The reasons that Pieter Wijncoop left New Netherland around mid-July of 1646, never to return, were probably as numerous and complex as his own personality. However, one factor may have been the Indian Wars that had been raging in New Netherland since the 25th of February 1643 when Director Kieft sent Govert Lookermans and Cornelis van Tienhoven to avenge the murder of Dutch settlers at Zwanendal and Staten Island. The resulting war that broke out was long and bloody and left many colonists uneasy in their beds:

    Chris

385-386

    1646:

    The population, comprising all who came under the title of the "Gemeente," or commonality of New Amsterdam, amounted, in 1643, to five hundred men. This would give a total of twenty-five hundred souls. Allowing that Rensselaerswyck and the few towns on Long Island contained four hundred more, we should then be justified in estimating the whole population of New Netherland at that date, at about three thousand.

    The public revenue was computed to amount to sixteen thousand guilders, or six thousand four hundred dollars per annum.

    The population was seriously affected by the difficulties with the Indians. Many had removed to the neighborhood of Fort Orange; others returned to Holland [italics are mine - chw]; and numbers had been slain by the savages. The consequence was, that in and around Fort Amsterdam, the male adult population was reduced to one hundred at the close of the war.¹ By the removal of the first portion of the inhabitants, the population of the country was not, however, actually decreased. The only diminution it experienced, was by emigration and loss of life, and, these considered, we doubt much if, at the close of Kieft's administration, the population exceeded a thousand souls. This figure is, we admit, low, and after a lapse of so many years, creditable neither to the founders nor managers of the province, expecially when contrasted with the progress and flourishing condition of the adjoining English colonies. But it could not well be otherwise. It was one of the natural consequences of the imperfect system and mismanagement of which the country was the victim. For the first thirteen years after its discovery, it was abandoned to the casual and rare visits of a few private trading-ships, which came for the mere purpose of taking away the furs that their servants or agents might have collected at Fort Orange or the Manhattans. When the West India company became incorporated, this system was not altered. Those in the employ of that association merely took the place of their predecessors.

    ¹ In Hol. Doc. iii., 369, it is asserted, that in 1648 not much more than one hundred males could be found besides the free traders. The population of New England then was 50 to 60,000.

    [NOTE: "Hol.Doc.," refers to the Dutch MSS. brought from Holland by Mr. Brodhead, and deposited in the office of the Secretary of State. - page 8, (chw)]

Source:

O'Callaghan, E. B., History of New Netherland; or New York Under the Dutch, Volume 1, D. Appleton & Company, Philadelphia, 1846: 385-386