Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete eBook
Washington Irving
Here he was encountered by a host of Yankee warriors,
headed by Preserved Fish, and Habakkuk Nutter, and
Return Strong, and Zerubbabel Fisk, and Determined
Cock! at the sound of whose names Stoffel Brinkerhoff
verily believed the whole parliament of Praise-God
Barebones had been let loose upon him. He soon
found, however, that they were merely the “select
men” of the settlement, armed with no weapon
but the tongue, and disposed only to meet him on the
field of argument. Stoffel had but one mode of
arguing—that was with the cudgel; but he
used it with such effect that he routed his antagonists,
broke up the settlement, and would have driven the
inhabitants into the sea, if they had not managed to
escape across the Sound to the mainland by the Devil’s
Stepping-stones, which remain to this day monuments
of this great Dutch victory over the Yankees.
Stoffel Brinkerhoff made great spoil of oysters and
clams, coined and uncoined, and then set out on his
return to the Manhattoes. A grand triumph, after
the manner of the ancients, was prepared for him by
William the Testy. He entered New Amsterdam as
a conqueror, mounted on a Narraganset pacer.
Five dried codfish on poles, standards taken from the
enemy, were borne before him; and an immense store
of oysters and clams, Weathersfield onions, and Yankee
“notions” formed the spolia opima;
while several coiners of oyster-shells were led captive
to grace the hero’s triumph.
The procession was accompanied by a full band of boys
and negroes, performing on the popular instruments
of rattle-bones and clam-shells, while Anthony Van
Corlear sounded his trumpet from the ramparts.
A great banquet was served up in the Stadthouse from
the clams and oysters taken from the enemy, while
the governor sent the shells privately to the mint,
and had them coined into Indian money, with which he
paid his troops.
It is moreover said that the governor, calling to
mind the practice among the ancients to honor their
victorious generals with public statues, passed a
magnanimous decree, by which every tavern-keeper was
permitted to paint the head of Stoffel Brinkerhoff
upon his sign!
FOOTNOTES:
[36] In a manuscript record of the
province, dated 1659, Library
of
the New York Historical Society, is the following mention
of
Indian
money:—“Seawant, alias wampum.
Beads manufactured from
the
Quahang or whelk, a shell-fish formerly abounding on
our
coasts,
but lately of more rare occurrence of two colors, black
and
white; the former twice the value of the latter.
Six beads of
the
white and three of the black for an English penny.
The
seawant
depreciates from time to time. The New England
people
make
use of it as a means of barter, not only to carry away
the
best
cargoes which we send thither, but to accumulate a
