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HISTORY OF THE HUGUENOTS, page 3
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2275536/replies?c=109
One of the more interesting findings regarding the beginnings of Niewe Sweden was that of the just over 100 named individuals on the Kalmar Nyckel on its first voyage, only half a dozen were actually Swedish (the Captain, the handful of military en), and all the rest are identified as FIN, FINN, FEN when it comes to their language.
At the time (1638) that didn't mean "Finnish", it meant "Sa'ami". Numerous researchers had earlier determined that the greater part of the passengers had simply been rounded up by the authorities in the Winter for getting too close to Stockholm or other important cities. That included the men, women and children since the Sa'ami always traveled in family groups.
Once here their job was to cut down trees for the purpose providing ships' timber to the Swedish and English navies.
Shortly after the Dutch interference in the original colony the people moved across the isthmus to found what is now called Elkton MD on Chesapeake Bay. That became a very prosperous area because it was protected from the hurricanes and Nor'easters of the Delaware/New Jersey shore.
By the year 1700 this colony relocated out of the Delaware Valley to a new colony called York Pennsylvania. The purpose appears to have been to evade contact with the Quakers then being resettled into Lancaster and other areas by Penn.
By that time there were 5 Sa'ami settlements in Pennsylvania and 3 in Maryland.
Getting back to the Kalmar Nyckel, it must have been a miserable trip with all those family groups ~ yet this ship made three more voyages of similar nature.
Through the centuries the colonists have maintained some cohesiveness and communal coherence by setting up additional "colonies" which were almost all named after reindeer, Christmas or the Kalmar Union. Elkton, Deer Park, Christmas Tree, Uniontown (5 in Pennsylvania alone), and so forth. They march West pretty much in a straight line all the way to Kansas.
109 posted on 06/20/2009 6:01:53 AM PDT by muawiyah
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