THE DIRECTORS	65
strance from De Vries he sent out his soldiers, who
returned after a massacre which disgraced the
Director, enraged the natives, and endangered the
colony. Kieft was at first proud of his treachery;
but as soon as it was known every Algonquin tribe
around New Amsterdam started on the warpath.
From New Jersey to the Connecticut every farm
was in peril. The famous and much-persecuted
Anne Hutchinson perished with her family; towns
were burned; and men, women, and children fled
in panic.
On the approach of spring, when the Indians had
to plant their corn or face famine, sachems of the
Long Island Indians sought a parley with the
Dutch. De Vries and Olfertsen volunteered to
meet the savages. In the woods near Rockaway
they found nearly three hundred Indians as-
sembled. The chiefs placed the envoys in the
center of the circle, and one among them, who had
a bundle of sticks, laid down one stick at a time as
he recounted the wrongs of his tribe. This orator
told how the red men had given food to the settlers
and were rewarded by the murder of their people,
how they had protected and cherished the traders,
and how they had been abused in return. At
length De Vries, like the practical man that he was,