Dutch and English on the Hudson: A Chronicle of Colonial New York

The object of forming this great company with almost unlimited power was twofold, at once political and commercial. Its creators planned the summoning of additional military resources to confront the hostile power of Spain and also the more thorough colonization and development of New Netherland. In these purposes they were giving expression to the motto of the House of Nassau: "I will maintain."

Two years elapsed between the promulgation of the charter and the first active operations of the West India Company; but throughout this period the air was electric with plans for occupying and settling the new land beyond the sea. Finally in March, 1623, the ship Nieu Nederlandt sailed for the colony whose name it bore, under the command of Cornelis Jacobsen May, of Hoorn, the first Director-General. With him embarked some thirty families of Walloons, who were descendants of Protestant refugees from the southern provinces of the Netherlands, which, being in general attached to the Roman Catholic Church, had declined to join the confederation of northern provinces in 1579. Sturdy and industrious artisans of vigorous Protestant stock, the Walloons were a valuable element in the colonization of New Nether land. After a two months' voyage the ship Nieu Nederlandt reached the mouth of the Hudson, then called the Mauritius in honor of the Stadholder, Prince Maurice, and the leaders began at once to distribute settlers with a view to covering as much country as was defensible. Some were left in Manhattan, several families were sent to the South River, now the Delaware, others to Fresh River, later called the Connecticut, and others to the western shore of Long Island. The remaining colonists, led by Adriaen Joris, voyaged up the length of the Mauritius, landed at Fort Orange, and made their home there. Thus the era of settlement as distinguished from trade had begun.

The description of the first settlers at Wiltwyck, on the western shore of the great river, may be applied to all the pioneer Dutch colonists. "Most of them could neither read nor write. They were a wild, uncouth, rough, and most of the time a drunken crowd. They lived in small log huts, thatched with straw. They wore rough clothes, and in the winter were dressed in skins. They subsisted on a little corn, game, and fish. They were afraid of neither man, God, nor the Devil. They were laying deep the foundation of the Empire State."2

The costume of the wife of a typical settler usually consisted of a single garment, reaching from neck to ankles. In the summer time she went bareheaded and barefooted. She was rough, coarse, ignorant, uncultivated. She helped her husband to build their log hut, to plant his grain, and to gather his crops. If Indians appeared in her husband's absence, she grasped the rifle, gathered her children about her, and with a dauntless courage defended them even unto death. This may not be a romantic presentation of the forefathers and foremothers of the State, but it bears the marks of truth and shows us a stalwart race strong to hold their own in the struggle for existence and in the establishment of a permanent community.

From the time of the founding of settlements, outward-bound ships from the Netherlands brought supplies for the colonists and carried back cargoes of furs, tobacco, and maize. In April, 1625, there was shipped to the new settlements a valuable load made up of one hundred and three head of live stock – stallions, mares, bulls, and cows – besides hogs and sheep, all distributed in two ships with a third vessel as convoy. The chronicler, Nicholaes Janszoon Van Wassenaer, gives a detailed account of their disposal which illustrates the traditional Dutch orderliness and cleanliness. He tells us that each animal had its own stall, and that the floor of each stall was covered with three feet of sand, which served as ballast for the ship. Each animal also had its respective servant, who knew what his reward was to be if he delivered his charge alive. Beneath the cattle-deck were stowed three hundred tuns of fresh water, which was pumped up for the live stock. In addition to the load of cattle, the ship carried agricultural implements and "all furniture proper for the dairy," as well as a number of settlers.

The year 1625 marked an important event, the birth of a little daughter in the household of Jan Joris Rapaelje, the "first-born Christian daughter in New Netherland." Her advent was followed by the appearance of a steadily increasing group of native citizens, and Dutch cradles multiplied in the cabins of the various settlements from Fort Orange to New Amsterdam. The latter place was established as a fortified post and the seat of government for the colony in 1626 by Peter Minuit, the third Director-General, who in this year purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians.

The colony was now thriving, with the whole settlement "bravely advanced" and grain growing as high as a man. But across this bright picture fell the dark shadow of negro slavery, which, it is said, the Dutch were the first to introduce upon the mainland of North America in 1625 or 1626. Among the first slaves were Simon Congo, Anthony Portuguese, John Francisco, Paul d'Angola – names evidently drawn from their native countries – and seven others. Two years later came three slave women. In a letter dated August 11, 1628, and addressed to his "Kind Friend and Well Beloved Brother in Christ the Reverend, learned and pious Mr. Adrianus Smoutius," we learn with regret that Domine Michaelius, having two small motherless daughters, finds himself much hindered and distressed because he can find no competent maid servants "and the Angola slave women are thievish, lazy, and useless trash." Let us leave it to those who have the heart and the nerves to dwell upon the horrors of the middle passage and the sufferings of the poor negroes as set down in the log-books of the slavers, the St. John and the Arms of Amsterdam. It is comforting to the more soft-hearted of us to feel that after reaching the shores of New Netherland, the blacks were treated in the main with humanity. The negro slave was of course a chattel, but his fate was not without hope. Several negroes with their wives were manumitted on the ground of long and faithful service. They received a grant of land; but they were obliged to pay for it annually twenty-two and a half bushels of corn, wheat, pease, or beans, and a hog worth eight dollars in modern currency. If they failed in this payment they lost their recently acquired liberty and returned to the status of slaves. Meanwhile, their children, already born or yet to be born, remained under obligation to serve the Company.

Apparently the Dutch were conscious of no sense of wrong-doing in the importation of the blacks. A chief justice of the King's Bench in England expressed the opinion that it was right that pagans should be slaves to Christians, because the former were bondsmen of Satan while the latter were servants of God. Even this casuist, however, found difficulty in explaining why it was just that one born of free and Christian parents should remain enslaved. But granting that the problems which the settlers were creating in these early days were bound to cause much trouble later both to themselves and to the whole country, there is no doubt that slave labor contributed to the advancement of agriculture and the other enterprises of the colony. Free labor was scarce and expensive, owing both to the cost of importing it from Europe and to the allurements of the fur trade, which drew off the boer-knecht from farming. Slave labor was therefore of the highest value in exploiting the resources of the new country.

These resources were indeed abundant. The climate was temperate, with a long season of crops and harvests. Grape-vines produced an abundant supply of wines. The forests contained a vast variety of animals. Innumerable birds made the wilderness vocal. Turkeys and wild fowl offered a variety of food. The rivers produced fish of every kind and oysters which the letters of the colonists describe as a foot long, though this is somewhat staggering to the credulity of a later age. De Vries, one of the patroons, or proprietors, whose imagination was certainly of a lively type, tells us that he had seen a New Netherlander kill eighty-four thrushes or maize-birds at one shot. He adds that he has noticed crabs of excellent flavor on the flat shores of the bay. "Their claws," he says naïvely, "are of the color of our Prince's flag, orange, white and blue, so that the crabs show clearly enough that we ought to people the country and that it belongs to us." When the very crabs thus beckoned to empire, how could the Netherlander fail to respond to their invitation?

The newly discovered river soon began to be alive with sail, high-pooped vessels from over sea, and smaller vlie booten (Anglicized into "flyboats"), which plied between New Amsterdam and Fort Orange, loaded with supplies and household goods. Tying the prow of his boat to a tree at the water's edge, the enterprising skipper turned pedler and opened his packs of beguiling wares for the housewife at the farm beside the river. Together with the goods in his pack, he doubtless also opened his budget of news from the other settlements and told the farmer's wife how the houses about the fort at Manhattan had increased to thirty, how the new Director was strengthening the fort, and how all promised well for the future of New Netherland.

For the understanding of these folk, who, with their descendants, have left an indelible impression on New York as we know it today, we must leave the thread of narrative in America, abandon the sequence of dates, and turn back to the Holland of some years earlier. Remembering that those who cross the sea change their skies but not their hearts, we may be sure that the same qualities which marked the inhabitants of the Netherlands showed themselves in the emigrants to the colony on the banks of the Mauritius.

When the truce with Spain was announced, a few months before Hudson set sail for America, it was celebrated throughout Holland by the ringing of bells, the discharge of artillery, the illumination of the houses, and the singing of hymns of thanksgiving in all the churches. The devout people knelt in every cathedral and village Kerk to thank their God that the period of butchery and persecution was over. But no sooner had the joy-bells ceased ringing and the illuminations faded than the King of Spain began plotting to regain by diplomacy what he had been unable to hold by force. The Dutch, however, showed themselves as keenly alive as the Spanish to the value of treaties and alliances. They met cunning with caution, as they had met tyranny with defiance, and at last, as the end of the truce drew near, they flung into the impending conflict the weight of the Dutch West India Company. They were shrewd and sincere people, ready to try all things by the test of practical experience. One of their great statesmen at this period described his fellow-countrymen as having neither the wish nor the skill to deceive others, but on the other hand as not being easy to be deceived themselves.

Motley says of the Dutch Republic that "it had courage, enterprise, intelligence, faith in itself, the instinct of self-government and self-help, hatred of tyranny, the disposition to domineer, aggressiveness, greediness, inquisitiveness, insolence, the love of science, of liberty, and of money." As the state is only a sum of component parts, its qualities must be those of its citizens, and of these citizens our colonists were undoubtedly typical. We may therefore accept this description as picturing their mental and spiritual qualities in the pioneer days of their venture in the New World.

CHAPTER III

PATROONS AND LORDS OF THE MANOR

Their High Mightinesses, the States-General of the United Netherlands, as we have seen, granted to the Dutch West India Company a charter conveying powers nearly equaling and often overlapping those of the States themselves. The West India Company in turn, with a view to stimulating colonization, granted to certain members known as patroons manorial rights frequently in conflict with the authority of the Company. And for a time it seemed as though the patroonship would be the prevailing form of grant in New Netherland.

The system of patroonships seems to have been suggested by Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, one of the directors of the West India Company and a lapidary of Amsterdam, who later became the most successful of the patroons. A shrewd, keen, far-seeing man, he was one of the first of the West India Company to perceive that the building up of New Netherland could not be carried on without labor, and that labor could not be procured without permanent settlers. "Open up the country with agriculture: that must be our first step," was his urgent advice; but the dwellers in the Netherlands, finding themselves prosperous in their old homes, saw no reason for emigrating, and few offered themselves for the overseas settlements. The West India Company was not inclined to involve itself in further expense for colonization, and matters threatened to come to a halt, when someone, very likely the shrewd Kiliaen himself, evolved the plan of granting large estates to men willing to pay the cost of settling and operating them. From this suggestion the scheme of patroonship was developed.

The list of "Privileges and Exemptions" published by the West India Company in 1629 declared that all should be acknowledged patroons of New Netherland who should, within the space of four years, plant there a colony of fifty souls upwards of fifteen years old. "The island of the Manhattes" was reserved for the Company. The patroons, it was stipulated, must make known the situation of their proposed settlements, but they were allowed to change should their first location prove unsatisfactory. The lands were to extend sixteen miles along the shore on one side of a navigable river, or eight miles on both sides of a river, and so far into the country as the situation of the colonies and their settlers permitted. The patroons were entitled to dispose of their grants by will, and they were free to traffic along the coast of New Netherland for all goods except furs, which were to be the special perquisite of the West India Company. They were forbidden to allow the weaving of linen, woolen, or cotton cloth on their estates, the looms in Holland being hungry for raw material.

The Company agreed that it would not take any one from the service of the patroon during the years for which the servant was bound, and any colonist who should without written permission enter the service of another patroon or "betake himself to freedom" was to be proceeded against with all the available force of the law. The escaped servant would fare ill if his case came before the courts, since it was one of the prerogatives of a patroon to administer high, middle, and low justice – that is, to appoint magistrates and erect courts which should deal with all grades of crimes committed within the limits of the manor and also with breaches of the civil law. In civil cases, disputes over contracts, titles, and such matters, where the amount in litigation exceeded twenty dollars, as well as in criminal cases affecting life and limb, it was possible to appeal to the Director and Council at Fort Amsterdam; but the local authorities craftily evaded this provision by compelling their colonists to promise not to appeal from the tribunal of the manor.

The scherprechter, or hangman, was included with the superintendent, the schout fiscaal, or sheriff, and the magistrates as part of the manorial court system. One such scherprechter named Jan de Neger, perhaps a freed negro, is named among the dwellers at Rensselaerswyck and we find him presenting a claim for thirty-eight florins ($15.00) for executing Wolf Nysen.

No man in the manorial colony was to be deprived of life or property except by sentence of a court composed of five people, and all accused persons were entitled to a speedy and impartial trial. As we find little complaint of the administration of justice in all the records of disputes, reproaches, and recriminations which mark the records of those old manors, we must assume that the processes of law were carried on in harmony with the spirit of fairness prevailing in the home country.

Even before the West India Company had promulgated its charter, a number of rich merchants had availed themselves of the opportunity to secure lands under the offered privileges and exemptions. Godyn and Blommaert, in association with Captain David de Vries and others, took up a large territory on Delaware Bay, and here they established a colony called "Swannendael," which was destroyed by the Indians in 1632. Myndert Myndertsen established his settlement on the mainland behind Staten Island, and his manor extended from Achter Kul, or Newark Bay, to the Tappan Zee.

One of the first patents recorded was granted to Michiel Pauw in 1630. In the documentary record the Director and Council of New Netherland, under the authority of their High Mightinesses, the Lords States-General and the West India Company Department of Amsterdam, testify to the bargain made with the natives, who are treated throughout with legal ceremony as if they were high contracting parties and fully capable of understanding the transaction in which they were engaged. These original owners of the soil appeared before the Council and declared that in consideration of certain merchandise, they agreed to "transfer, cede, convey and deliver for the benefit of the Honorable Mr. Michiel Paauw" as true and lawful freehold, the land at Hobocan Hackingh, opposite Manhattan, so that "he or his heirs may take possession of the aforesaid land, live on it in peace, inhabit, own and use it … without that they, the conveying party shall have or retain the least pretension, right, power or authority either concerning ownership or sovereignty; but herewith they desist, abandon, withdraw and renounce in behalf of aforesaid now and forever totally and finally."

It must have been a pathetic and yet a diverting spectacle when the simple red men thus swore away their title to the broad acres of their fathers for a consideration of beads, shells, blankets, and trinkets; but, when they listened to the subtleties of Dutch law as expounded by the Dogberrys at Fort Amsterdam, they may have been persuaded that their simple minds could never contend with such masters of language and that they were on the whole fortunate to secure something in exchange for their land, which they were bound to lose in any event.

It has been the custom to ascribe to the Dutch and Quakers the system of paying for lands taken from the Indians. But Fiske points out that this conception is a mistake and he goes on to state that it was a general custom among the English and that not a rood of ground in New England was taken from the savages without recompense, except when the Pequots began a war and were exterminated. The "payment" in all cases, however, was a mere farce and of value only in creating good feeling between savages and settlers. As to the ethics of the transaction, much might be said on both sides. The red men would be justified in feeling that they had been kept in ignorance of the relative importance of what they gave and what they received, while the whites might maintain that they created the values which ensued upon their purchase and that, if they had not come, lands along the Great River would have remained of little account. In any case the recorded transaction did not prove a financial triumph for the purchaser, as the enterprise cost much in trouble and outlay and did not meet expenses. The property was resold to the Company seven years later – at a price, however, of twenty-six thousand guilders, which represented a fair margin of profit over the "certain merchandise" paid to the original owners eight years earlier.

Very soon after the purchase of the land on the west shore of the North River, Pauw bought, under the same elaborate legal forms, the whole of Staten Island, so called in honor of the Staaten or States-General. To the estate he gave the title of Pavonia, a Latinized form of his own name. Staten Island was subsequently purchased from Pauw by the Company and transferred (with the exception of the bouwerie of Captain De Vries) to Cornelis Melyn, who was thus added to the list of patroons. Other regions also were erected into patroonships; but almost all were either unsuccessful from the beginning or short-lived.

The patroonship most successful, most permanent, and most typical was Rensselaerswyck, which offers the best opportunity for a study of the Dutch colonial system. Van Rensselaer, though he did not apparently intend to make a home for himself in New Netherland, was one of the first to ask for a grant of land. He received, subject to payment to the Indians, a tract of country to the north and south of Fort Orange, but not including that trading-post, which like the island of Manhattan remained under the control of the West India Company. By virtue of this grant and later purchases Van Rensselaer acquired a tract comprising what are now the counties of Albany and Rensselaer with part of Columbia. Of this tract, called Rensselaerswyck, Van Rensselaer was named patroon, and five other men, Godyn, Blommaert, De Laet, Bissels, and Moussart, whom he had been forced to conciliate by taking into partnership, were named codirectors. Later the claims of these five associates were bought out by the Van Rensselaer family.

In 1630 the first group of emigrants for this new colony sailed on the ship Eendragt and reached Fort Orange at the beginning of June. How crude was the settlement which they established we may judge from the report made some years later by Father Jogues, a Jesuit missionary, who visited Rensselaerswyck in 1643. He speaks of a miserable little fort built of logs and having four or five pieces of Breteuil cannon. He describes also the colony as composed of about a hundred persons, "who reside in some twenty-five or thirty houses built along the river as each found most convenient." The patroon's agent was established in the principal house, while in another, which served also as a church, was domiciled the domine, the Reverend Johannes Megapolensis, Jr. The houses he describes as built of boards and roofed with thatch, having no mason-work except in the chimneys. The settlers had found some ground already cleared by the natives and had planted it with wheat and oats in order to provide beer and horse-fodder; but being hemmed in by somewhat barren hills, they had been obliged to separate in order to obtain arable land. The settlements, therefore, spread over two or three leagues.

The fear of raids from the savages prompted the patroon to advise that, with the exception of the brewers and tobacco planters who were obliged to live on their plantations, no other settlers should establish themselves at any distance from the church, which was the village center; for, says the prudent Van Rensselaer, "every one residing where he thinks fit, separated far from others, would be unfortunately in danger of their lives in the same manner as sorrowful experience has taught around the Manhattans." Our sympathy goes out to those early settlers who lived almost as serfs under their patroon, the women forbidden to spin or weave, the men prohibited from trading in the furs which they saw building up fortunes around them. They sat by their lonely hearths in a little clearing of the forest, listening to the howl of wolves and fearing to see a savage face at the window. This existence was a tragic change indeed from the lively social existence along the canals of Amsterdam or on the stoops of Rotterdam.

Nor can we feel that these tenants were likely to be greatly cheered by the library established at Rensselaerswyck, unless there were hidden away a list of more interesting books than those described in the patroon's invoice as sent in an oosterse, or oriental, box. These volumes include a Scripture concordance, the works of Calvin, of Livy, and of Ursinus, the friend of Melanchthon, A Treatise on Arithmetic by Adrian Metius, The History of the Holy Land, and a work on natural theology. As all the titles are in Latin, it is to be presumed that the body of the text was written in the same language, and we may imagine the light and cheerful mood which they inspired in their readers after a day of manual toil.