of the main reasons that the German settlements in Pennsylvania resisted
Anglicization was their hatred of bishops.
There was too much Reformed and dissenter blood on the hands of English
bishops and these sturdy Germans from the Palatinate figured a bishop was a
bishop, whether appointed by the kings in Spain or France or by a king in
England. James Good reports that in
spite of the extreme poverty of the Germans in Pennsylvania, English charity
schools failed, not only because of the patronizing attitude of the English,
but because of the suspicion that the schools were a plot to impose an English
bishop and turn them into Episcopalians.
When
it was rumored that the English were about to “land a bishop” in America the
revolution erupted uniting in common cause the sons and daughters of those who
had borne the persecution of the old country and had found the sweetness of
liberty in the new.
The
Germans were never as unruly as the Scots/Irish, but they were not second place in their love of liberty. The first soldiers to arrive in New England
to fight the British were 550 Pennsylvania Germans from Frederick. Good reports that with few exceptions the
ministers and their congregations were in the forefront of those who supported
the War for Independence. What the
Scots/Irish ended at King’s Mountain and Cowpens, the Pennsylvania Germans had
begun at Boston.
Around
their fireplaces in their cabins, these children of the persecuted in Holland,
Germany, Ireland, Scotland, England had told their stories to their children,
read their Bibles and tamed the wilderness.
They sang their songs and preserved their legends and the recounted the
history of persecution and religious conformity. The stories are very different. One is about a Dutch boy who put his finger
in the dike; others are about the Beggars of the Sea; another is about the
siege of Leyden, some are about Robin Hood and his merry men; some are about
idolatry and rich bishops; others are about Robert Bruce and Braveheart; still others are about plowing the steppes of
Russia and the bitter winters of North Dakota and ecclesiastical betrayal. There are stories of blood and church
burnings and wasting of fields in the Palatinate. But the songs and stories tell of
oppression, liberty, of faith, and heroism as well as of sorrow and pain almost
unbearable.
It
is a proud and glorious history. Modern
bishops still hate and ridicule them, but the songs and stories show a
character forged in fire and blood, the stuff of which heroes are made. Religious bosses continue to “misunderestimate” them, as George W. Bush would put
it. Their descendants still will not
blindly obey blind authority, but when they understand the proposition they are
formidable foes and powerful friends.
Europe still doesn’t understand them.
Very often they do not understand each other, these log cabin children
of the oppressed of Europe.
The
rest, as they say, is history.
Non-conformity, for better or for worse, won the day. That day at Yorktown when the British filed
out to lay down their arms, the bands played “The World Turned Upside
Down.” Little did they know. It was not a
good day for bishops and kings. But it
was a good day for log cabins. Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Selected Bibliography.
Fabend, Firth Haring. Zion on the Hudson.
Dutch New York and New Jersey in the Age of Revivals. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London:
Rutgers University Press, 2000
Fischer, David Hackett. Washington’s Crossing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004
Good, James I; Reading, PA.;
Daniel Miller. 1899. History of the Reformed
Church in the United States, 1725–1792.
Electronic Version published by the Permanent Publication Committee of
the Reformed Church in the U. S. Olive
Tree Publications, 2004
Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center
of the World. The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped
America. New York: Doubleday,
2004.
Webb, James. Born Fighting. How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. New York: Broadway Books, 2005
Weslager, C. A. A Man and His Ship: Peter Minuit and the Kalmar Nyckel. Wilmington, Delaware: Kalmar Nyckel Foundation, 1989
