Willem Kieft (1597–1647) was a Dutch merchant who was appointed by the West India Company as director-general of New Netherland in 1638. Kieft instituted a harsh policy toward the Indians of the colony, whom he attempted to tax and drive from their land. In 1643, a contingent of soldiers under Kieft attacked a Raritan village on Staten Island in a dispute over pigs allegedly stolen from a Dutch farm. This led to the bloody, two-year conflict known as Kieft’s war, which raged in parts of what is now ...