his own, he snapped it up first. Van der Donck's contract as schout was not renewed when its term expired in 1644. Early political activism In New Amsterdam, disgruntled colonists had been sending ineffective complaints to the Dutch West India Company about the Director-General of New Netherland, Willem Kieft, who had begun a bloody war with the Indians against the advice of the council of twelve men. Kieft's War badly damaged relations and trade between the Indians and the Dutch, made life more dangerous for colonists living in outlying areas, and drained the colony's resources. He exacerbated his relationship with the already financially strained colonists by enacting a tax on beaver skins and beer to fund the war. In 1645, Kieft tried to mend relations with the Indians and asked van der Donck to assist as a guide and interpreter. At the negotiations, Kieft found himself in the awkward position of coming without the necessary gifts. Van der Donck had not informed Kieft of this important component to negotiations in advance, but happened to have brought an appropriate amount of sewant (wampum), which he loaned to Kieft. In return for this favor, Kieft granted van der Donck on the mainland north of Manhattan in the territory of the Wecquaesgeek in 1646. He named the estate Colen Donck and built several mills along what he named the Saeck Kill, later to become the Neperham River and today the Saw Mill. The estate was so large that locals referred to him as the Jonkheer ("young gentleman" or "squire"), a word from which the name "Yonkers" is derived. By this time, van der Donck had already married the Englishwoman Mary Doughty, whose father had lost his land after irking Kieft. Kieft remained out of favor with the colonists in New Amsterdam. Adriaen van der Donck stepped into this environment of political unrest and used his rhetorical legal skills to give voice to the disaffected colonists. Upon his arrival, the tone of the colonists' petitions suddenly changed. While ostensibly putting himself at Kieft's disposal as a lawyer and a translator, he was working with disgruntled members of the community to get Kieft recalled and convince the company of the need for a Dutch-style representative government in New Amsterdam. The Dutch West India Company did decide to remove Kieft from his post in 1645, citing the terrible damage caused to trade by his war against