authority-an authority only pretended by the British claimant to the territory-at naught.

As was the case with the Portuguese in Africa, the presents and the tribute were paid by the Dutch, not to them. It was well said by Governor Codd, of Essequibo, in September, 1813, that

"It is obvious, however, that our Colonies are tributaries to the Indians; while the proper system of policy would be to make them allies, looking to us for protection" (B. C. V, 216).

So far from maintaining the peace within the disputed territory, the order of the Dutch Governor to his subordinates was to maintain neutrality in the wars between the tribes, and that in the face of the fact that these wars were destructive of Dutch trade interests. There could, in the nature of things, be no stronger disclaimer of a right to control the Indians.

Some of the instances of failure to exercise such control may be cited.

In 1764 the Director-General was greatly exercised to establish a Dutch post in Cuyuni. He appealed to the Indians, and reported the result thus (V. C. II, 159):

"Whatever trouble I have taken, and whatever promises I have made, I have not been able to get any Indians up to the present to aid me in re-establishing the Post in Cajoeny, and without their help it cannot be done, because with slaves it is not only too costly but also too dangerous, so that I am in great difficulties with this work, and the re-establishment of that Post is, in my opinion, of the greatest necessity."

The Dutch control did not suffice to procure the aid of a single Indian in a work that the Director-General thought was essential to the safety of the colony.

In February, 1768, the Dutch colonies were in great distress and fear by reason of the fact that escaping slaves had established a formidable settlement in the interior. The help of the Accaway tribe was needed. Two of their "Owls" visited the Commandeur at Demerara, who gave this account of it (B. C. III, 162):

"After I had welcomed them with a glass of brandy and presented each of them with a suit of my every-day clothes, I asked them (after

having acquainted them with the reason of my sending for them) whether they were willing to attack the negroes, or cut off their retreat if the negroes were attacked by the Caribs and put to flight."

Brandy and old clothes! And were the Indians "willing"? Is this the conduct and language of one who is asserting control of these people as subjects?

But the Caribs, not the Accaways, seem to have done the work. They killed seven men, one woman and a girl, and the DirectorGeneral reported (B. C. III, 166):

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They have brought seven right hands to me, and I am just now occupied in paying them."

This, we suppose, is given as evidence that Dutch civilization and political control pervaded the lodges of this tribe.

Some suspicions, however, afterwards arose that a trick had been played and that the right hands the Director-General had paid for were not those of negro slaves, but of Indians. Of this he said (B. C. III, 178):

"There was a report here that Tampoko and the Caribs had not killed negroes but Indians, and that the hands brought down were the hands of Indians. If such were found to be true I have never seen a rascally trick executed more carefully and clothed with more feasible circumstances, and I think that Satan himself might be deceived in this way."

But if the Caribs had not become tricky, it was not for want of a schoolmaster.

In February, 1768, there was a notable incident illustrating Dutch control, an account of which is given in the evidence annexed to the British Case (B. C. III, 161). The Director-General reported that he had been advised of the arrival of twelve soldiers, sent by the Company to reinforce the Dutch post, of whom it was said that they were "good recruits for Orinoco, because they are nearly all French." He reported that they were all French, and that all but one or two were Roman Catholics. Frenchmen were not wanted.

The Director-General said:

"In addition to this all the Indians have declared that they will have no French at the Posts, a troop of more than 100 Warouwans, all well armed, having already arrived at the Post, Maroco saying that they came to see whether there was a Frenchman there, and intending to kill him if it were so."

This threat was taken seriously. The Dutch were not even able to control the matter of the personnel of their own posts, as against the Indians. The Frenchman, Pierre Martin, who had been somewhere on the Cuyuni, had been compelled to leave there, as the Director-General (B. C. III, 162) said, "the Indians flatly refusing to come and live anywhere near the post so long as he is there. They will have a Dutchman, they say."

In April, 1768, the Director-General reported (B. C. III, 164):

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Having also been obliged to remove Pierre Martin, the Postholder of Cuyuni (because the Indians will on no account have a Frenchman there) as well as the one in Maroco, I have no one there now but the two assistants. It now remains to be seen whether the Indians of Maykouny, whither Pierre Martin has gone, will exhibit the same feelings, in which case I shall have to discharge the man nolens volens. I fear very much that it will be so, because in Maykouny they are mostly Warouws (the nation which commenced and continued the work in Maroco) where they came to the Post in great numbers and well armed with the openly expressed intention of murdering a French Postholder had they found one there."

Here we have Indian control of the Dutch "chiefs." The Dutch trembled before the armed Indians who came to the post, and acknowledged their inability to protect their own Postholders against the Indian demand for their dismissal.

The Dutch West India Company approved of this. In a communication to the Director-General, in July, 1768 (B. C. III, 180), they said:

"It being hard to catch hares with unwilling hounds, you cannot do otherwise than accede to the wish of the Indians in Cuyuni and Moruca, and send no Frenchmen thither as Postholders, and therefore not even Pierre Martin, good and capable though he may be."

But the Company could not have the services of this honest and capable man, because the Indians would not consent.

How thoroughly the Indians were unaware of their subjugation by the Dutch appears in an account given by the Director-General in February, 1769, in which he said (B. C. IV, 3):

"The nation of the Caribs, my Lords, are looked upon as nobles among the Indians. It is a very good thing to have them as allies or friends, for they render excellent services, but they are formidable enemies, capable of more bravery and resistance than one would think. When their principal or great Owls come to me, they immediately take a chair and sit down, and will eat and drink nothing but what I have myself, and they call me by no other name than that of mate' or 'brother." "

These "noble" Indians were not aware that the true mode of address was "Master." They asserted equality. They were allies, not subjects, of the Dutch.

This distinctly appears again in the report of the DirectorGeneral of April 4, 1769. He said (B. C. IV, 11):

"March 16.-The chief of the Caribs, who is now here, goes up the river to-day. He has promised me to attack the murderers of the Postholder, and to hold all his people in readiness in case we might have need of them. Commandant Backer told me this morning that he would like to come up the river, and asked him whether he would then let him be master. He answered, No, I am master of the Caribs. You can be master of the whites and of the other nations, and then we can together become masters of everything."

The opportunity

This is rather an impressive declaration. was ripe for an assertion by the Director-General that the Dutch were masters of the Caribs, but fear of his own life and of the peace of his settlement made it impossible for him to put forward the pretension that is now urged in his behalf. We do not know whether Commandant Backer went up the river, but we do know that if he did he was not in the command of the Caribs.

The Director-General's situation at that time was rather full of distresses, which he set forth in the next paragraph:

"But, my Lords, allow me to ask what is now to be done to get food for your Lordships' slaves? The salting is now entirely stopped, not alone

in the mouth of the Orinocque, where we had carried on the fishery from time immemorial, but there are neither canoes nor corrials to be got for the plantations or the Fort along the whole of the sea-coast, and we are shut in on all sides. I must now, nolens volens, buy from the English, or allow your Lordships' slaves to go without rations. There being nothing on the plantations and the out-runners having come back emptyhanded after exposing themselves to the greatest danger, and losing their men and boats."

The Director-General was truly not in a position to demand the title of "Master."

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In 1767 the Director-General reported (V. C. II, 170) that the Indians are unwilling to do the least thing for the Postholder, and that even when he orders the passing boats to lie to to see whether there are any runaways in them, they obstinately refuse to do so, and when he threatens to shoot upon them they reply that they have bows and arrows with which to answer."

In 1769 the Director-General narrated his efforts to get a Postholder to go to the "Crystal Mine." Not one of his Postholders at Arinda had been willing to execute this purpose, giving various pretexts; but the true cause, as the Director-General said, was their fear of the savage nations living in those parts, though these fears were "ungrounded," as he, in the security of the principal post, thought. But a man was found to hunt for the "Crystal Mine," "somewhere up in Essequibo." Being a representative of the Dutch power, the nation that "controlled" these tribes and had "sovereignty " over the territory, he thought that he might venture to dig for crystal; but the Director-General reported that "when he wished to dig up the crystal which grows there in many places in a red dry soil, the natives would not allow him to do so" (B. C. IV, 17).

Besides "a few instructions how to behave," this man had been told by the Director-General "to try and obtain, in a friendly manner, permission from the Wapissannes to cross the Maho and go to the neighboring nations."

In November, 1770, the Director-General found himself utterly