Document: Dutch colonial council minutes, 13 May 1640

[1]We, the director and council, residing in New Netherland on the part of the High and Mighty Lords the States General of the United Netherlands, his Highness of Orange, and the honorable directors of the Chartered West India Company, having express order and command from the aforesaid lords to purchase in their name from the inhabitants of these parts all such lands as we may consider most adapted for agriculture and the raising of all sorts of stock —

Have, therefore, pursuant to the orders of our Sovereign Lords, purchased from the Great Chief or Sachem named Penhawits, all the lands lying on Long Island, within the limits of New Netherland, which he has inherited from his forefathers, with all such right and title as he may in any wise claim, according to the deed of purchase and conveyance thereof in existence. Which aforesaid Panhawits, after some foreigners had settled on the aforesaid land, about Schout's bay, notified us that some deserters or vagabonds had come on the land that we had purchased from him and there begun to build houses, cut trees and do other work, and that said vagabonds had there pulled down their High Mightinesses' arms.

In order to obtain a good and correct report and assurance of what is aforewritten, Jacobus van Curler, commissary of cargoes, was sent thither with the yacht Prins Willem, who, coming to the place where their High Mightinesses' arms had been set up, found the same torn off and that on the tree to which they had been nailed a fool's head was carved in the stead of said arms. All of which appeared strange to us, being a crime of Lese-Majesty and tending to the disparagement of the sovereignty of their High Mightinesses.