It's hard to imagine what it must have been like for the earliest settlers in New Netherlands who were attracted there by the promises of land and economic opportunity. By all accounts, Governor Willem Kieft was miscast for his appointment as the Dutch West India Company's Director. True, he was faced with presiding over the transformation of the end of the company's monopoly on the fur trade, the influx of settlers into the Indian lands, and the aftermath of the Dutch patroon patronage policy. He decided to launch a war against the Indians and selected a Council of Twelve Men on August 28, 1641, to help justify it, although he paid absolutely no attention to their advice. Technically, this was the first foray into representative government in New Amsterdam. Kieft so badly mismanaged his disastrous war that it took a concerted effort by the disgruntled populace over the course of the next two years to get him recalled to Holland. Alas, he actually never made it home, perishing in a shipwreck off the coast of Wales.
