WHEREAS, the year 2006 marks the 375th anniversary of the Dutch settlement at the point on the western shore of the Delaware Bay known as Zwaanendael or “Valley of the Swans,” near the present-day City of Lewes; and

WHEREAS, this ill-fated colony, short-lived though it proved to be, marked the first settlement by Europeans within the present State of Delaware; and

WHEREAS, the fact that the said Zwaanendael Colony had been in existence, even briefly, proved to be a crucial consideration in establishing eventual Delaware statehood; and

WHEREAS, it is, therefore, right and proper that we consider the 1631 settlement at Zwaanendael by an expedition of the Dutch West India Company as the founding moment not only of the City of Lewes, but of what became the State of Delaware; and

WHEREAS, the events of 1631 followed a sequence of events which had begun in 1609 with the “discovery” of the great estuary later known as the Delaware River and Bay by the English explorer Henry Hudson, then in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, in his ship, the Half Moon; and

WHEREAS, Hudson, whose objective in making his voyage of discovery was to find a shorter, all-water route to the great riches of the East Indies, a so-called “Northwest Passage,” claimed the bay and its adjoining lands for the Netherlands; and

WHEREAS, the governing body of the United Netherlands, the States General, later made the estuary they designated the “South River” an integral part of their vast New Netherlands domains, which extended from the capes of the South or Delaware Bay northward to encompass the great expanse of the Hudson River Valley and New York State as well as southern New England; and

WHEREAS, in the early 1620s the Netherlands government chartered the Dutch West India Company, modeled after the earlier East India Company, and gave it a trade monopoly for Africa and Dutch domains in the New World, as well as the power to, in the words of the late Delaware historian, C. A. Weslager, in his 1989 work, A Man and His Ship: Peter Minuit and the Kalmar Nyckel, “make alliances with native rulers ... to establish colonies; to appoint and discharge governors and other officers; to administer justice; build forts, and hire soldiers and sailors to defend its vessels and properties”; and

WHEREAS, during the years between Hudson’s voyage of 1609 and the eventual colonization at Zwaanendael, there was increasing activity by Dutch traders and other Europeans in the South River; and

WHEREAS, in 1626, the West India Company established a fort upriver from the mouth of the bay, known as Fort Nassau, on an island near the eastern bank of the river in the vicinity of present-day Gloucester, New Jersey, but this effort was abandoned in short order, leaving Dutch claims to the region subject to competition from other European powers, particularly the English; and

WHEREAS, to strengthen Dutch claims to the South River, and in pursuit of a potentially profitable venture, prominent Dutch businessmen active in the management of the Dutch West India Company sought to establish a privately-funded trading post and whaling station further south, near the mouth of the South or Delaware Bay, by obtaining a type of charter from the company known as a “patroonship,” allowing them to proceed privately; and

WHEREAS, toward that end their agents “purchased” from local Indians a large expanse of land along the western shore of the bay extending from the present Cape Henlopen north to the Smyrna River, though it later proved in this, as in many other cases in the New World, that the local inhabitants had a far different understanding of the meaning of the transaction, and of the whole concept of land ownership, than did the Europeans; and

WHEREAS, the person most directly responsible for the settlement at Zwaanendael was Amsterdam businessman, Samuel Godyn, a director of the Dutch West India Company, who enlisted the cooperation of his fellow directors, Samuel Blommaert and Kiliaen van Rensselaer, as well as other businessmen as investors to finance the settlement; and

WHEREAS, Godyn and his fellow investors also enlisted the aid of David Pietersen de Vries of the City of Hoorn, a sailor of broad experience, who was made a partner in the enterprise in return for his knowledge and expertise; and

WHEREAS, the expedition was placed under the command of one Gillis Hossit and was dispatched in the small ship Walvis, or Whale, commanded by Peter Heyes, from Holland in December 1630, arriving at the site of the settlement on the west bank of what became known as Lewes Creek, now the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal, in the spring of 1631; and

WHEREAS, after their voyage, the twenty-eight men of the expedition began construction of a brick house surrounded by a wooden palisade on the banks of the creek; and

WHEREAS, as the organizers of the expedition began preparing to send a second expedition the following year, this time under the direct command of de Vries, news came that the Zwaanendael settlement had been destroyed and the settlers massacred by local Indians to the last man; and

WHEREAS, de Vries set sail anyway, arriving at the mouth of the bay in early December 1632, there discovering the burnt remnants of the fort and the skeletal remains of the colonists; and

WHEREAS, that tragedy and unsuccessful efforts by de Vries to establish a whaling operation at the cape eventually caused the investors to declare their venture a loss and to sell their lands to the West India Company several years later; and

WHEREAS, this was not to be the end of Dutch efforts at colonization along the South River or even at the site along Lewes Creek where the ill-fated Zwaanendael had briefly stood, for it was in this same general area that the Dutch established a permanent settlement in the 1650s that became the present-day City of Lewes; and

WHEREAS, the Zwaanendael colony, tragic and temporary though it was, turned out to be an event of extraordinary importance to the future history of Delaware, and its existence for only a few months in the spring, summer and fall of 1631 proved to be the determining factor in establishing what later became the State of Delaware as a separate and distinct legal entity which was a part neither of Maryland nor of Pennsylvania; and

WHEREAS, it is, therefore, to the organizers of the Zwaanendael expedition at home in the Netherlands and to the intrepid band of men who actually established the colony on the banks of Lewes Creek to whom we, the citizens of Delaware, owe our status as a separate state; and

WHEREAS, the precariousness of our earliest origins may perhaps, one is tempted to believe, have helped to convince our founding fathers, as they met some 156 years later in a tavern at the state capital of Dover on the seventh day of December, 1787, of the importance of taking hold of a good thing when they saw it, and acting with remarkable dispatch to ratify the new United States Constitution, thus making Delaware “the First State”.

NOW, THEREFORE:

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives and the Senate of the 143rd General Assembly of the State of Delaware, with the approval of the Governor, that the State of Delaware does hereby commemorate the 375th Anniversary of the Dutch settlement at Zwaanendael, formally recognize its importance to the later establishment of what our founding fathers designated in 1776 as “the Delaware State” and honor the memory of all those persons on both sides of the Atlantic who were instrumental in establishing the said colony of Zwaanendael.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we do hereby extend sincere best wishes to the citizens of Lewes upon the occasion of their—and our own—375th birthday.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that suitably prepared copies of this Resolution be presented to those in attendance at the ceremonial session of the Delaware General Assembly to be held at Lewes on the twenty-first day of April, 2006.

SPONSOR:	Rep. Spence & Sen. Adams;
	Reps. Smith, Lee, Gilligan, VanSant, on behalf of all Representatives, Sens. McDowell, DeLuca, Still, Sorenson, on behalf of all Senators