The Indians came down the Christina in their canoes or
overland, bringing their packs of beaver, otter, and deer skins,
their tobacco, corn, and venison to exchange for the cloth,
blankets, tools, and gaudy trinkets that pleased them. It must
often have been a scene of strange life and coloring, and it is
difficult today to imagine it all occurring close to the spot
where the Pennsylvania railroad station now stands in Wilmington.
When doughty Peter Stuyvesant became Governor of New Netherland,
he determined to assert Dutch authority once more on the South
River, as the Delaware was called in distinction from the Hudson.
As the Swedes now controlled it by their three forts, not a Dutch
ship could reach Fort Nassau without being held up at Fort
Elfsborg or at Fort Christina or at the fort at Tinicum. It was a
humiliating situation for the haughty spirit of the Dutch
governor. To open the river to Dutch commerce again, Stuyvesant
marched overland in 1651 through the wilderness, with one hundred
and twenty men and, abandoning Fort Nassau, built a new fort on a
fine promontory which then extended far out into the river below
Christina.
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