The Documentary history of the state of New-York; arranged under direction of the Hon. Christopher Morgan, secretary of State. By E. B. O'Callaghan ...

CALLED BREEDEN RAEDT. 103
supplied with all necessaries; this pretent was therefore altogether
a specious one.
K. Was it then in the power of one man to begin a war or
massacre for that?
B. That it might appear plausible, they had such a petition
presented; to which, on Feb. 25. 1643 was answered that they
authorised Maryn Adriaensz, with his company, to make an
attack on the Savages, camped at Curlers plantation, and to treat
them as time and circumstances required.
E. Who ever gave such an authorisation? Who could have
been the author of that authorisation?
B. Why secretary Cornelius van Tienhoven, who is now
returned home to make a report on New Netherland; the same
who had, composed the petition.
C. A child might see that that was but a pretext. The secretary deserved to be torn to pieces by four horses as a traitor;
and as for the three boors, according to law they had forfeited
their lives. In the mean time were the settlers warned to be on
the alert, that they might not run any risk either by assistance
or resistance?
B. Nobody at all was warned but the three before mentioned,
The settlers were not so much as thought of. The secretary
himself went to reconnoitre the camp of the savages the day
before the attack, and if the settlers had known what was intended, supposing there had been reasons for it, not one of the savages
would have escaped; but if, as was really the case, there had
been no reasons, the director would never have been able to,
commit such a murder, if even he had such traitors as secretaries.
J. By what I understand of the affair, the secretary is the
principal cause of what followed. But how did they proceed?
B. Between the 25 and 26 Febr. 1643, at midnight 80 and odd
savages were murdered at Pavonia, by 80 soldiers. Young
children, some of them snatched from their mothers, were cut in
pieces before the eyes of their parents, and the pieces were
thrown into the fire or into the water; other babes were bound
on planks and then cut through, stabbed and miserably massacred,
so that it would break a heart of stone; some were thrown
into the river and when the fathers and mothers sought to