Document: Complaint of the fiscal against ensign Dirck Smith for selling a gun to Indians

[several lines lost] My lords,

It is known that Dirck Smith, ensign, came to this country with five snaphances and some other weapons, which he was permitted to bring into the country, so he says, for his own use and the Company’s service but not to trade, much less to sell to the wilden nation, our enemies; and as he has acknowledged to have sold two snaphances and a sword to the wilden, one for six beavers and one not belonging to him from a soldier for two beavers and 3 fathoms of sewant, and a Company sword for a piece of beaver; also, he received the gun of Jan Gerbou, soldier, and doesn’t know where he left it; also, he has bartered guns among the soldiers for other guns and soldiers’ necessities; also, he, together with Nicolaes Velthuysen, corporal of the cadets, broke open a soldier’s chest left in his care and kept from it 3 shirts, 1 pair of shoes and two cheeses, which is not only contrary to the placards, but also contrary to the soldiers’ book of regulations that no one shall damage or degrade the weapons or arms issued to him on pain of being stripped of rank and banished from the Company; no one shall deprive soldiers of arms or weapons on pain as above [ ] according to circumstances to be [ corporally ] punished; whereas this [ ] by common soldiers in our garrison and not by officers, who commit such on our enemies, which merits severe punishment and also according to legal statutes should be punished by the neck until dead; having been informed of such, I, fiscal, am, as protector of the law, obliged to pay attention to this, concluding in this regard that the detained shall be condemned as an example to others, first to be stripped of his weapons and to have his sword broken before the Company and immediately be banished from the country and have all of his possessions confiscated.

Done at Amsterdam in New Netherland, 12 September anno 1656, and signed Nicasius de Sille.