But before he was removed from office (because of
these and other indiscretions) he had founded Our Village,--so may his
soul rest in peace!
Not that he intended to do posterity a favour. He never wanted to help
anyone but himself. But, in the first year of his disastrous
governorship, he got the itch of tobacco speculation. He knew there
was money in it.
He, too, looked over the Indian village above the river, and he, too,
found it good. He made it the Company's Farm Number 3, but he did not
work it for the company. Not he! He worked it for Wouter Van Twiller,
as he worked everything else. He eliminated the Indians by degrees,
whether by strategy or force history does not say. R.R. Wilson says it
was "rum and warfare." Anyway, they departed to parts unknown and Van
Twiller built a farm and started an immense tobacco plantation. As the
tobacco grew and flourished the place became known by the Dutch as the
Bossen Bouwerie--the farm in the woods. It was one of the very
earliest white settlements on the whole island.
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