It is named for Director-General of New Netherland Willem Kieft, who had ordered an attack without the approval of his advisory council and against the wishes of the colonists.

The Dutch West India Company appointed Kieft as a director without evident experience or qualifications for the job; he might have been established through family political connections.

Still, he left two weeks before Kieft's arrival to establish New Sweden in the poorly developed southern reaches of the colony along the Delaware Valley.

The Dutch West India Company ran the settlement chiefly for trading, with the director-general exercising unchecked corporate authority backed by soldiers.

In 1640, the Company surrendered its trade monopoly on the colony and declared New Netherland a free-trade zone, and Kieft was suddenly governor of a booming economy.

They called for establishing a permanent representative body to manage local affairs, and Kieft responded by dissolving the council and issuing a decree forbidding them to meet or assemble.

[10] Mahican and Mohawk Indians in the north had driven them south the year before, armed with guns traded by French and English colonists,[9] and the Tappans sought protection by the Dutch.

Some were thrown into the river, and when the fathers and mothers endeavored to save them, the soldiers would not let them come on land but made both parents and children drown.

Historians differ on whether Kieft had planned such a massacre or a more contained raid,[12][13] but all sources agree that he rewarded the soldiers for their deeds.

[14][15] In late 1643, a force of 1,500 Indians invaded New Netherland and killed many, including Anne Hutchinson, a chief figure in the Antinomian Controversy which ruptured the Massachusetts Bay Colony years earlier.

Many then banded together to formally petition for the removal of Kieft, writing: "We sit here among thousands of wild and barbarian people, in whom neither consolation nor mercy can be found; we left our dear fatherland, and if God the Lord were not our comfort we would perish in our misery.

The outcome is regarded as favourable to the Dutch[17] since the colony's safety was eventually assured, and the siege of New Amsterdam was lifted, after a great offense which devasted the Indians.