Document: New Netherland in 1627. Letter from Isaack de Rasiere to Samuel Blommaert. Image 014

if they have no acquaintances there, and are entertained by the expenditure of as much sewan as is allowed for that purpose. Therefore, the Sachem generally have three or four wives, each of whom has to furnish her own seed-corn. The Sachem has his fixed fine of sewan for fighting and causing blood to flow.

When any are Coming out of the river Nassau, you sail east-and-by-north about fourteen leagues, along the coast, a half league from the shore, and you then come to “Frenchman’s Point” at a small river where those of Patuxet have a house made of hewn oak planks, called Aptucxet, where they keep two men, winter and summer, in order to maintain the trade and possession. Here also they have built a shallop, in order to go and look after the trade in sewan, in Sloup’s Bay and thereabouts, because they are afraid to pass Cape Malabar, and in order to avoid the length of the way; which I have prevented for this year by selling them fifty fathoms of sewan, because the seeking after sewan by them is prejudicial to us, inasmuch as they would, by so doing, discover the trade in furs; which if they were to find out, it would be a great trouble for us to maintain, for they already dare to threaten that if we will not leave off dealing with that people, they will be obliged to use other means. If they do that now, while they are yet ignorant how the case stands, what will they do when they do get a notion of it? From Aptucxet the English can come in six hours, through the woods, passing several little rivulets of fresh water, to New Plymouth, the principal place in the district Patuxet, so called in their patent from His Majesty in England. New Plymouth lies in a large bay to the north of Cape Cod, or Malabar, east and west from the said point of the cape, which can be easily seen in clear weather. Directly before the commenced town lies a sand-bank, about twenty paces broad, whereon the sea breaks violently with