The Dutch founding of New York

M C,

Q^

WILLIAM WSSELINX

AVTEVR VAN WESTINDISE COMPAXGI

AET. SVAE 69. Ao. 1637

THE DUTCH FOUNDING
OF NEW YORK

BY

THOMAS A. JANVIER

AUTHOR OF " IN OLD NEW YORK "
'THE CHRISTMAS KALENDS OF PROVENCE" ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

1903

Copyright, 1903, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

All rights resetted.
Published October, 1903.

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

W. WSSELINX. (Avtevr van Westindise Com-
pangi Act. Svae 69. Ao. 1637) . Frontispiece
MAP OF NEW NETHERLAND. CIRCA 1616 . facing 20
THE WEST INDIA COMPANY'S HOUSE, HAARLEM-
MER STRAAT, AMSTERDAM. 1623—1647. facing 30

THE WEST INDIA COMPANY'S WAREHOUSE AS
SEEN FROM THE OuDE ScHANS, AMSTERDAM.
— (Built in the year 1641. Used as the Com-
pany's meeting-place in the years 1647-
1674) facing 46

EARLIEST KNOWN VIEW OF NEW AMSTERDAM.
CIRCA 1630. — Reversed (following Mr. J. H.
Innes) from Joost Hartger's Beschrijvingh van
Virginia, Nieuw Nederlandt, etc. . . . facing 66

VIEW OF NEW AMSTERDAM. CIRCA 1650. SHOW-
ING THE CAPSKE ROCKS, NOW COVERED BY
BATTERY PARK. — (From the Beschrijvingh van
Amerika of Arnoldus Montanus. Amsterdam,
1671) facing 84

THE TOWN HOUSE (STADT HUYS), NEW YORK,
1679. — (Redrawn from the Bankers and Sluy-
ter drawing. See Memoirs of the Long Island

Historical Society, vol. i.) facing 96

iii

ILLUSTRATIONS

FAGE

THE VISSCHER MAP, WITH A VIEW OF NEW AM-
STERDAM DRAWN BEFORE THE YEAR 1653 facing 112

THE WATER GATE, FOOT OF WALL STREET. 1679.
— (Redrawn from the Bankers and Sluyter
drawing. See Memoirs of the Long Island
Historical Society, vol. i.) facing 122

THE ALLAERDT VIEW OF NEW YORK. CIRCA
1668. — (From the map of Reinier and Josua
Ottens) facing 138

VIEW OF NEW YORK FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS,
1679. — (From the Bankers and Sluyter
drawing) facing 166

" THE BUKE'S PLAN," 1661-1664. (Photographed
for this work from the original in the British
Museum. Showing New Amsterdam in the
year that it became New York) . . . facing 188

THE DUTCH FOUNDING
OF NEW YORK

THE DUTCH FOUNDING
OF NEW YORK

ARTFUL fiction being more convinc-
ing than artless fact, it is not likely
that the highly untruthful impression of
the Dutch colonists of Manhattan given
by Washington Irving ever will be ef-
faced. Very subtly mendacious is Ir-
ving's delightful History of New York from
the Beginning of the World to the End of
the Dutch Dynasty. Bearing in mind the
time when he wrote — before Mr. Brod-
head had performed the great work of

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

collecting in Europe the documents re-
lating to our colonial history, and while
the records of the city and of the State
still were in confusion — his general truth
to the letter is surprising. But precisely
because of his truth to the letter are his
readers misled by his untruth to the
spirit. Over the facts which he was at
such pains to gather and to assemble, he
has cast everywhere the glamour of a be-
littling farcical romance : with the result
that his humorous conception of our an-
cestral Dutch colony peopled by a sleepy
tobacco-loving and schnapps-loving race
stands in the place of the real colony
peopled by hard-headed and hard-hitting
men.

Irving' s fancy undoubtedly is kindlier
than the plain truth. They were a rough
lot, those Dutchmen who settled here in
Manhattan nearly three hundred years

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

ago ; and they did not — the phrase is from
our own frontier vocabulary — come here
for their health. As has happened in the
case of much later outpost settlements
on this continent, they cheated the sav-
ages whom they found in residence, and
most cruelly oppressed them. Also, on
occasion, they cheated one another; out
of which habit, as is shown by the verbose
records of their little courts, arose much
petty litigation of a snarling sort among
themselves. In a larger and more im-
personal fashion, they consistently cheat-
ed the revenue laws of the colony; and
with a fine equanimity they broke any
other laws which happened to get in their
way — a line of conduct that is not to be
condemned sweepingly, however, because
most of the revenue laws of the colony,
and many of its general laws, were unjust
intrinsically and were administered in a

3

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

manner that gave to those who evaded or
who broke them a good deal in the way of
colorable excuse. In a word, our Dutch
ancestors who founded this city had the
vices of their kind enlarged by the vices
of their time. But, also, they had cer-
tain virtues — unmentioned by Irving —
which in their time were, and in our time
still are, respectable. With all their short-
comings, they were tough and they were
sturdy and they were as plucky as men
could be. Of the easy-going somnolent
habit that Irving has fastened upon them
as their dominant characteristic there is
not to be found in the records the slight-
est trace. I am satisfied that that char-
acteristic did not exist.

Certainly, there was no suggestion of

somnolence in the promptness with which

the Dutch followed up Hudson's practical

discovery of the river that now bears his

4

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

name. Hudson's immediate backers, to
be sure, the members of the Dutch East
India Company, took no action in the
premises. They had sent him out to find
a northerly passage to the Indies — and
that he had not found. What he had
found was of no use to them. The region
drained by his great river was outside the
limits of their charter; and trade with it
did not promise — though promising much
— returns at all comparable with those
which were pouring in upon them from
their spice-trade with the East. There-
fore, his voyage having been a mere waste
of their money, they charged off the cost
of it to profit and loss and so closed the
account — while the great navigator, be-
ing seized by his own government out
of the Dutch service, went off to sea
again: on that final quest of his for the
impossible passage to the east by the
5

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

north that ended in his death in Hud-
son's Bay.

But when Hudson's report of the fur-
yielding country that he had found was
made public in Holland certain other of
the Dutch merchants pricked up their
ears. These were the traders who carried
European and Eastern goods to Russia
and there bartered them for Muscovy
furs: a commerce that had its beginning
toward the end of the sixteenth century,
and that was greatly stimulated by cer-
tain concessions granted by the Czar to
the Dutch in the year 1604. Those con-
cessions provided, in effect, that goods
might be imported into Russia, and that
goods to an equal value might be export-
ed thence, on the payment of landing and
loading duties of two and a half per cent.,
while on exports above the value of im-
ports a farther duty of five per cent, was
6

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

laid: a tariff system which, for those
times, was at once so liberal and so
simple that it drew to Archangel a fleet of
from sixty to eighty Dutch ships a year.
But Hudson's exposition of the fur-
trade possible in America made a still
better showing. In dealing with ingenu-
ous savages, unhampered by a govern-
ment of any sort whatever, there would
be no duties to pay on either imports or
exports; and instead of being compelled
to give value for value — a custom that all
traders of all times have resented — a ship-
load of furs could be had for the insignif-
icant outlay of a few jerry-made hatchets
and some odds and ends of beads. (It is
but just to the Netherlanders to add that,
in the passing of the centuries, they have
lost nothing of their acuteness in such
matters: as is evidenced by their ability
to get and to keep the weather-gauge of
7

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the unlucky savages of the Congo Pro-
tectorate to-day.) And so, in the summer
of 1610, certain merchants of Amsterdam
— suffering no grass to grow under their
feet — despatched to the island of Man-
hattan a vessel loaded with "a cargo of
goods suitable for traffic with the Ind-
ians " : and no doubt but it was a pre-
cious lot of rubbish that they put on
board !

I am sorry to say that the name of
that first trading-ship sent to this port
remains unknown. But the fact of her
sailing is established, as is also the fact
that her crew in part was made up of
men who had sailed with Hudson in the
Half Moon. Mr. Brodhead is of the opin-
ion that she was commanded by Hudson's
Dutch mate; and he cites the tradition
that the Hollanders who came again to
this island, and the Indians living here,
8

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

were "much rejoiced at seeing each
other " : a cordiality which — however rea-
sonable it might have been on the side of
the Dutch — showed that the savages had
no endowment of prophetic instinct to
warn them that the stars in their courses
were fighting against them, and that then
was the beginning of their end.

For my present purposes it suffices to
say that the briskness with which that
first trading voyage was undertaken and
accomplished strikes the key-note of
Dutch character. Keenness and alert-
ness— not the drowsiness upon which
Irving so harps in his persistent pleas-
antries— were the personal and national
characteristics of the people who founded
this city; and who founded it, we must
remember, in the very thick of their
glorious fight for freedom with what then
was the first sea power of the world.

9

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Those qualities clearly were in evidence
in their despatch to Manhattan — almost
on the instant that Hudson's report of
his discovery was made public — of that
little nameless merchantman: with the
coming of which into this harbor, solely
as a trader, the commerce of the port of
New York began.

II

THERE was a nice touch of prophetic
fitness in the fact that the very first
product of skilled labor on our island was
a ship; and a still nicer touch — since the
commercial supremacy of our city was
assured at the outset by its combined
command of salt-water and of fresh-water
navigation — in the farther fact that that
ship was large enough to venture out
upon the ocean, and yet was small enough
to work her way far into the interior of
the continent: up the channels of the
thirteen rivers which fall into, or which
have their outlet through, New York Bay.
And, also, I like to fancy that the spirit
of prophecy was upon the Dutch builders
ii

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

of that heroically great little vessel when
they named her the Onrust: because, as-
suredly, the word " Restless " — in its sense
of untiring energy — at once describes the
most essential characteristic of, and is
the most fit motto for, the city of New
York. Indeed, I wish that this early
venture in ship-building had been remem-
bered when our civic arms were granted
to us; and that then — instead of our
beaver and of our later-added wind-mill
sails and flour-barrels, full of meaning
though those charges are — we had been
given a ship for our device, and with it
for our motto the pregnant word: "On-
rust."

Our little first ship — built almost in
the glowing moment of the city's found-
ing— was a child of disaster; but all the
more for that reason, I think, was the
making of her heroic. Following quickly
12

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

in the wake of the little nameless mer-
chantman, other ships were sent to the
river Mauritius — as they were beginning
to call it in honor of their Stadtholder — to
win a share of the profits in the newly-
opened trade. From Amsterdam were
sent the Fortune, commanded by Hen-
drick Christiansen, and the Tiger, com-
manded by Adrien Block; and another
ship, also called the Fortune, commanded
by Cornelis Jacobsen, was sent out from
Hoorn. By the year 1613 half a dozen
voyages had been made ; and by that time,
also, there was some sort of a little trad-
ing-post here: a group of huts, possibly
stockaded, which stood where the Fort
stood later and where the irrational walls
of the new custom-house are rising now.
The disaster to which the building of
the Onrust was due was the burning of
Block's ship, the Tiger, just as he was
13

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

making ready to return in her to Holland
— in the autumn of the year 1613. Had
Block and his men been of a ruminative
habit — the habit that Irving has ascribed
to the Dutch generally — they would have
meditated the winter through, with their
hands in their pockets, upon the disaster
that had overtaken them. What they
actually did was to set to work instantly
to build another vessel. Presumably they
saved from the burned Tiger what little
iron - work they needed (ships in those
days were pegged together with wooden
pins, which fact accounts for their com-
ing apart so easily and leaking so pro-
digiously), and for ship-timber there was
not need to go farther up town — as we
should say nowadays — than Rector
Street; very likely there was not need
to go so far. And so they buckled down
to their work, and by the spring-time of
14

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the year 1614 the Onrust was finished
and launched : a yacht, as she was classed,
of forty-four feet six inches keel; eleven
feet six inches beam; and of " about eight
lasts burthen " — that is to say, of about
sixteen tons. The Dutch are not a de-
monstrative race — but I fancy that there
was cheering on this island on the day
that the Onrust slid down the ways!

There is good ground for believing that
the ship-yard in which Block and his men
worked was close by the present meeting
place of Pearl and Broad streets, on the
bank of the creek that then flowed where
Broad Street now is. It is my very ear-
nest hope that a monument may be set
up there to commemorate that great
building of our little first ship: the an-
cestor of all the ships which have been
built on this island in the now nearly com-
pleted three centuries since she took the

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

water; the ancestor of all the ships which
will be built on this island in all the cen-
turies to come. And I am the more eager
to see my monument erected because at
this very time precisely the site for it
is being prepared. The purchase of
Fraunces's Tavern, for permanent pres-
ervation, includes the purchase of a half-
block of land at Pearl and Broad streets
— whence the modern houses are to be re-
moved, that in their place may be laid out
a little park. Possibly the Onrust was
built on the very piece of land thus to be
vacated; almost certainly she was built
not a stone's cast from its borders. In
that park, therefore, the monument to
New York's first ship must stand.

As the direct result of the building of

the Onrust the Dutch field of American

discovery and possession materially was

enlarged. Block sailed away in her, in the

16

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

sunshine of that long-past spring-time, to
explore the bays and rivers to the east-
ward— " into which the larger ships of the
Dutch traders had not ventured." He
laid his course boldly through Hell Gate
—it is probable that the Onrust was the
first sailing vessel to make that perilous
passage — and, going onward through
Long Island Sound, crossed Narragansett
Bay and Buzzard's Bay, coasted Cape Cod,
and made his highest northing in "Pye
Bay, as it is called by some of our navi-
gators, in latitude 42° 30', to which the
limits of New Netherland extend." As
he returned southward he fell in with the
Fortune, homeward bound from Man-
hattan, and went back in her to Holland
to report upon the new countries which
he had found — leaving the Onrust to make
farther voyages of discovery under the
command of Cornelis Hendricksen.
17

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Block's claim that Pye Bay (in mercy
to summer residents upon the North
Shore of Massachusetts, we call it Nahant
Bay now) marked the limits of New
Netherland to the northward was one of
those liberal assertions common to the
explorers of his day. That claim clashed
with claims under English grants, and
while it was asserted it was not maintain-
ed. But the Dutch did claim resolutely,
in their subsequent wranglings with the
English, as far north as the Fresh Water
— that is to say, the Connecticut river : on
the ground that Block was the first Euro-
pean to enter that river, and that the
Dutch planted the first European colony
upon its banks. On like grounds they
claimed, and for a long while held with-
out dispute, the whole of Long Island.
Broadly speaking, therefore, the building
of the Onrust and the voyages made in
18

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

her resulted in bringing within the Dutch
" sphere of influence," as we should phrase
it nowadays, both shores of Long Island
Sound.

The official record of what the Onrust
accomplished, and of what came of it, was
spread upon the minutes of the States
General (August 18, 1616) in these words:
" Cornelis Henricxs8, Skipper, appears be-
fore the Assembly, assisted by Notary
Carel van Geldre, on behalf of Gerrit
Jacob Witssen, Burgomaster at Amster-
dam, Jonas Witssen, Lambrecht van
Tweenhuyzen, Paulus Pelgrom cum sms,
Directors of New Netherland, extending
from forty to five - and - forty degrees,
situate in America between New France
and Virginia, rendering a Report of the
second Voyage, of the manner in which
the aforesaid Skipper hath found and dis-
covered a certain country, bay, and three

19

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

rivers [the Housatonic, Connecticut, and
Pequod, or Thames] lying between the
thirty-eighth and fortieth degree of Lati-
tude (as is more fully to be seen by the
Figurative Map) in a small yacht of about
eight Lasts, named the Onrust. Which
little yacht they caused to be built in the
aforesaid Country, where they employed
the said Skipper in looking for new coun-
tries, havens, bays, rivers etc. Request-
ing the privilege to trade exclusively to
the aforesaid countries for the term of
four years, according to their High Might-
iness's placard issued in March 1614. It
is resolved, before determining herein,
that the Comparants shall be ordered to
render and to transmit in writing the
Report that they have made."

Ill

THEIR High Mightiness's placard,"
above cited, was an epoch-making
document. It had its origin in a joint
resolution of the states of Holland and
West Vriesland taken March 20, 1614,
"on the Remonstrance of divers mer-
chants wishing to discover new unknown
rivers countries and places not sought for
(nor resorted to) heretofore from these
parts"; and it declared that "whoever
shall resort to and discover such new
lands and places shall alone be privileged
to make four voyages to such lands and
places from these countries, exclusive of
every other person, until the aforesaid
four voyages shall have been completed."
21

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

To make the resolution effective, it was
sent up to be confirmed by the Assembly
of the United Provinces at The Hague;
and there, evidently, it had strong back-
ers who were in a hurry. Their High
Mightinesses were not given to acting pre-
cipitately. Quite the contrary. But on
that occasion — as the result, we reason-
ably may assume, of very lively lobbying
on the part of a delegation sent to The
Hague from Amsterdam — the resolution
of the states of Holland and West Vries-
land was " railroaded " at such a rate that
in a single week the Assembly had em-
bodied it (March 27th) in a placard, or
proclamation, which gave it the author-
ity of a national law. As the making of
Manhattan was the outcome of the local
resolution and of the general proclama-
tion which gave it effective force, a pleas-
ing parallel may be drawn between this
22

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

piece of brisk legislation and other pieces
of brisk legislation in later times ; indeed,
it is not too much to assert that the prec-
edent then was established of sending
lobbying delegations from New York to
Albany — and I see no reason for doubt-
ing that The Hague lobby was run then
very much as the Albany lobby is run
now. Customs and clothes change from
one century to another; but it is well to
remember (Borbonius and his omnia mu-
tantur to the contrary notwithstanding)
that the men inside of the customs and
the clothes do not change much from age
to age.

Without going deeper into this matter
of ethics, it suffices here to state that the
placard issued by the States General gave
the Amsterdam ring what it wanted—
but with a commendably greater dignity
of expression than usually is found in the

23

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

legislative acts affecting " cities of the first
class" which issue from Albany to-day.
The charging points of that famous pla-
card are as follows: "Whereas, we un-
derstand that it would be honourable ser-
viceable and profitable to this Country,
and for the promotion of its prosperity,
as well as for the maintenance of sea-
faring people, that the good Inhabitants
should be excited and encouraged to em-
ploy and to occupy themselves in seeking
out and discovering Passages, Havens,
Countries, and Places that have not be-
fore now been discovered nor frequented ;
and being informed by some Traders that
they intend, with God's merciful help,
by diligence labour danger and expense,
to employ themselves thereat, as they
expect to derive a handsome profit there-
from, if it pleased Us to privilege charter
and favour them that they alone might
24

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

resort and sail to and frequent the pas-
sages havens countries and places to be
by them newly found and discovered for
six voyages, as a compensation for their
outlays trouble and risk. . . . Therefore:
We, having duly weighed the aforesaid
matter, and finding, as hereinbefore
stated, the said undertaking to be laud-
able honourable and serviceable for the
prosperity of the United Provinces, and
wishing that the experiment be free and
open to all and every of the inhabitants
of this country ... do hereby grant and
consent that whosoever from now hence-
forward shall discover any new Passages
Havens Countries or Places shall alone
resort to the same or cause them to be
frequented for four voyages, without any
other person directly or indirectly sailing
frequenting or resorting from the United
Netherlands to the said newly discovered
25

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

and found passages havens countries or
places until the first discoverer and find-
er shall have made, or caused to be made,
the said four voyages : on pain of confis-
cation of the goods and ships wherewith
the contrary attempt shall be made, and
a fine of Fifty thousand Netherland Duc-
ats, to the profit of the aforesaid finder
or discoverer."

It would seem from the foregoing that
the Amsterdam men asked for six voyages
and were granted four : even as at Albany
" a strike " nowadays is so made that the
Assembly may manifest a fine faithful-
ness to the public interests by cutting
it down handsomely — and still give the
" strikers" all they want. Again I may
observe that in this energetic piece of
legislation — obviously rushed through
that older Assembly by powerful private
interest — there is no very pointed mani-
26

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

festation of the Dutch sleepiness upon
which Irving so freely descants.

Indeed, as I have already stated, and
as I shall state more at length presently,
the Dutch showed a most lively eagerness
during the years immediately following
Hudson's discovery to seize upon and
to develop the North American trade.
Broadly, they sought to capture that
trade before it fell into the hands of
other nations. Narrowly, they sought to
wrest it from one another — as may be
seen in the fierce contention for trading
privileges which went on among them-
selves. Petitions and counter -petitions
for trading rights pestered the local as-
semblies of the states and the States
General. One large company was formed
to take, and for a time did take, the
whole of the American contract. There
was a constant wrangling that disturbed
27

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the land. Partly to quiet that wrangling,
but more to serve high national interests,
measures at last were taken which put an
end to all rivalries (other than with out-
siders) by creating a single powerful cor-
poration to which was granted all trad-
ing right to America.

IV

VERY great principles of religion and
of state, along with other principles
of a strictly commonplace selfish sort, lay
at the root of the founding of the Dutch
West India Company. In a grand way,
that Company was intended to win free-
dom for the Netherlands by smashing the
power of Spain. In a less grand way —
but in a way that never was lost sight of
— it was intended to line the pockets of
the practical patriots who were its stock-
holders. On its larger lines, as an in-
strument of justice, and incidentally as an
instrument of personal and political re-
venge, it was to a great extent a success.
On its smaller lines, as a commercial in-
29

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

vestment, it was a ruinous failure. We
of New York are none the better for its
success, and we distinctly are the worse
for its failure. That failure gave this city
a bad start.

William Usselincx, the originator of the
Company, and for thirty years its most
persistent promoter, was one of the half
million or so of Protestant Belgians who
were driven to take refuge in Holland
by Spanish persecution. As an Antwerp
merchant, under Spanish rule, he had
traded to America; and so had come to
know that the colonies whence Spain
drew her main revenues were at once her
strength and her weakness. He realized
that those colonies, widely scattered and
individually ill-defended, were secure only
because they were not attacked; and he
farther realized that even a small naval
force, resolutely handled, could give a
30

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

good account of the treasure-fleets which
sailed annually from America to Spain.
His simple plan, developed from those
conditions, was to seize and to sack the
richer cities of the Spanish islands and the
Spanish main, and to capture such plate-
ships as could be caught conveniently
upon the sea — with the immediate result
of a very satisfactory return in cash from
his sackings and capturings, and with an
ultimate result of a greater and more far-
reaching sort. On that larger side was
patriotism. His great purpose was to
cripple Spain by seizing her revenues at
their source, and still farther to cripple
her by breaking her line of communica-
tion with that source : both by the actual
capture of her treasure-laden ships, and
by the threat of capture that would make
Spanish ship-masters fearful of their voy-
age. The threat was a potent one. In

31

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK'

our own day, when the Alabama was
afloat, we have seen what such a threat,
backed by only a ship or two, will do to
wreck the commerce of a nation by driv-
ing its vessels to the shelter of foreign
flags. In those large days of hard fight-
ing refuge under a foreign flag was a
thing unknown. Spain had no choice but
to stand up and take Dutch punishment
until — and that was intended to be the
glorious ending of the struggle — she
should be so weakened that her hold
upon the Netherlands could be broken
for good and all.

It was about the year 1592 that Ussel-
incx broached his heroic project for or-
ganizing that private military corporation
which anticipated by almost precisely
three centuries Mr. Stockton's " Great
War Syndicate " : an association of finan-
ciers who, in a strictly business way, were
32

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

to expel the Spaniards from the Nether-
lands— and who were to net upon the
transaction a profit of from fifty to one
hundred per cent. Also, it was on busi-
ness lines that his project was opposed —
but with a mingling in the opposition of
considerations of classes and of creeds.
The destruction by the Spaniards of the
commerce of Antwerp had thrown a large
part of that commerce to Rotterdam and
Amsterdam. It was asking a good deal,
therefore, to ask the Dutch to take a
hand in a venture that would bring them
to grips with the strongest State in the
world; and that would have for its out-
come, if successful, the return of the
Belgian refugees in triumph to their own
country to re-establish — at the cost of
their Dutch allies — their lost trade on the
Scheldt. John of Barneveldt, as a states-
man— perhaps as a somewhat narrow-

3 33

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

minded statesman — opposed the Belgian
plan. Behind him were the town aris-
tocracies of birth and of wealth, the
advocates of republicanism, the Armin-
ians. The Belgians had for allies the
lower classes in the towns of Holland, the
monarchists, the strict Calvinists, and for
a rallying centre the House of Orange—
the head of which great House, taking a
strictly personal interest in the matter,
played always and only for his own hand.
The two great parties then formed last-
ed intact until the French Revolution,
and are not extinct even now. For
thirty years the fight between them —
broadly on the Belgian matter, but with
many side issues — was waged vigorously.
In the first acute stage of the struggle,
1607-1609, the main issues were war or
truce or peace with Spain — and the threat
implied by Usselincx's project had much
34

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

to do with compelling Spain to accept
the humiliating twelve years' truce that
was signed in the year 1609. In the
second acute stage, 1617-1619, the main
issue was theological: the fight for su-
premacy between the Calvinists and the
Arminians. That fight ended, on May
13, 1619, with the execution of Barne-
veldt. Then Usselincx's plan was taken
up in good earnest: with the result that
things began to move forward briskly
toward the founding of New York.

I confess that there is a suggestion of
anticlimax in treating as mere incidents
of that great struggle the wrecking of
the power of Spain and the winning of
freedom for the United Netherlands ; and
as its culmination nothing more stirring
than the establishment of a fur-traders'
camp on a lonely islet nooked in the
waters of an almost unknown land. But
35

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

I protest that, for my present purposes,
the most important result which flowed
from the rise of the Dutch Republic pre-
cisely was the establishment of that fur-
traders' camp.

V

JUST the same human nature that still
is in use showed itself in the fight that
went on in the Low Countries during
those strenuous thirty years. That much
is made clear by the records of the states
of Holland and of West Vriesland — where
the Belgian party was strongest — and by
the records of the States General. But
the spicy personal details of the conflict,
being hid in the phrases " divers mer-
chants" and "divers traders," are lost.

On June 21, 1614, when the light
sparring of the second round was be-
ginning, a petition of "divers traders of
these provinces" was presented to the
States General praying for power to form

37

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

" a general Company for the West Indies,
the coast of Africa, and through the
Straits of Magellan." The petition was
ordered to lie over for four weeks, to the
end that "their High Mightinesses may
thoroughly examine the matter " ; but its
opponents — by means which were not re-
corded in the minutes — managed to keep
it in committee for more than two months.
It did come up again, however, on the
25th of August; and so vigorously that
the Assembly voted "that the business
of forming a general West India Com-
pany shall be undertaken to-morrow
morning." Again the opposition got in
some fine work — and the business was not
undertaken on that " to-morrow morn-
ing" of nearly three hundred years ago.
It was adjourned until September 2d. On
that day the two parties came to a clinch
— that ended for the Belgian party in a
38

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

clean fall. During the morning the Bel-
gians clearly had the lead, and the As-
sembly resolved "that the affair of the
West India Company shall be continued
this afternoon." But it wasn't — and be-
fore the West India Company was found-
ed that momentary stoppage had stretch-
ed out into nine years. Very interesting
would be the record — if it existed, and
if we could get at it — of what happened
that day at The Hague after the morning
session of the Assembly stood adjourned!
Having no record to go by, we can only
make guesses : being guided a little in our
guessing by knowledge of what has hap-
pened at Albany, between two sessions
of another Assembly, in later times.

A little light is thrown on the situation
by an act passed (September 27, 1614) by
the states of Holland and West Vries-
land: in which is the pointed suggestion

39

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

that under cover of a general company
"some may secretly endeavor to pursue
trade to Guinea ... in case the trade
to other countries should . . . happen to
fail, to be interrupted, or to cease."
Possibly, then, the Dutch slave-traders
had a hand in " knifing " the bill that day.
Some measures in our own Congress were
" knifed" by the slave-holding interest
much less than three centuries ago. Also,
it is fair to assume that the promoters of
the New Netherland Company had much
to do with the " knifing. ' ' Certainly, that
Company was chartered only a little more
than a month after the West India Com-
pany went by the board.

Among the members of the New
Netherland Company were Hans Hongers,
Paulus Pelgrom, and Lambrecht van
Tweenhuysen, owners of the ships Tiger
and Fortune — and therefore the owners
40

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

of the yacht Onrust: and the major claim
on which they rested their request for
special trading privileges was their right
to benefit from the discoveries that had
resulted from the little yacht's voyage.
To that Company the States General
granted a charter (October n, 1614)
which gave an exclusive right " to resort
to, or cause to be frequented, the afore-
said newly discovered countries situate
in America between New France and Vir-
ginia, the sea coasts whereof lie in the
Latitude of from forty to forty five de-
grees, now named New Netherland, as is
to be seen by a Figurative Map hereunto
annexed ; and that for four Voyages with-
in the term of three years, commencing
the first January 1615 next coming, or
sooner."

In that document the name " New
Netherland" first was used officially; and

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

was used, to quote Mr. Brodhead, to
designate the "unoccupied regions of
America lying between Virginia and Can-
ada by a name which they continued to
bear for half a century — until, in the full-
ness of time, right gave way to power
and the Dutch colony of New Netherland
became the English province of New
York."

The question of title that Mr. Brodhead
raises in this loose statement of fact is far
too large a question to be dealt with here.
But it is only fair to add that his hot con-
tention that the Dutch had a just right to
their North American holding is denied
with equal heat by a Dutch authority.
The peppery Dr. Asher — in his life of
Hudson, prepared for the Hakluyt Society
— disposes of the claims of his own coun-
trymen in these words: "The [Dutch]
title itself was little better than a shadow.
42

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

It was entirely founded on the boldest,
the most obstinate, and the most ex-
tensive act of 'squatting' recorded in
colonial history. The territory called
New Netherland, which the West India
Company claimed on account of Hudson's
discovery, belonged by the best possible
right to England. It formed part of a
vast tract of country, the coast of which
had been first discovered by English
ships, on which settlements had been
formed by English colonists, and which
had been publicly claimed by England,
and granted to an English company be-
fore Hudson ever set foot on American
ground. But the wilds and wastes of
primeval forests were thought of so little
value that the Dutch were for many years
allowed to encroach upon English rights,
without more than passing remonstrance
of the British government."
43

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

It is my duty to state the clashing
opinions of these two fiery historians ; but
I have not the effrontery to discuss the
question on which, so signally, they are
at odds. Nor is discussion necessary.
Most happily, that once burning question
was quieted by the Treaty of Breda
(1667) and has been a dead issue for
more than two hundred years.

In the end, as I have written, Usselincx
and the Belgians won through. When
John of Barneveldt's head ceased to be
associated with his body — the equities of
that detachment need not here be dis-
cussed— opposition to the founding of the
West India Company came to an end.
The actual establishment of the Com-
pany had to be postponed until the ex-
piration of the truce with Spain; but
matters immediately were set in train
for it, and in the year 1621, upon the
44

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

renewal of hostilities, the act of incor-
poration (June 3d) was passed.

Under the terms of the charter — which,
as Mr. Brodhead puts it, " created a sort
of marine principality with sovereign
rights on foreign shores"-— the Company
was granted exclusive rights to trade on
the coasts of Africa between the Tropic
of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope;
to the West Indies; and to the coast of
America between New Foundland and
the Straits of Magellan: with power to
make treaties, to found colonies within
those limits, to appoint governors over
such colonies, to administer justice in
them, and to raise a military force for
their defence. Farther, the States Gen-
eral engaged to defend the Company
against every person in free navigation
and traffic; to " assist " it with a grant of
a million guilders; and to give it sixteen

45

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

warships — that the Company was to man
and to equip, and to match by raising an
equal naval force of its own: the whole
fleet to be under the command of an
admiral whom the States General should
name. Also, the States General reserved
the right to confirm or to reject the
governors nominated by the Company,
and to exercise a general control of its
affairs.

Thus, at last, the Dutch West India
Company was launched. Had Irving
touched upon its history he probably
would have attributed the long delay to
Dutch sleepiness; and would have given
us many neatly-turned pleasantries about
the number of pipes smoked drowsily,
and about the drowsy talk that went on
for thirty years between those stolid
Dutch statesmen and those stolid Dutch
financiers — all of which would have been
46

M !>*

o 2

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

vastly amusing, but would have left some-
thing on the side of fact to be desired.

There was substantial cause for that
long delay. In addition to the great

problems of statecraft that had to be

/

dealt with, the Dutch were dealing with
a new great project on new great lines.
Their nearest approach to a precedent
was the East India Company: of which
the primary purpose — as trade went and
as peace was understood in those days —
was peaceful trade. The primary pur-
pose of the West India Company was
war. Its main dividends were expected
to come from, and eventually did come
from, the capture of Spanish treasure.
But provision had to be made for earn-
ing money in between whiles — during the
close season for treasure -hunting — by
employing its armed fleet in ordinary
trade: in carrying cargoes of slaves and
47

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

peltries and other general merchandise
of the times. And at every turn con-
flicting interests, political and commer-
cial, had to be reconciled and brought
into line. Nowadays a half-dozen cor-
poration lawyers would get together and
would organize such a company in a fort-
night; and in another fortnight — under
the New Jersey general corporation act
— it would have its charter and would be
established as a going concern. But we
do these things quickly now — being also
freed from the trammels of state policy
— because we have precedents in abun-
dance to work by, and because we have
the tools to work with (I use the phrase
with a broad impersonality) lying ready
to our hands. To take a strictly legal
parallel: any little seventeenth-century
English conveyancer was able to get the
weather-gauge of the Statute of Uses after
48

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Orlando Bridgman had shown him how.
Yet sleepiness — whatever may be said of
its slowness — never has been suggested
as a distinguishing characteristic of the
seventeenth - century English bar. Nor
were the Dutch of that century sleepy.
They were very wide awake indeed.

One other point in the making of the
West India Company I must touch upon.
With the sincere immodesty that is not
the least marked of our civic traits, we
of New York are accustomed to believe
that that Company was organized and
chartered mainly for the purpose of ex-
ploiting our own New Netherland. Act-
ually, the part that our little island (and
its dependent continent) had in that large
piece of statecraft was microscopic: as
we realize when we consider the great
elements — rival trade interests, contend-
ing factions, warring creeds — which were

4 49

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

combined in it under the strangely blend-
ed pressure of sordid selfishness and lofty
patriotism and hot revenge. Looked at
in that way, there is nothing in the his-
tory of the Company to stir our vanity.
But looked at in another way, even our
vanity has its consolations. Although the
splendid part that the Company took in
fighting to a glorious finish the glorious
fight that Holland put up with Spain is
not forgotten, its share of honor in a way
is lost: being merged into, and almost
indistinguishably blended with, the na-
tional honor which the Dutch won by a
victory that instantly benefited, and that
still continues to benefit, the whole civ-
ilized world. But the Company shared
with no one the glory of planting the city
of New Amsterdam, that in time's fulness
was to be the city of New York — nor had
it, I venture incidentally to assert, the

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

least notion that out of that trifling
colonial venture any glory ever would
come. Yet that most minor of all its
accomplishments is precisely the accom-
plishment that has kept green its mem-
ory; that will continue to keep green its
memory as long as New York endures.

I hasten to add that we owe the Com-
pany no thanks. What it did for the
making of our city was done badly — and
the very founding of it was barely more
than a mere by - blow of chance. In
point of fact, the nearest approach to
naming New Netherland in the Com-
pany's charter was the permissive clause
referring to the colonization of "fruitful
and unsettled lands." At least, the de-
scription is recognizable. While Man-
hattan no longer is unsettled, it certainly
is fruitful still.

5*

VI

EVEN before the West India Com-
pany was organized the germ of the
destruction of Dutch rule in North Amer-
ica had taken form. In November 1620
the patent had passed the Great Seal by
which King James granted to the Plym-
outh Company "an absolute property
in all the American territory extending
from the fortieth to the forty-eighth de-
gree of latitude and from the Atlantic to
the Pacific." That large-handed grant
was qualified, to be sure, by the proviso
that colonies might not be planted in any
region "actually possessed or inhabited
by any other Christian prince or state " ;
but as England refused to acknowledge
52

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

that the Dutch had any possessions be-
tween the Virginia and the New England
plantations, and as the English ambas-
sador in Holland, Sir Dudley Carleton,
lodged (February 9, 1622) a formal pro-
test against the planting of the New
Netherland colony, that proviso was no
more than a politely turned phrase. On
the other hand, the States General paid
very little attention to the protest, and
never formally replied to it. However,
there it was on the record ; and so was in
readiness for use. But England went
slowly in those days. Almost half a cen-
tury passed before it was used. Mr.
Chamberlain and Sir Alfred Milner were
quicker in getting from cause to conse-
quence a couple of years or so ago.

While the ambassadors talked — or
maintained a discreet but aggravating
silence — the merchants acted. In the

53

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

years while the West India Company was
in course of formation the foundation of
the sea- wealth of New York was laid.
The Dutch planted their trading-post on
the island of Manhattan because the
many water-ways which came together
there obviously made it a good place for
trade with the interior of the country.
As exploration continued, the fact was
demonstrated that it not only was a good
place but that it absolutely was the best
place for trade on the coast of North
America: that there was no other such
great land-locked harbor, which at once
was near to the sea, easily open to it, and
free from the dangers of outlying reefs
and shoals ; that nowhere else — and this
fact continued to count first with us un-
til the time of railroads — was there any
such system of interior water-ways as
that which made the Sandy Hook Chan-
54

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

nel the inlet to the trade of a vast part,
and a vastly rich part, of the continent.
Therefore the Dutch shallops went and
came on our thirteen rivers — and beyond
the shallop service, plying in the upper
reaches of those rivers and in countless
minor streams, was a still farther-reach-
ing service of canoes. And all of that
trade ebbed from and flowed to this island
of Manhattan: where the round-bellied
Dutch ships linked it with and made it a
part of the commerce of the world. Even
a minor prophet, with those geographical
facts in his possession, would not have
hesitated to prophesy a great future for
such a seaport with such a hold upon the
land.

When the West India Company came

into existence it therefore had among its

assets — although ignored in its chartered

list of assets — a little trading-post that

55

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

was in the way of promotion to be the
capital of a flourishing colony, had there
been manifested even a very small
amount of common sense and common
justice in the management of its affairs.
And at the beginning — being stimulated
to wise action, perhaps, by the English
assertion of a counter claim to their
American possessions — the Company did
go at the planting of New Netherland
with a certain show of energy, and on
lines of broader policy than were called
for by the mere requirements of trade.

Upon the completion of the Com-
pany's organization the management of
the affairs of New Netherland were con-
fided by the Directorate, the Council of
XIX., to the Chamber of Amsterdam —
whence came the name that was given to
the settlement on Manhattan Island —
and by that Chamber the first ship-load
56

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

of colonists, thirty families, was despatch-
ed from the Texel in the ship New Nether-
land in March 1623. Making their course
to the westward by a long reach into the
south — as was the habit of the Dutch
navigators, who ever were fearful of North
Atlantic storms — they touched at the
Canaries and at Guiana, and then beat
up the coast to Sandy Hook and made
their harbor early in May. (Possibly our
otherwise unaccounted-for custom of May-
day movings had its origin in their arrival
about May-day, and the consequent run-
ning of their yearly tenures from that
date.) They were of good stuff, those
colonists — mostly Walloons, very eager
to get away from European religious in-
tolerance for good and all. Their coming
marks the real founding of New York.
They were the first Europeans who came
to dwell upon this island with the inten-

57

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

tion of spending their lives here; and, in
the end — though that part of their inten-
tion was understood rather than stated —
of making themselves permanently a part
of it by being buried in its soil.

Meantime, by way of fortifying the
situation politically, the States General
erected into a Province the West India
Company's comet - like holding — which
had a tiny material head upon the sea-
board, and a vast vaporous tail that ex-
tended vaguely across the continent west-
ward— and gave it, as a Province, the
heraldic rank and bearings of a Count.

Then it was that our beloved Beaver
came to us : the same worthy animal who
still figures gallantly in the arms of the
city of New York. As we first received
him, he was the single charge — " a bea-
ver proper" — upon our shield, above
which a count's coronet was our crest.
58

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Later, when new civic arms were granted
to us by the English Crown — in the time
of great commercial prosperity that fol-
lowed upon the passage of the Bolting Act
—he modestly joined the wind-mill sails
and the flour - barrels, and so became a
mere beaver " in chief and in base." And
there he remains to this day: in lasting
memorial of the fact that the foundation
of the sea- wealth of this city was laid in
its trade in furs.

VII

AT the outset, the venture undertaken
by the West India Company was a
profitable one: not on the side of trade,
but on the side of war. Three great
successes marked the first ten years of
the Company's existence: the taking of
Bahia (1624), the capture of the treas-
ure fleet (1628), and the reduction of
Pernambuco (1630). Of those three
events, although the Brazilian conquests
counted for more in the long run, the
capture of the plate-ships naturally made
the strongest impression upon the popular
mind. Indeed, that magnificent cash re-
turn upon invested patriotism is talked
about relishingly in Holland even until
60

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

this present day. And it is not sur-
prising. Never has there been such a
bag of treasure in modern times! Ad-
miral Peter Heyn, leaving out of the
account the vessels which he sunk with
their treasure in them, brought home to
Holland seventeen galleons laden with
bullion and merchandise valued, accord-
ing to Dr. Asher, at more than fourteen —
or, according to the more conservative
Mr. Brodhead, at more than twelve mill-
ions of guilders; and the Dutch guilder
of that period, it must be remembered,
had a purchasing value not much less
than that of our dollar of to-day. Ei-
ther estimate is prodigious — and on the
strength of those huge winnings the Com-
pany declared upon its paid-up capital a
dividend variously estimated by the same
authorities at fifty and at seventy-five
per cent. Neither the Standard Oil Com-
61

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

pany nor the Steel Trust as yet has
equalled that!

But it was not a wholesome sort of
money - making. " Successful war thus
poured infatuating wealth into the treas-
ury of the West India Company," is the
view that Mr. Brodhead takes of it ; and
he adds that when, in the ensuing year,
the King of Spain made overtures to re-
new the truce "the pride, the avarice,
and the religious sentiment of Holland
were united in continuing the war."
Against the truce the Company addressed
to the States General (November 16,
1629) a formal remonstrance. " We have
at present," declared the remonstrants,
"over one hundred full-rigged ships of
various burdens at sea . . . manned by
fifteen thousand seamen and soldiers and
armed with over four hundred metal
pieces . . . and over two thousand swiv-
62

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

els, beside pedereros to the number of
far beyond six hundred." That fleet had
not sailed the seas, nor was it intended
to sail the seas, for mere amusement — as
the remonstrants implied by adding that
" during some consecutive years " they
had " plundered the enemy and enriched
this country " by bringing into it great
stores of indigo, sugar, hides, cochineal
and tobacco; and, above all, by bringing
in the captured galleons — which contain-
ed " so great a treasure that never did any
fleet bring to this or to any other country
so great a prize." And they ended by
declaring that they had exhausted the
King of Spain's treasury by these various
appropriations of his property, and by
" depriving him of so much silver, which
was as blood from one of the arteries of
his heart." But the pith of their argu-
ment was in their assertion — in which

63

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

was more of truth than they suspected —
that "the utter ruin and dissolution of
this Company will be the result of the
present negotiations for a truce."

It was reasonable that the Company
should be so hot for keeping on with the
war. Spanish treasure-ships were to be
had for the mere taking — and the Dutch
found taking them very easy work in-
deed. It is a curious fact that the
Spaniards — who have done some very
pretty fighting at one time and another
on land — never were hard to whip at sea.
From the Armada down to Santiago their
naval record is a shabby one. We ham-
mered them pretty much as we pleased
in the nineteenth century; so did the
English in the eighteenth; so did the
Dutch in the seventeenth — the time that
I here am dealing with; and so, I believe
thoroughly, would the English have ham-
64

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

mered the whole Armada in the sixteenth
had they not sublet a part of their con-
tract to the winds and the waves.

The battlings of the Dutch and the
Spaniards have a distinct place in our
commercial annals, because one of their
direct results was to check our com-
mercial growth at the start. The "in-
fatuating wealth" that poured in upon
the West India Company tended to make
it careless of the little colony of New
Netherland, and also to make it resentful
of the small return which that colony
yielded upon the relatively large outlay
required to keep it in running order: and
so led to the adoption of the " squeezing "
policy which handicapped the trade of
the colonists and in the end destroyed
their loyalty and made them welcome the
change to English rule. Mr. Brodhead
is within the mark in his observation:
65

THE DUTCH FOUNDI.NG OF NEW YORK

" It was an evil day for New Netherland
when the States General committed to
the guardianship of a close and grasp-
ing mercenary corporation the ultimate
fortunes of their embryo province in
America."

In a report presented to the States
General (October 23, 1629) the feeling of
the Company in regard to its colony is
made plain. "The people conveyed by
us thither have . . . found but scanty
means of livelihood up to the present
time ; and have not been any profit, but a
drawback, to this Company. The trade
carried on there in peltries is right ad-
vantageous; but, one year with another,
we can at most bring home fifty thousand
guilders."

Yet with that return, at that time, the
Company should have been well satis-
fied. In The Planter's Plea, published in
66

§_

5' tf
w ^

3 <

* §
S 3

f I

»a n

«• >

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

London in the year 1630, the English
author wrote that the colonists of New
Netherland "appeared to subsist in a
comfortable manner, and to promise fair-
ly both to the State and to the under-
takers." The trouble was that "the
undertakers" wanted too much and
wanted it too soon. In the year 1629
the population of the colony could not
have exceeded three hundred and fifty
souls ; and three hundred and fifty people
very well might "subsist in comfort" on
an export trade of fifty thousand guild-
ers a year. The Company in short, then
and always, was greedy. By holding New
Netherland as an investment rather than
as a trust, by laying heavy imposts upon
commerce in order to raise dividends, it
throttled the trade that a less selfish
policy would have left free to expand.
The one sort of private ownership in

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the colony that was encouraged — by the
granting of little principalities to pa-
troons, who were free within certain lim-
itations to trade on their own account
— told directly against the welfare of the
mass of the colonists by creating unfair
distinctions of class. It was a trans-
planting of feudalism to America — and
feudalism did not thrive in American
soil. Actually, the patroonships were
bagged by an inside ring of the Com-
pany's directors — the practical value of
being on the ground floor was understood
in those days quite as well as we under-
stand it now — and the outcome of that
intrinsically bad policy bred evil in two
ways. It created dissension in the man-
agement of the Company's affairs at
home by arraying inside private inter-
ests against the common interests of the
shareholders at large; and in the colony
68

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the same private interests were arrayed
against the common interests of the less-
favored colonists. Later, the supply of
arms which the savages obtained from
the patroon trading - posts — but by no
means only from those sources: trading
guns for peltries was so profitable an
illegal transaction that everybody was
keen to have a hand in it — led on direct-
ly to the horrors of the Indian wars.

VIII

IN a word, atrociously bad government
was the rule almost from the beginning
until quite the end of the Dutch domina-
tion of New Netherland. Execrable ad-
ministration in Holland led to execrable
executive management in the colony.
Excepting May (1624) and Verhulst
(1625), who were little more than factors,
the men sent out as governors (the of-
ficial title was Director General) wretch-
edly neglected or absolutely betrayed the
interests which they were sworn to serve.
Kieft (1638-1646) was an easy first in
that bad lot. He was an ex-bankrupt,
whose bankruptcy had been of such sort
that his portrait had been hung up on the
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

town gallows. Against him, unrefuted,
stood the pleasing charge of having em-
bezzled ransom -money intrusted to him
to rescue Christian captives held by the
Turks. His evil work in New Nether-
land culminated in his provocation — by
a horrid and utterly inexcusable massa-
cre of savages — of the terrible Indian
war of 1643: which brought the colony
to the very verge of ruin, and which
aroused so violent an outcry against him
on the part of the colonists that he was
recalled. In a way, justice was served
out to him: he went down, his sins with
him, in the wreck of the ship in which he
took passage for home. But while Kieft
holds the record for worse than inca-
pacity, protests were made by the
colonists against the doings of every one
of the Directors — and always for cause.
Each of them played first for his own

71

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

hand. After caring for himself, his care
was for what remained of the interests
of the Company — and those he either
muddled or marred. Caring for the in-
terests of the colonists, in every case, was
the last consideration of all. Under those
conditions, of necessity, discontent was
chronic among the inhabitants of the
Province from first to last.

On the other hand, I am persuaded
that an archangel would have had his
work cut out for him had he tried to
govern at once wisely and acceptably the
hustling, greedy, law-defying Dutchmen
who dwelt in New Netherland two hun-
dred and fifty years ago. By combining
the atrocities of the Congo Free State
under Lothair's administration (paral-
leled here by Kieft's atrocities) with
the corruption at Johannesberg under
Kruger's administration (paralleled here
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

by the corruption that obtained con-
tinuously under Dutch rule) we may get
a fair notion of what our few respectable
ancestors on this island had to contend
with, and of what our many unrespect-
able ancestors actually were.

The saving salt of those days was
found in the few men who stood reso-
lutely for good government and for hon-
est ways. They would have been called
mugwumps, had that word then been
available for use ; and no doubt they did
receive some equivalent derogatory Dutch
name. The most exemplary of that
small but honorable company was David
Pietersz de Vries: who strove hard to
avert the Indian war waged by the out-
rageous Kieft, and who stood as dis-
tinctly for all that was good in the colony
as Kieft stood for all that was bad. Had
De Vries been appointed Director, in-

73

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

stead of Kieft, we should have been
saved from the blackest crime recorded
in our colonial history; and had he been
continued in office, in Stuyvesant's place,
the colony would not have fallen into
such disorder as to give the English a
mere walk - over when their time for
absorbing it came. No governor could
have prevented that absorption. It was
inevitable. But the community taken
over from De Vries would have been far
sounder morally than was that which
was taken over from Stuyvesant; and
therefore would have been less likely to
degenerate into a nest of pirates and
smugglers, as it did degenerate, during
the first thirty years of English rule.

Precisely what sort of government we

had here under the governors appointed

by the West India Company was set

forth with a refreshing candor in the

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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

famous Remonstrance — and in its accom-
panying Memorial — presented by the
colonists to the States General in the
year 1649. Incidentally, the tone of
those documents — which are informed by
the petty spitefulness of mean spirits —
makes also an ugly case against their
authors; and the case is all the stronger
because it is to be read between the lines
of their complainings and is an alto-
gether unconscious arraignment of them-
selves. But this fact, while it tends to
palliate the minor charges against Stuy-
vesant — whose high-handed ways with
his subjects, and whose coarsely express-
ed contempt for them " in language better
befitting the fish-market than the Coun-
cil board," probably were not without
justification — does not weaken the ma-
jor charge of misgovernment preferred
against him and against the Company's
75

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

representatives generally; nor does it
lessen the reasonableness of the several
specific requests for reforms in law and
in administration for which the remon-
strants prayed.

The Remonstrance — a document that
fills forty-four printed quarto pages — is
a history of the planting of New Neth-
erland, a description of the country, a
statement of the wrongs suffered by
the colonists, and a prayer for certain
specified easements and reliefs. It was
drawn up, presumably, by Adriaen van
der Donck. It was signed by Van der
Donck, Heermans, Hardenburg, Couwen-
hoven, Loockermans, Kip, Van Cortlandt,
Jansen, Hall, Elbertsen, and Bout. Three
of the signers, Van der Donck, Couwen-
hoven, and Bout, were delegated to take
it to Holland and to lay it before the
authorities at The Hague.
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

"In the infancy of this country" [wrote the
complainants] "the Directors [the Board of
Directors of the West India Company] adopted
wrong plans, and in our opinion looked more
to their own profit than to the country's welfare,
and trusted more to interested than to sound
advice. This is evident from the unnecessary
expenses incurred from time to time ; the heavy
accounts from New Netherland; the taking
of colonies [land grants] by Directors; their
carrying on commerce, to which end trade has
been regulated, and finally from not colonizing
the country. . . . Had the Honble West India
Company attended in the beginning to popula-
tion instead of incurring great expense for
things unnecessary . . . which through bad
management and calculation came wholly to
little or nothing, notwithstanding the excessive
expenditure . . . the place might now be of
considerable importance. . . .

"Trade, without which, when lawful, no coun-
try prospers, has also fallen off so much in
consequence of the Company's acts that it is
without a parallel, and more slavish than free,
owing to high duties and all the inspections and
trouble that accompany it. We highly approve
of inspection according to the orders given by

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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the Company to its officers, and so far as 'tis
done to check smugglers, who have ruined the
country, and now go out from all parts; but it
ought, nevertheless, be executed without par-
tiality, which is not always the case. The
duty is high ; of inspection and seizures there is
no lack, and thus lawful trade is turned aside
— except some little which is carried on only pro
forma, in order to push smuggling under this
cloak. Meanwhile the Christians are treated al-
most like Indians in the purchase of necessaries
which they cannot do without ; this causes great
complaint, distress and poverty. Thus, for ex-
ample : The merchants sell their dry goods, which
are subject to little loss, at a hundred per cent,
advance, and that freely, according as there is
a demand for, or a scarcity of, this or that
article; petty traders who bring small lots and
others who speculate, buy up those goods from
the merchants and sell them again to the com-
mon people who cannot do without them, often
at another advance of cent per cent., more or
less, according as they are persuaded or dis-
posed. More is taken on liquors, which are
subject to a considerable leakage, and . . . the
goods are disposed by the first, second, and
third hands at an advance of .one and two

78

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

hundred and more per cent. It would be im-
possible for us to enumerate all the practices
that are had recourse to for the purpose of
promoting self or individual interest; whilst
little thought is bestowed on introducing people
into the country. ... It also has been seen
how the letters of the Eight Men have been
treated, and the result; besides many additional
orders and instructions which are not known
to us, and are alike ruinous. But laying this
aside for the present, with a word now and
again by way of remark, let us proceed to
examine how their [the Company's] servants,
and the Directors [of New Netherland] and
their friends, have fattened here from time to
time, having played with their employers and
the people as the cat plays with the mouse.
. . . We shall pass over the beginning . . . and
treat only of the two last sad and senseless ex-
travagances— we should say administrations —
of Director Kieft, which is now in truth past,
but its evil consequences remain ; and of Director
Stuyvesant, which still stands — if that can be
said to stand which lies completely prostrate.
. . . Previous to Director Kieft's bringing the
unnecessary war upon the country, his principal
aim and object was to take good care of him-

79

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

self and to leave behind him a great name,
but without any expense either to himself or to
the Company. . . . With that view he con-
sidered the erection of a church very necessary.
. . . The Director wished and insisted that it
should be located in the Fort, where it was
erected in spite of the others. And, truly, the
location is as suitable as a fifth wheel to a
coach; for, besides being small, the Fort lies
on a point, which would be of more importance
in case of population; the church, which ought
to be owned by the people who defrayed the
expense of its construction, intercepts and turns
aside the Southeast wind from the gristmill which
stands in that vicinity ; and this is also one of the
causes [!] why a scarcity of bread prevails fre-
quently in summer for want of grinding. But
this is not the sole cause ; for the mill is neglected,
and having been leaky most of the time, it has
become decayed and somewhat rotten, so that
it cannot now work with more than two arms,
and has gone on thus for all of five years.
But returning to the church, from which the
gristmill has for the moment diverted us, the
Director concluded, then, to have one built and
on the spot which he preferred. He lacked
money — and where was this to be got? It

80

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

happened, about this time, that Everardus
Bogardus, the clergyman, gave in marriage a
daughter, by his first wife. The Director
thought this a good time for his purpose, and set
to work after the fourth or fifth drink; and he
himself setting a liberal example, let the wedding
guests sign whatever they were disposed to give
towards the church. Each, then, with a light
head, subscribed away at a handsome rate, one
competing with the other; and although some
heartily repented it when their senses came back,
they were obliged, nevertheless, to pay — noth-
ing could avail against it. The church, then,
was located in the Fort, in opposition to every
one's opinion. The honor and ownership of
that work must be inferred from the inscription,
which, in our opinion, is somewhat ambiguous,
and reads thus: 'Anno 1642. Willem Kieft,
Directeur Generael, heeft de gemeente desen
temple doen bouwen.' But, laying that aside,
the people nevertheless paid for the church."

That is the tone of the Remonstrance
throughout. In a petty spirit it dealt
with petty grievances at a length out of
all proportion to their importance, and

6 8l

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

left what evidently were substantial
grievances — as the high duties and the
manifold inspections — far from clearly
explained. That the complainants dis-
missed in a few lines the greatest of all the
colonial crimes against good government
and against humanity, Kieft's Indian war,
was not surprising. The wreck of colo-
nial interests which had been brought
about by that war was well understood in
Holland. There was no need that it
should be explained.

IX

OLONI AL discontent usually is rea-
sonable, and always is natural. It
is reasonable, because colonies are pretty
certain to be neglected, or remembered
only to be harshly dealt with, by the
home government. It is natural, be-
cause of the qualities pretty certainly
inherent in colonists: who for the most
part are either untried young men of
strong character who know little of the
world but are eager to make their way
in it quickly, or incapable middle-aged
men who have failed at home yet des-
perately hope to mend their broken
fortunes abroad. Of the small residuum,
the men who settle down to work and

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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

who silently and steadfastly build their
own fortunes by subduing a savage land,
very little ever is heard. It is the " kick-
ers " who make the noise. Here in Amer-
ica our sympathies always have been
on the colonial side, and our animosities
against home governments in general al-
ways have been strong. Perhaps, now
that we are in the way of being (some-
what unwillingly) a " world power " our-
selves, with swaggering and blustering
colonies of our own, our point of view
may change. It even is conceivable that
in time we may come to have quite a
compassionating fellow-feeling for our
once tyrant, the late King George the
Third!

Actually, in spite of bad laws badly
administered, the colony of New Nether-
land did make headway. This country
was a rich country, and its exploitation
84

s: Ss

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

— even under heavy handicaps — yielded
a good return. In the year 1624 the
cargo of furs sent home by Director May,
"as a first year's remittance from New
Netherland," sold for 28,000 guilders.
Two years later the showing was still bet-
ter. Under date of November 5, 1626,
the following report was sent from Am-
sterdam to the States General :

"Yesterday arrived here the ship the Arms of
Amsterdam, which sailed from New Netherland,
out of the River Mauritius, on the 23 d of Septem-
ber. They report that our people are in good
heart and live in peace there. The women also
have borne some children there. They have
bought the Island Manhattes from the Indians
for the value of 60 guilders — 'tis n.ooomorgens
[about 22,000 acres] in size. They had all their
grain sowed by the middle of May, and reaped
by the middle of August. They send thence
samples of summer grain — such as wheat, rye,
barley, oats, buckwheat, canary -seed, beans,
and flax. The cargo of the aforesaid ship is:
7246 beaver skins, 178^ otter skins, 675 otter

85

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

skins, 48 minck skins, 36 wild cat skins, 33
mincks, 34 rat skins. Considerable oak timber
and hickory."

Charles Wooley, writing half a century
later, gives these values: "beaver skins,
ordinary, 10 shillings; beaver skins, black,
1 5 shillings ; minck skins, 5 shillings ; otter
skins, ordinary, 8 shillings; otter skins,
black, if very good, 20 shillings." Rough-
ly estimated, and without allowance for
the fall in the value of peltries in that
half century, the value of the cargo of the
Arms of Amsterdam therefore was not less
than $25,000 — or well above $50,000, in
the values of to-day. In another way the
manifest of that ship is interesting. It
is the earliest known manifest of a ship
clearing from this port. The cargo seems
to have been an exceptional one. In the
year 1628 the exports hence "in two
ships" is given at 61,000 guilders — only a
86

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

trifle above the value of the lading of that
single ship four years earlier — and for
the years 1629-30 the exports were valued
at 130,000 guilders. In the year 1632 the
exports of furs alone were valued at
140,000 guilders, and in the year 1635 at
135,000 guilders. I must add, however,
that the figures of that early time have a
wandering way with them that places
them anywhere but above reproach. Yet
they show, at least, that returns of a
respectable sort began almost imme-
diately to come in from the colony, and
that those returns increased from year
to year.

With the development of trade be-
tween the colony and the home country
went also the development of a trade
that was wholly colonial. By the year
1635 a considerable commerce was car-
ried on between New Netherland and

87

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

New England — of which the less impor-
tant part was direct, and the more im-
portant part was the carriage of tobacco
and salt from Virginian and West Indian
ports to Boston. The suggestive fact also
is recorded that in the year 1 63 7 a Dutch
ship sailing direct from the Texel landed
in Boston a cargo of sheep and oxen and
Flanders mares. Naturally, the English
did not take kindly to such commercial
under-cutting; and all the more nat-
urally because the Dutch stiffly refused
to permit English traders to come upon
their own colonial preserves.

Touching those preserves, there was a
sharp little clashing of rights in April
1633, when the William, a London ship
commanded by a renegade Dutchman,
came into this port " to trade at Hudson's
river" — and peremptorily was refused a
trading license. There was a fine inter-
88

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

change of bravadoes between Director
Van Twiller and the William's captain.
Flags were run up and salutes were fired,
and there was a vast amount of vaporing
talk on the Director's side. But at the
end of it all the ship did go up the river
—being the first English vessel to ascend
the Hudson — and her captain would have
made his trade unmolested had not De
Vries put some stiffening into Van
Twiller 's weak backbone. "If it had
been my case," said De Vries, shortly
and hotly, " I should have helped him
from the Fort to some eight-pound iron
beans!" "The English," he added, and
his remark has quite a modern ring in it,
"are of so haughty a nature that they
think everything belongs to them"; and
he concluded by declaring with energy:
"I should send the ship Souther g after
him and drive him out of the river!" And
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

that was precisely what Van Twiller, be-
ing thus brought up to the collar, then
did.

It was not in human nature, therefore,
for the English quietly to permit Dutch
ships to trade in English colonial ports
when English ships were refused trading
privileges in Dutch colonial ports; and,
as a matter of fact, the profitable trade
that was developed between New Nether-
land and the plantations in New Eng-
land and Virginia — while immediately
beneficial to the Dutch — was one of the
most active of the several causes which
led to the wresting from the Dutch of
their holding in North America. The
matter is too broad in its scope to be
dealt with fully here; yet am I loath to
relinquish it because of the many very
human touches in which it abounds.

With one scrap of ancient history,
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

wherein the humanity still is fresh and
strong, I am justified in dealing: the fa-
mous case of the ship Eendracht — driven
by stress of weather into Plymouth in the
year 1632, and there seized by the Eng-
lish port authorities (I quote the Dutch
version of the matter) " on an untrue rep-
resentation that the Peltries were bought
within the jurisdiction or district belong-
ing to his majesty of Great Britain."
Over that seizure there was a diplomatic
squabble between Holland and England
that went on for years — and the whole of
it, I am persuaded, was the outcome of a
love-affair! According to a letter sent
by the States General to their Am-
bassador in England, the Eendracht was
"seized on false information of the
Provost of said ship . . . and of the
Pilot who, in opposition to the Director
and Skipper, being on shore got married."

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

There is the crux of it, I am sure. But
for that Pilot's impetuously inopportune
determination to wed the widow (I am
quite certain that she was a widow, be-
cause of the eagerness of it all) he very
probably could have taken the Eend-
racht out of Plymouth harbor and safe
away to sea. Being ordered, no doubt,
to do that very thing — and the widow
ashore waiting for him! — he and his
friend the Provost laid the " untrue rep-
resentation " which led on to those years
of diplomatic blustering: but which also
led to the detention of the ship at Plym-
outh until he was safe wed to his bounc-
ing bride!

After all, what mattered it if Holland
and England were embroiled by that
brave Pilot's hot -hearted indiscretion?
Every man thinks first of his own happi-
ness; and in love-affairs — it has been so
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

from the world's beginning — he thinks of
nothing else. I wish that we had the end
of the story. Let us hope that his widow
repaid him for his gallant defiance, for
her sweet sake, of the orders of captains
and directors, and that it turned out
well — that sailor-wedding which shook
two great states to their foundations
nearly three centuries ago ! In all serious-
ness, I am justified in recalling here that
only half -told and long-forgotten idyl. It
had its place, the love - making of that
precipitate Pilot, among the causes which
in time's fulness changed New Nether-
land and New Amsterdam into the State
and City of New York.

X

UNDER spur of the " remonstrances "
— there were many of them — sent
home by the colonists, the States General
did make some effort to deal with New
Netherland on lines of equity. An of-
ficial inquiry was made into the affairs
of the West India Company in the year
1638 that resulted in checking some of the
worst of the colonial abuses; and that
also led to the promulgation (1640) of a
new charter of Liberties and Exemptions
which materially added to the welfare of
the colony, and increased the comfort of
the colonists, by relaxing the regulations
under which trade was conducted and
94

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

by easing the conditions under which
the people lived.

Kieft, be it said to his credit, gave ef-
fect to this liberal policy in so liberal a
spirit that the three ensuing years — until
almost ruin came with the Indian war
— probably were the most prosperous in
the time of Dutch rule. Notably, he en-
couraged English refugees, fleeing from
religious persecution in New England, to
settle in New Netherland; and those
settlers — maintaining relations with their
friends and kinsfolk — did much to de-
velop the intercolonial trade of which I
have written above. By the year 1642
the English were so numerous in New
Amsterdam that the appointment of an
official interpreter became necessary ; and
that officer also was required to serve as
an intermediary between the Dutch mer-
chants and the English ship-masters who
95

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

broke the voyage between New England
and the Virginia plantations by stopping
here for a bit of trade.

It was for the accommodation of such
wayfarers that the City Tavern — which
later became the Stadt Huys — was built,
facing Coenties Slip, in the year 1642;
and it seems to have been built badly,
as it manifested such a decided dispo-
sition to tumble to pieces in little more
than half a century that it was torn
down. I should be glad to believe that
hospitality was the corner-stone of that
nominally hospitable edifice ; but I fancy
that in building it some thought may
have been taken of the fact that trade
in a tavern is apt to turn in favor of
the trader who has the hardest head —
and it is an incontestable fact that our
Dutch ancestors had heads upon which
they could rely. Possibly some of those
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

visiting English skippers carried away in
their aching heads unkindly memories of
our City Tavern — as they beat down the
harbor and out through the Narrows on
their way to Virginia, or as they affront-
ed the dangers of Hell Gate on their way
eastward up the Sound!

The encouragement that Kieft gave to
the incoming of the English, and to the
trade with the neighboring English colo-
nies, tended to the immediate good of New
Netherland ; but in the end, of course, the
influx of those settlers, and the strain-
ing of relations with the government to
which they owed allegiance, were the
chief factors in hastening the downfall
here of Dutch rule. George Baxter, the
official interpreter — he seems to have
been a fuming sort of a person — was one
of the leaders of the rebellion that broke
out among the English on Long Island

7 97

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

in the year 1655; a rebellion that Stuy-
vesant's temporizing policy did not check,
and that helped to give a valuable part
of New Netherland to the English nine
years before they grabbed it all.

In another way Kieft's liberal admin-
istration of more liberal laws led on to
catastrophe. The increased freedom in
trading tended to facilitate the supply of
arms — in exchange for good bargains in
peltries — to the savages; and so enabled
the savages to make their winning fight
when, by Kieft's own abominable act, the
time for fighting came. From the very
beginning the trade in arms with the
Indians offered temptations too strong
to be resisted by the money - seeking
Dutch — just as it has offered temptations
too strong to be resisted by the money-
seekers of our own time on our western
frontier. Under Kieft it went on swim-
98

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

mingly. In those days a musket sold for
twenty beaver skins, and a pound of gun-
powder was worth in furs from ten to
twelve guilders: and so the "bosch-
lopers," or "runners in the woods," made
their account with the savages — and gave
no thought to the reaping of the whirl-
wind that was to come in sequence to that
sowing of the wind.

Actually, the " bosch-lopers " were mere
agents. The sources of supply of that
pernicious trade were the capitalists of
the colony. In the year 1644 a ship
sent out from Holland by the Patroon
of Rensselaerswyck — being searched by
mere accident at New Amsterdam — was
found to have on board, not on her
manifest, " four thousand pounds of pow-
der and seven hundred pieces, to trade
with the natives." The illicit cargo was
confiscated with a great show of pro-
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

priety: but I do not doubt that the
powder and the pieces got along to the
natives in due course. In Stuyvesant's
time (July 9, 1648) " Govert Barent, the
armourer at Fort Amsterdam," and three
others were arrested, and two of the four
"were convicted and sentenced to death
for violating the proclamation against
the illicit trade in fire-arms." But the
convicted and sentenced ones were not
executed. " By the intervention of
many good men " they got off from the
hanging which they richly deserved, and
nothing worse happened to them than
the confiscation of their illegally held
property. In other words, public sen-
timent was in favor of the trade — in
which, practically, everybody desired to
have a hand — and no real attempt was
made to suppress it because the rulers
of the colony shared the popular feeling
100

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

and either were weak or were venal, and
for the most part were both. The re-
sponsibility for that sin, as for many
others, therefore rests primarily with the
West India Company : which without ex-
ception, from Van Twiller's time onward,
appointed as Directors of New Nether-
land men utterly unfitted to perform the
gravely important duties with which they
were charged.

As was shown by the official inquiries
made from time to time into the affairs
of the colony, usually followed by small
reforms, the Dutch government was not
wholly unmindful of the evils wrought by
the mercenary corporation to which it
had delegated too great powers; but, the
initial error of delegating those powers
having been committed, not even the
States General could set right what had
begun by being, and what continued
101

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

until the end to be, hopelessly wrong.
From the start, that ill-conceived colo-
nial venture had in it the seeds of fail-
ure. The wonder is not that it ended so
soon, but that it lasted so long.

XI

WHEN Peter Stuyvesant, the last of
those incompetent Directors, took
over the government of New Netherland
(May n, 1647) things were in a hope-
lessly bad way. Mr. Brodhead, whose
disposition is to make the best of Dutch
shortcomings, thus summarizes the situa-
tion: " Excepting the Long Island settle-
ments, scarcely fifty bouweries could be
counted; and the whole province could
not furnish, at the utmost, more than
three hundred men capable of bearing
arms. The savages still were brooding
over the loss of sixteen hundred of their
people. Disorder and discontent pre-
vailed among the commonalty ; the public
103

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

revenue was in arrear, and smuggling had
almost ruined legitimate trade; conflict-
ing claims of jurisdiction were to be
settled with the colonial patroons; and
jealous neighbors all around threatened
the actual dismemberment of the prov-
ince. Protests had been of no avail ; and
the decimated population, which had
hardly been able to protect itself against
the irritated savages, could offer but a fee-
ble resistance to the progress of European
encroachment. Under such embarrassing
circumstances the last Director General
of New Netherland began his eventful
government. ' ' And to this Mr. Brodhead
might have added in set terms what he
does add virtually by his subsequent pre-
sentment of facts : that Peter Stuyvesant,
so far from being the man to set a wrong-
going colony right, was precisely the man
to set a right-going colony wrong.
104

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Irving, with his accustomed genial
warping of the truth, has created so
kindly a caricature of the last of the
Dutch governors that our disposition is
to link him with, almost to exalt him to
the level of, the blessed Saint Nicholas
— our city's Patron. Such association
is not justified by the facts, and our
good Saint — notwithstanding his notable
charity and humility — most reasonably
might take exception to it. In truth,
Stuyvesant had little in common with
any respectable saint in the calendar ; and
to come upon the real man — as he is re-
vealed in the official records of his time
— is to experience the shock of painful
discovery.

The Remonstrance of the year 1649,

already cited, while dealing generally

with the manifold misfortunes brought

upon the colonists by bad government,

105

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

deals particularly with the misdoings of
the last Director: who then had been in
office for only two years and a half, and
who in that time had succeeded in set-
ting the whole colony by the ears. " His
first arrival," declared the remonstrants,
"was peacock-like, with great state and
pomposity"; and the burden of their
complaint, constantly recurred to, is of
his brutally dictatorial methods and of
his coarsely arrogant pride. " His man-
ner in court," they declare, "has been
... to browbeat, dispute with, and har-
ass one of the two parties; not as be-
seemeth a judge, but like a zealous ad-
vocate. This has caused great discontent
everywhere, and has gone so far and
had such an effect on some that many
dare not bring any suits before the court
if they do not stand well, or passably
so, with the Director; for whom he op-
106

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

poseth hath both sun and moon against
him. . . . He likewise frequently sub-
mits his opinion in writing . . . and
then his word is: 'Gentlemen, this is
my opinion, if any one have ought to
object to it, let him express it.' If any
one then, on the instant, offer objection
. . . his Honour bursts forth, inconti-
nently, into a rage and makes such a to
do that it is dreadful; yea, he frequently
abuses the Councillors as this and as that,
in foul language better befitting the fish-
market than the Council board; and if
all this be tolerated, he will not be satis-
fied until he have his way." In regard to
the right of appeal to the home govern-
ment, his declaration is cited that " Peo-
ple may think of appealing during my
time — should any one do so, I would
have him made a foot shorter, pack the
pieces off to Holland, and let him appeal
107

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

in that way." And to this the remon-
strants added by way of comment: "Oh
cruel words! What more could a sover-
eign do?"

As the tone of the complainings shows,
there was another side to all this. Ac-
cording to his lights (which were few)
and within his limitations (which were
many) Stuyvesant was in the way of be-
ing a reformer: and reformers ever have
been painted blackest by those whom
they sought to reform. That outrageous
little colony needed a deal of reforming
when he took over its government; and
had his mandatory proclamations stop-
ped with the one that forbade "sabbath
breaking, brawling, and drunkenness," he
still would have had a hornets' nest about
his ears. Fancy what would have been
the consensus of opinion on the part of
the leading citizens of Fort Leavenworth
108

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

had any reforming person fired off at
them a proclamation of that sort in the
old days of the Santa Fe Trail! But
Stuyvesant's reforms cut deeper. Not
content with trying to reduce to decency
the energetic social customs of the colo-
nists, he tried also to bring them up to the
line of honest dealing: and so struck at
their pockets as well as at their hearts.
He forbade the sale of liquor to the
savages: a most profitable business in
itself, and of much indirect advantage
to those engaged in it — because an in-
toxicated savage obviously was more
desirable than a sober -savage to bargain
with for furs. He made stringent reg-
ulations which checked the profitable
industry of smuggling peltries into New
England, and European goods thence
into New Netherland. He issued revo-
lutionary commands that the frowsy
109

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

and draggle-tailed little town should be
set in order and cleansed. And on top
of all this, farther to replenish the ex-
hausted treasury of the colony, he levied
a tax upon liquors and wines. That was
the climax of his offending. As the out-
raged and indignant colonists themselves
declared — becomingly falling back upon
holy writ for a strong enough simile —
the wine and liquor tax was "like the
crowning of Rehoboam!"

It is not surprising that such a com-
munity should be at odds with such a
ruler. Nearly half a century later, when
New Amsterdam had become New York,
a like resentful commotion was stirred
up by another and a far better reform
governor, Lord Bellomont : who was sent
out from England to put down, and
who did put down, the pirates and smug-
glers then flourishing in this town. But
no

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Lord Bellomont was a strong man and a
just man — who carried through his re-
forms to a masterly finish precisely be-
cause his sense of justice restrained him
from making an arbitrary use of his
strength. Stuyvesant was neither strong
nor just, and he was arbitrary to the last
degree. Considering the material that
he had to work on, and considering also
the manners and customs of his times, his
headstrong ways and his coarse speech
admit of palliation. No doubt he gave
those equally headstrong and equally
foul-mouthed colonists pretty much what,
in one way, they deserved. But provo-
cation is not justification. The capital
error of his government was not its
harshness but its arbitrary harshness. He
seems to have been a waspish little
man, with a testy temper that ever dis-
posed him to fly into a rage with any-
iii

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

body who in the smallest particular con-
tradicted him; and, assuredly, he lacked
the sagacity that might have saved him
from letting fly his choleric outbursts with
an indiscriminating violence that destroy-
ed the moral effect of what very often, no
doubt, was his righteous wrath.

Under such a government as Stuy-
vesant gave to that unfortunate colony
there could be no real improvement in its
affairs. Even when his attempted re-
forms were sound — and for the most part
they were sound — the effect of them was
weakened, and their realization was made
difficult or impossible, by the manner in
which they were applied.

NOVA B F. L G I C A/f,v.

THE VISSCHER MAP, WITH A VIEW OF N'

llSTERDAM DRAWN BEFORE THE YEAR 1653

XII

BUT a better man than Stuyvesant
— while he might have lost it with
more dignity — could not have saved to
Holland the colony of New Netherland.
Forces from within and forces from with-
out were working for its destruction. In-
ternally, its affairs were administered with
incompetence tempered with injustice —
and it owed its bad government to the
fact that it was but a by- venture in a
great scheme of combined money-making
and statecraft; and to the farther fact
that it was more and more neglected,
or remembered only to be more tightly
squeezed, as the ruinous end of the West
India Company drew near. Externally,

8 113

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the English constantly were pressing more
closely upon its borders: strong in their
determination to have the whole of it;
and in the mean time taking possession
of such scraps of it — as the eastern end
of Long Island — as dropped loose of their
own accord. Such conditions led inev-
itably to the loss of that which never
had been well held.

The evil star of the West India Com-
pany was the most conspicuous among
the several stars in their courses which
fought against the Dutch in their struggle
to hold fast to their American colonies.
The condition of the Company never was
sound financially. By heroic marauding
it did acquire a vast sum of money —
which went as quickly as it came. But
the Company absolutely failed to build
up in any part of its dominions a sub-
stantial legitimate trade from which it
114

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

could draw securely a stable revenue. Its
nearest approach to founding a well-
ordered colony was in the Brazils, under
the one competent governor that it ever
sent out from Holland: Count John
Maurice of Nassau. Under the wise rule
of that excellent ruler a liberal scheme
of trade regulations was established; re-
ligious toleration was assured ; and for all
classes alike there was just enforcement
of, and equal protection under, a just code
of laws. But, to quote Dr. Asher, " even
Count John Maurice's brilliant talents
yielded no pecuniary profits. Compelled
by the strict and reiterated orders of the
Directors of the Company, he had to carry
on an incessant war with the Portuguese
in southern Brazil. Great part of his rev-
enue consisted of booty; and his troops
ruined more than they took away — draw-
ing upon the Dutch possessions similar

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

acts of retribution from the enraged
enemy. Among those horrors of border
warfare agriculture and trade could not
survive." If such a state of affairs ob-
tained in the best managed of the Com-
pany's colonies, and at a time when the
Company was in a flourishing condition,
we need not be surprised that the state
of affairs in its worst managed colony —
our own New Netherland — became al-
most unendurable as the Company drew
nearer and nearer to collapse.

From the year 1630 onward the Com-
pany's finances showed, as Dr. Asher puts
it, "a terribly constant downward ten-
dency." Only a year after it had paid its
famous dividend upon its treasure-ship
winnings, and out of its remaining sur-
plus had lent 600,000 guilders to the
Dutch government, it was unable to meet
its running expenses. Under its charter
116

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

it was entitled to a subsidy; but the
government — partly because of lack of
funds, but more because of the adverse
action taken by the dominant political
ring — was slack in making the promised
payments and the subsidy fell badly into
arrear. Money from other sources was
not forthcoming. No colonial trade of
importance had been developed; and the
plan for breaking Spain's line of com-
munication with her colonial treasure-
houses had been executed so effectively
that it had reacted upon its projectors
after the manner of a boomerang; that
is to say, although the Company had to
carry the load of an armed fleet created
mainly to bag Spanish plate-ships, the
seas were empty of plate-ships to be
bagged.

Bad luck had something to do with
the Company's misfortunes, but at the
117

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

root of them was bad management. The
same stupidity, or worse, that was shown
in the conduct of the affairs of our own
little New Netherland was shown on a
larger scale in the conduct of the far
more important affairs in Brazil. At the
end of a long series of quarrels with the
Council, Count John Maurice resigned his
commission in disgust in the year 1644.
His successors, for the most part, were
incompetents. When they happened to
possess wits they used them in betraying
the Company's interests — for a consider-
ation— to the Portuguese. It took just
ten years of that sort of thing to bring
matters to their logical climax. In the
year 1654 the Company's troops evacu-
ated the Brazils.

Ten years more brought the end of
everything. Dr. Asher puts the record
of those ten calamitous years into a few
118

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

words. "We cannot here attempt," he
writes, "to describe the Company's last
agony : its vain attempts to combine with
the East India Company; its painful ef-
forts to obtain from the government
either armed assistance or payment of its
arrears. The symptoms of bankruptcy
became saddening and more threatening
from year to year. At last its creditors
began to seize the Company's property.
The death blow was struck in 1664 —
when New Netherland, the Company's
last valuable possession, was conquered
by the English." And so that rather
grandly conceived, but consistently ill
executed enterprise, came to a miserable
end. As a warning, the history of its few
triumphs and of its many failures has
a permanent value. And especially does
its history point the moral that it is
unwise, to say the least, to try to get
119

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

from invested patriotism a dividend in
cash.

Conceivably, by the exercise of a small
amount of common sense, the Dutch
might have retained their holdings in
Brazil; but from their holdings in North
America — New Netherland, and the
colony on the Delaware — the common
sense of all the ages could not have
saved them from being squeezed out.
There they were at grips with a race
stronger than their own in numbers, and
not less strong in sheer grit. For thirty
years before the end came, the English
were pressing in upon their territory from
the east and from the south ; while across
seas, with a large statesmanship, the
English government was taking a hand
in putting on the screws.

The most effective twist of the English
screw was the passage by the Common-
120

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

wealth Parliament (October 9, 1651) of
the Navigation Act: which decreed that
goods imported into England must come
in English ships or in ships belonging to
the country in which the goods were
produced. As the Dutch at that time
had the carrying trade of the world pretty
well in their hands, the English law was
in the nature of some of our own highly
impersonal legislation affecting " cities of
the first class. ' ' No names were mention-
ed— but it hit where it was meant to hit,
and it hit hard. A loud buzzing of am-
bassadors followed that shot at Dutch
commerce. But the propositions made
by Holland — that there should be free
trade to the West Indies and to Virginia,
and that " a just, certain, and immovable
boundary line" should be fixed between
the English and the Dutch territories in
America — came to nothing ; and so, pres-
121

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

ently, there was the louder buzzing of
guns. In the handsome little war that
followed (1652-54), the English — while
practically gaining what they fought for
— experienced the unusual sensation of
being soundly whipped at sea. Blake
fairly was driven to take shelter in the
Thames : after which Tromp went sailing
up and down the Channel with that ag-
gravating broom at his mast-head, to
which reference is inexpedient in talking
with the average Englishman even now.

Here in Manhattan there was a great
show of bellicosity while that waspish
little war went on. It was then — under
orders from Holland to put the town in a
state of defence — that our famous wall
was built along the line of what now is
Wall Street. Thomas Baxter (who proved
himself to be a very bad lot, a little later)
had the contract for supplying the pali-
122

t- w

c M

a B

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

sadoes which were intended to stand off
his own countrymen ; but which, in point
of fact, never stood off anything more
dangerously aggressive than wandering
cows. Also, the city watch was strength-
ened ; and preparations for a naval demon-
stration (in the event of a hostile fleet
appearing before the city) were made by
ordering Schipper Visscher "to keep his
sails always ready, and to have his gun
loaded day and night." In a word, we
all were full of fight in ihat strenuous
time — but, mercifully, carnage was avert-
ed. It takes two armies to make a
battle: and the English army, for which
we were waiting in so blood-thirsty a
mood, discreetly remained at a safe dis-
tance from our pugnacious little fume of
a town.

XIII

STUYVESANT showed both manli-
ness and good common sense in deal-
ing with the most threatening feature of
that really volcanic situation : the charge
made by the New-Englanders that he
had endeavored to stir up against them
an Indian revolt. He met the charge
promptly by inviting the Commissioners*
to send delegates to New Amsterdam to
investigate it — and when they came he
refuted it. More than that, he submitted

* The colonies of New Plymouth, Massachusetts,
Connecticut and New Haven became confeder-
ated, May 19, 1643, as "The United Colonies of
New England." The administration of the affairs
of the confederacy was intrusted to a board con-
sisting of two commissioners from each colony.

124

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

to the delegates very reasonable and just
propositions for the regulation of inter-
colonial affairs. In substance, those prop-
ositions were: I. Neighborly friendship,
without regard to the hostilities in
Europe; II. Continuance of trade as be-
fore; III. Mutual justice against fraudu-
lent debtors; IV. A defensive and offen-
sive alliance against common enemies.
But the delegates refused to entertain his
propositions, and went back to Boston in
an unexplained but quite unmistakable
huff. Very likely they had an instinctive
feeling that treaties were unnecessary —
since, without treaties, things were com-
ing their way.

Moreover, the desire of the New-Eng-
landers to fight the Dutch was strong.
Patriotism may have been at the root of
that desire, but its more obvious motive
was a mere commonplace human longing
125

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEWYORK

to lay hands on valuable Dutch property.
Rhode Island — in those years, and for
many succeeding years, the abode of
notoriously hard characters — even made
a start at a little war of spoliation on its
own account. Two loose fish of thievish
proclivities, Dyer and Underbill, were
granted a license by that disreputable
colony (June 3, 1653) to "take all Dutch
ships and vessels as shall come into their
power"; and the energetic Thomas Bax-
ter— fresh from his palisading operation
in Wall Street, and very likely using the
profits of that operation in fitting out his
expedition — also got a predatory license
from Rhode Island ("turned pirate," is
the way that Mr. Brodhead puts it) and
made a spirited looting cruise along the
Sound: that was ended by his being " run
in" not by the Dutch but by the au-
thorities of New Haven.
126

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Only the action of Massachusetts at
that juncture averted what would have
been a most horrid little war between the
Dutch and the English colonies; and, as
it was, the war was escaped by a very
close shave. The delegates, being come
again to Boston, presented their report
of the evidence that had been laid before
them, in New Amsterdam and elsewhere,
for and against the alleged Dutch plot to
excite an Indian rising; and the matter
was referred to a conference of "divers
neighbouring elders," held before the
General Court of Massachusetts, with in-
structions to find out "what the Lord
calleth to do." The elders found proofs
enough to " induce them to believe " in the
reality of " that late execrable plot, tend-
ing to the destruction of so many dear
saints of God, which is imputed to the
Dutch governor and fiscal"; but they
127

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

did not find the proofs " so fully conclu-
sive as to clear up present proceedings
to war." Thereupon the General Court
voted that they were not " called to make
a present war with the Dutch."

That mild decision was not well re-
ceived. Voicing the popular feeling —
and with the bellicose tendencies of his
cloth — the "teacher of the church at
Salem" wrote to urge immediate hos-
tilities: the postponement of which, he
declared, already "had caused many a
pensive heart." Six out of the eight
Commissioners were at one with this
kindly gentleman in his desire for vica-
rious blood-letting. Solidly they cast
their votes for instant war. Fortunately,
the members of the General Court of
Massachusetts kept their heads. Rest-
ing their opinion upon the terms of the
colonial Articles of Confederation, they
128

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

declared that it was beyond the powers
of " six commissioners of the other colo-
nies to put forth any act of power in a
vindictive war, whereby they shall com-
mand the colonies dissenting to assist
them in the same." That declaration —
which virtually was a declaration, near-
ly two centuries in advance of its recog-
nized existence, of the doctrine of State
Rights — saved the day. The Commission-
ers sent to Stuyvesant " a peevish reply " :
telling him that his "confident denials
of the barbarous plot charged will weigh
little in the balance against such evi-
dence" as that which they had secured;
and adding the broad and vague threat
that "we must still require and seek due
satisfaction and security." But their
vaporing led to nothing, and the war
did not come off. Massachusetts spoke
the final word — in reply to a request
9 129

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

from Connecticut that "by war, if no
other means will serve, the Dutch at and
about the Manhatoes, who have been and
still are like to prove injurious and dan-
gerous neighbours, may be removed."
To that intemperate request the tem-
perate answer was given that Massachu-
setts refused to act " in so weighty a con-
cernment as to send forth men to shed
blood" unless satisfied "that God calls
for it; and then it must be clear and not
doubtful, necessary and expedient."

That persistent stand for peace was
due in part, no doubt, to the fact that
between Massachusetts and New Nether-
land there was no such sharp conflict
of interests as there was between New
Netherland and the nearer-lying English
colonies ; that, on the contrary, there was
even a certain friendliness between the
two because of the trade that went on, to
130

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

their common advantage, between Bos-
ton and New Amsterdam. But I think
that what really prevented the war was
Stuyvesant's promptness and frankness
in dealing with the charge that he had
sought to stir up an Indian revolt. The
clearness of his defence, and his straight-
forward way of making it, constituted an
appeal to the sense of right which then
and always was characteristic of the
Massachusetts colonists ; and that appeal,
I am persuaded, counted for more with
them than did the feeling of friendliness
begotten of common interests in trade.

The fact is to be noted that Stuyvesant
uniformly showed in what may be termed
his foreign policy a far greater wisdom
than he usually showed in his domestic
policy. His one important aggressive act
— his reduction (1655) of the Swedish
colony on the Delaware, in dealing with

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

which Irving has quite outdone himself
in a farrago of mingled nonsense and
falsehood — was admirably planned and
most successfully executed. He gained
his end, without any fighting whatever,
by the menacing display of an effective
superior force: a method, it will be ob-
served, that accords precisely with the
rules laid down by the highest modern
authorities on the art of war. It is true
that in the Treaty of Hartford (1650) he
yielded too much to the English ; but his
concessions materially lessened the dan-
gerous border troubles, and the treaty
certainly was beneficial for a time. His
dealings with Virginia were to still better
purpose. Even while the war between
Holland and England was in progress —
in accordance with his desire, scouted by
the New - Englanders, for "neighbourly
friendship, without regard to the hostil-
132

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

ities in Europe" — he made two attempts
to conclude a commercial treaty with the
Virginia authorities ; and he succeeded in
effecting with them a favorable working
arrangement in the year 1653 that led on
to the more formal and equally favorable
convention of the year 1660.

The Virginia trade began to be of im-
portance in the year 1652, when the ex-
port tax on tobacco shipped from New
Netherland was removed; a concession
on the part of the Amsterdam Chamber
with which were united a reduction of the
price of passage from Holland outward,
and permission — here was the beginning
of our slave trade — for the colonists to
import negroes from Africa. A hint of
trade direct with the Spanish colonies is
found, also, in a list of charges brought
(1653) by the West India Company
against the proprietors of Rensselaer-

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

wyck; one of those charges being that
" licenses have been granted to private in-
dividuals to sail to the coast of Florida."
I should like to follow up that interest-
ing lead, but there is little to go upon in
the indiscreetly reticent records of the
time. One other important trace of it
I have found: in a letter (February 13,
1659) from the Amsterdam Chamber to
the Director General and Council in New
Netherland granting " a larger liberty to
the inhabitants there to trade ... to
France, Spain, Italy, the Caribbee islands,
and other parts, to dispose of and sell
their freighted products, salted fish, wares
and merchandise " ; subject to the restric-
tion that they "shall be obliged and
bound to return direct either here before
this city of Amsterdam or back to New
Netherland to the place of your Honours'
abode, in order to pay to your Honours,
134

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

on the discharge and sale thereof, such
duties as the Company here derives from
them." Bearing on this matter, but a
little beside it, is a minute (July 10, 1655)
of the States General touching a memo-
rial presented by the Spanish ambassador
requesting that one " Sebastien Raef, a
Captain or privateer committing piracies
in the West Indies on the subjects of the
Most Illustrious King " should be arrest-
ed in Amsterdam; and " that the govern-
ment of New Netherland be instructed
to arrest in their harbours Joan van
Kampen, his lieutenant, together with his
ship and effects, that law and justice be
administered to the one and the other,
for the behoof of the interested, with in-
fliction of exemplary punishment for the
piracies they have committed." From
which we may infer that somewhat liberal
notions obtained in New Netherland as

135

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

to the scope of commercial relations with
the colonies of Spain.

Putting incidental piracies out of the
question, Stuyvesant certainly endeavor-
ed— according to his lights — to foster the
foreign trade of New Netherland. His
voyage to the West Indies in the year
1655 was made expressly to that end; and
his consistent effort seems to have been
to make New Amsterdam a little metrop-
olis in which should centre the American
colonial trade. Possibly I am going too
far in crediting him with the deliberate
formulation and pursuit of a policy in
which was such large statesmanship; but
it is, at least, an interesting and a sugges-
tive fact that most of his plans touching
the exterior affairs of the colony do wear
the look of having been conceived in the
spirit of one who had that great end in
view.

136

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Unfortunately, Stuyvesant did not
show in dealing with home matters the
excellent qualities which he showed in
dealing with intercolonial matters. Had
he done so his record would have been a
very different one, and his governorship
— while ending in the always inevitable
loss of his province — would have ended
without disgrace. The shame of the tak-
ing of New Netherland by the English
was not that it was conquered ; it was that
its people — in their eagerness to escape
from a government that had become in-
tolerable— almost welcomed their con-
querors. But only the more because of
his bad domestic policy does the last
Director need the praise, that assuredly
is due to him, for his good foreign policy ;
and most of all does he deserve praise for
his share — a good half of the credit be-
longs to Massachusetts — in so handling
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the matters at issue with the New Eng-
land colonies as to avert a war in which
the meanest sordid motives would have
found vent in a truly horrible way. I
suppose that there can be nothing more
despairingly cruel than a fight to the
death, having greed for its motive, be-
tween two castaways on a desert island
in a lonely sea: and it would have been
much that sort of a fight between the
handful of English and the handful of
Dutch, then living remote and isolated in
the American wilderness, had they come
to blows.

XIV

IN the thick of that troublous time,
while Holland and England were at
open war and while the threat of war
hung over their dependent colonies, the
long-cherished desire of New Amsterdam
to become a city was realized. As a
matter of course, it was not realized in a
satisfactory way — nothing was satisfac-
tory to anybody, to state the case broad-
ly, in which the West India Company
had a hand; but, at least, on February 2,
1653, the civic government was estab-
lished which, in one form or another,
has been maintained on this island until
this present day.

By the terms of the grant, from the

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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Amsterdam Chamber, the municipal or-
ganization of New Amsterdam was to
resemble "as much as possible" that of
the parent city in Holland; but, as the
matter worked out in practice, the possi-
bilities proved to be so limited that the
resemblance was in the nature of a car-
icature. Stuyvesant set up and main-
tained his right to appoint the members
of the city government - - the burgo-
masters, schepens, secretary, and schout
— with the natural result that his au-
thority continued to be paramount in
civic matters; and in general he con-
trived to make the new order of things
very much the same as the old order so
far as any real increase of liberties was
concerned. In a word, as Mr. Brodhead
puts it: "The ungraceful concessions of
the grudging Chamber were hampered by
the most illiberal interpretation which
140

their provincial representative could de-
vise." For Mr. Brodhead — whose dis-
position toward the Director uniformly
is kindly — those are very strong words.
But they are amply justified by the facts.
With a modernity of method that our
citizens of that period resented more
keenly (being unaccustomed to it) than
we resent it now, Stuyvesant made out
his " slate " ; and then — with a directness
that a Tammany leader would weep over
in envy — put in his men by the simple
process of issuing a proclamation in which
they were assigned to their several offices.
Save in our spasmodic lucid intervals of
civic reform, we still get by ways only
a trifle more roundabout to just the
same practical results — and philologists,
with these early facts available for their
study, will perceive with pleasure the nice
linguistic propriety that there is in our
141

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

present use of the Dutch word "boss."
On the very instant that this city be-
came a city the political meaning of
that word, in effect, was established and
defined.

Some of the men named on Stuy-
vesant's "slate," as is the custom nowa-
days, were respectable citizens. More of
them, still in accordance with modern
custom, were not. And — fitting to a
hair with Tammany methods — the most
important office was given to the worst
of them all. For Schout — an official who,
in addition to presiding over the Board of
Burgomasters and Schepens, performed
duties which in a way combined those
of our modern sheriff and district attor-
ney— Stuyvesant appointed Cornelis van
Tienhoven, the Company's Fiscal: and
had he searched through the whole col-
ony he probably could not have found a
142

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

man more outrageously unfit for any
office at all.

In the summary, prepared by order of
the States General, of the Remonstrance
of 1649, Van Tienhoven is thus pleasingly
described: "He is subtle, crafty, intel-
ligent, sharp witted for evil; one of the
oldest inhabitants in the country ; is con-
versant with all the circumstances both
of Christians and Indians, hath even
associated with the savages through
lechery; he is a dissembler, double-faced,
a cheat; the whole country proclaims
him a knave, a murderer, a traitor, in-
asmuch as he by false reports originated
the war [the Indian war of 1643]. He
holds the office of Secretary, wherein he
perpetrates all conceivable sorts of blun-
ders, now against one, now against an-
other, even against his own employers;
he fleeces the people."

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

To this arraignment may be added the
testimony of Hendrick van Dyck, given
a year earlier (1652) when he was super-
seded in his office of Fiscal by — to use
his own kindly words — " the perjured,
godless Cornells Tienhoven." Van Dyck
uplifted his testimony in these terms:
"Were an honorable gentleman put in
my place, the false accusations which
the Director [Stuyvesant] made and sent
over against me long ago might have
some semblance of truth ; but his perjured
secretary, Cornelis van Tienhoven, who
returned hither contrary to the pro-
hibition of their High Mightinesses; who
is known, and can be proved to all the
world, to be a * * * and perjurer; who is
a disgrace to, and the sole affliction of,
Christians and heathens in this country,
and whom the Director always hath man-
aged to shield — this is the person whom
144

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the Director hath of his own authority
appointed Fiscal!" It is only just to
add that Van Dyck's genial deliverance
was made against a man who had ousted
him from a lucrative office and also, as
is apparent, while he himself was under
fire. Obviously, he had his little prej-
udices, and he certainly did not hesitate
to express them with an engaging frank-
ness. But the fact remains that every-
thing in his statement is borne out by the
records — excepting, perhaps, the asser-
tion that Van Tienhoven was "the sole
affliction of Christians and heathens."
That is too exclusive. The Christians
and heathens resident in New Amster-
dam were variously and very generally
afflicted in those unhappy days.

Touching the affair of Van Tienhoven
and poor Lysbet van Hoogvelt, "the
daughter of the basket-maker in Amster-

145

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

dam," the dry and formal records of two
centuries and a half ago suddenly cease to
be dry and formal and become warmly
alive. It is inexpedient to quote in full
the several long depositions taken in Hol-
land in the matter, and it also is need-
less: a few extracts from those ancient
documents will suffice to make the case
clear. Louisa Noe, " who speaks by her
woman's troth, instead of oath," testified
that there came to her " to engage lodg-
ings for himself and a young lady ... a
certain corpulent and thickset person, of
red and bloated visage and light hair,
who she afterward understood was called
VanTienhoven." Margaretta van Eeda,
"tavern-keeper in old Haerlem at the
Sluice," bearing witness "upon her ve-
racity and conscience, instead of upon
oath," testified — in more kindly terms
as to my gentleman's personal appear-
146

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

ance — that " over a year ago there came
to lodge at her house a likely person of
ruddy face, corpulent body, and having
a little wen on the side of his cheek, who
she afterward understood was from New
Netherland, having with him a woman
toward whom he evinced great friendship
and love, calling her always ' Dearest, '
and conversing with her as man and wife
are wont to do." Elizabeth Janns, inn-
keeper, of The Arms of Haerlem, testified
that "a person named Mr. Cornelis van
Tienhoven came divers times to the
house of the deponent, keeping open
tavern . . . with Lysbet Janssen Croon
van Hoogvelt . . . and have there at
different times, now and then, eaten fish
and showed and manifested toward each
other great love and friendship, such as
is the custom among sweethearts." And
the end of the story is told in a letter
147

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

written here in Manhattan by Augustin
Heermans, September 20, 1651: "The
basket - maker's daughter, whom Van
Tienhoven brought from Holland on a
promise of marriage, coming here and
finding he was already married, hath
exposed his conduct even in the public
court." That exposure, as is evident,
did him no harm. Less than a year
later Stuyvesant appointed him Fiscal,
and less than two years later appointed
him Schout — and so made him the chief
officer of the then new-born city that
now is New York.

I have dwelt at length upon Van
Tienhoven 's personal record, and I have
revived this ancient scandal in which
poor Lysbet had so cruel a part (and, too,
after they had "eaten fish and showed
and manifested toward each other great
love and friendship"!) because such de-
148

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

tailed statement is necessary to support
convincingly my general assertions touch-
ing the immorals of the inhabitants and
of the rulers of this unfortunate town.
There was, indeed, a popular outcry
against Van Tienhoven's appointment;
but it seems to have been based mainly
on the ground that he was unfit to be
Schout because he still continued to be an
officer, the Fiscal, of the Company — not
on the broader and very tenable ground
that he was an unfit person to hold any
public office at all. And, also, the out-
cry came in part — as in the case of the
shady Van Dyck, who had been " turned
down" in Van Tienhoven's favor — from
citizens whose right to object to anybody
on the score of immorals was of a highly
attenuated sort. In the end, to be sure,
he was turned out of his office in disgrace
by order of the West India Company ; and
149

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Stuyvesant was forbidden again to em-
ploy him — or to employ his brother,
Adriaen, who had been detected in fraud
as receiver general — in the public service.
But that order was a lashing of Stuy-
vesant over Van Tienhoven's shoulders,
and it was not issued until Van Tien-
hoven had been Schout of the city for
three years. Even Tammany has not
beaten this record in civic immorality
which our city scored at its very start.

XV

ON December 10, 1653, " the most im-
portant popular convention that had
ever been assembled in New Netherland,"
to quote Mr. Brodhead's words, met in
the Stadt Huys of New Amsterdam. That
convention — being a gathering of rep-
resentatives of the capital city, of the
near-by Dutch towns, and of the English
towns on Long Island — was in the way
of being an impotent parliament: that
came together not as a governing and
law - making body but to remonstrate
against the existing government, and
against the tangle of inequitable laws (still
farther complicated by arbitrary edicts)
in which the colonists were involved.

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

What gave that queer little parliament
its chief significance was the presence, for
the first time in Dutch councils, of English
delegates; and the fact that those dele-
gates came to the council rightfully, as
representatives of their fellow - country-
men legally subject to the government of
New Netherland, did not make them
any the less representatives of the race
that was crowding out the Dutch from
their holding in the new world.

It was at the instance of the English,
indeed, that the council was convened.
Long Island had been filling up steadily
with English settlers, and those settlers
took even less kindly than did the Dutch
to the eccentricities and the inefficiencies
of the government under which they
lived. Especially did they resent the
failure of that government to protect
them against the many little freebooters
152

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

— of the Thomas Baxter stripe — who
committed highly annoying robberies
along the borders of the Sound; and
against the many stray savages who, as
occasion offered, engaged in little ravag-
ings and murderings of a distasteful sort.
Also, they had the characteristic English
longing to be let alone in the manage-
ment of their local affairs. Out of which
conditions arose among them the not
unreasonable desire either to be taken
care of, or to be given a free hand in
taking care of themselves.

In order to talk matters over with the
Dutch authorities, representatives came
up from Gravesend and Flushing and
Newtown; and a conference was held in
the Stadt Huys (November 26, 1653) to
consider what could be done "for the
welfare of the country and its inhabi-
tants," and "to determine on some wise

153

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

and salutary measures" which should
bring up the Sound pirates with a round
turn. The Dutch representatives who
met them — members of the city govern-
ment and of the Provincial Council — see-
ing their way to grinding some axes of
their own, recommended that a general
statement of grievances should be em-
bodied, as usual, in a " remonstance " ; and
that with the remonstrance, also as usual,
should be coupled a prayer for relief.
That method of procedure being agreed
to, an adjournment of a fortnight was
decided upon : to the end that the views
of the colonists of Long Island and of
Staten Island might be obtained more
fully, and that a larger number of dele-
gates might be got together; in effect,
that the informal meeting might be raised
to the dignity of a little Landtag. Stuy-
vesant had no relish for such doings. The
154

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

action of the English, he declared, " smelt
of rebellion " and of " contempt of his
high authority and commission." But
the popular will was too strong for him
—or he was too weak to control it, which
amounted to the same thing — and he
"very reluctantly sanctioned the meet-
ing that he could not prevent." Accord-
ingly, on December zoth, with an aug-
mented membership, the council was re-
convened. Four Dutch towns and four
English towns were represented, and the
delegates — apparently chosen on a basis
of numerical representation — were ten
of Dutch and nine of English nativity.
And all of them, without regard to
nationality, harmoniously were agreed to
pool their grievances and to go for
Director Stuyvesant horns down!

Considering how serious those griev-
ances were, the Remonstrance which
155

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

they formulated was couched in ex-
traordinarily temperate terms. That
document was drawn by one of the
representatives from Gravesend, Ensign
George Baxter — who is not to be con-
founded with the piratical Thomas — and
as the work of an Englishman it is all the
more remarkable for its tone of loyal-
ty to the government of Holland. The
preamble runs in these words: ''Com-
posed of various nations from different
parts of the world, leaving at our own
expense our country and countrymen, we
voluntarily came under the protection of
our sovereign High and Mighty Lords the
States General, whom we acknowledge as
our lieges; and being made members of
one body, subjected ourselves, as in duty
bound, to the general laws of the United
Provinces, and all other new orders and
ordinances which by virtue of the afore-
156

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

said authority may be published, agree-
ably to the customs freedoms grants and
privileges of the Netherlands."

What the remonstrants did object to,
and pointedly, was the publication of
new orders and ordinances which dis-
tinctly were disagreeable to the customs,
and still more disagreeable to the free-
doms, of the home country. The first
and the main charge of their remon-
strance was that such orders and or-
dinances had been enacted by the Direc-
tor and Council "without the knowledge
or consent of the people," and that the
same were "contrary to the granted
privileges of the Netherland govern-
ment, and odious to every free born man,
and especially so to those whom God
has placed under a free state in newly
settled lands, who are entitled to claim
laws not transcending, but resembling as

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

nearly as possible, those of the Nether-
lands."

Joined with this remonstrance in chief
— which, in effect, was no more than an
assertion of the fact that the colonists
were denied common right and common
justice — minor remonstrance was made
against the failure of the provincial gov-
ernment to protect persons and prop-
erty; against the obligation to obey "old
orders and proclamations of the Director
and Council, made without the knowledge
or consent of the people," which " subject
them to loss and punishment through
ignorance"; against the "wrongful and
suspicious delay " in confirming land
patents; against land grants to favored
individuals "to the great injury of the
Province " ; and against the appointment
of officers and magistrates "without the
consent or nomination of the people
158

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

. . . contrary to the laws of the Nether-
lands." In conclusion, the authors of
that surprisingly modest appeal added:
"As we have, for easier reference, re-
duced all our grievances to six heads, we
renew our allegiance, in the hope that
satisfaction will be granted to the coun-
try according to established justice, and
all dissensions be settled and allayed."

There is a very marked difference be-
tween the verbose and mean complain-
ings of the more famous Remonstrance
of the year 1649 ano^ the simple direct-
ness and dignity of this demand for
obvious rights; and had there been any
"established justice" for New Nether-
land — either in the provincial govern-
ment or in the home government — it
could not have been met, as it was met,
by a flat refusal all around. Stuyvesant
made answer to it by a general denial,

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

that included a particular denial of the
right of the delegates to assemble; and
when the delegates replied, in turn, by
an appeal to that natural law "which
permits all men to assemble for the pro-
tection of their liberties and their prop-
erty," he tersely ordered them to disperse
"on pain of our highest displeasure";
to which lordly mandate, by way of a
cracker, he added: "We derive our au-
thority from God and the Company, not
from a few ignorant subjects; and we
alone can call the inhabitants together."
In Holland, when the Remonstrance got
there, the answer was the same. The
Directors of the Company wrote to Stuy-
vesant (May 18, 1654) in these terms:
" We are unable to discover in the whole
Remonstrance one single point to justify
complaint. . . . You ought to have acted
with more vigor against the ringleaders
1 60

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

of the gang. ... It is our express com-
mand that you punish what has occurred
as it deserves, so that others may be
deterred in future from following such
examples." And at the same time the
Directors wrote to the Burgomasters and
Schepens of New Amsterdam command-
ing " that you conduct yourselves quietly
and peaceably, submit yourselves to the
government placed over you, and in no
wise allow yourselves to hold particular
convention with the English or others
in matters of form and deliberation on
affairs of state, which do not appertain to
you; and, what is yet worse, attempt an
alteration in the state and its govern-
ment."

The answer from Holland sustained one

half of Stuyvesant's declaration that he

derived his authority " from God and the

Company " — so far as the Company went,

« 161

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

his delegated authority was confirmed
and sustained. But the other half of
his declaration did not come out so well.
A decade later his draft on divine power
was returned dishonored ; and only a turn
of chance in his favor prevented that
draft from going to protest within a year.
The twist of luck that saved him tem-
porarily was the conclusion of peace
(April, 1654) between England and Hol-
land; and the consequent abandonment
by Cromwell of his project for paci-
fying the colonial situation — in a breez-
ily statesman -like fashion — by annexing
New Netherland out of hand. Actually,
the Protector's annexation scheme came
to the very edge of being realized. An
effective naval force was despatched from
England; the New England colonies —
Massachusetts alone lagging a little —
buzzed with eager preparations for the
162

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

fight that they so longed for; and the
English colonists on Long Island, de-
lightedly bustling to the front, made a
fair start toward the impending revolu-
tion by declaring their independence of
Dutch authority and by setting up a
microscopic government of their own.
And then, just as everybody (with the
exception of Director Stuyvesant) was
ready for things to happen, the peace was
concluded — and nothing happened at all !
But it was only by a very narrow margin
that the orders for the seizure of New
Netherland were countermanded before
New Netherland was seized.

While the war was imminent New
Amsterdam was in a whirl. Stuyvesant 's
mental attitude in the premises seems to
have bordered upon consternation. In
regard to practical provision for defence
he wrote: "We have no gunners, no
163

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

musketeers, no sailors, and scarcely six-
teen hundred pounds of powder" — a
statement that exhibits in rather a start-
ling fashion the physical unpreparedness
of the colony for a long-threatened war.
On its moral side the situation was worse.
The Director declared that he did not
expect " the people residing in the coun-
try, not even the Dutch," to back him
in the fight that was coming on; and
added: "The English, although they
have sworn allegiance, would take up
arms and join the enemy ... to invite
them to aid us would be bringing the
Trojan horse within our walls."

By the Director's own showing, there-
fore, it appears that the spirit of loyalty
in the colony — if such a spirit can be
said ever to have existed — practically was
dead, and that the spirit of revolt was
very much alive. His English subjects
164

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

— almost openly in New Amsterdam,
quite openly on Long Island — were im-
patient for the coming of their country-
men. His Dutch subjects were in a
state of sulky mutiny that made them
more than half ready to welcome the
coming of anybody who would give them
a new government of any sort — because
of their moody conviction that any
change whatever must give them a better
government than that under which they
lived. And it all was quite logical. It
was the natural and inevitable outcome
of thirty years of consistent misrule.

XVI

FOR my present purposes it is need-
less to treat at all in detail the last
ten years of the Dutch domination of
New Netherland. Little concessions con-
tinued to be made to the colonists; large
wrongs continued to oppress them ; there
were more "remonstrances"; there was
an Indian war. Fresh turns produced
fresh figures in that small kaleidoscope,
but the constituent elements of the fig-
ures remained unchanged. The essential
change came from the outside; and even
that was but the continued, yet always
increasing, pressure of those forces which
had begun to operate (as I have already
written) before the unstable foundation
1 66

1 3

r o

*• V

2 *

3 o

J

?,: it* .

M

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

of the Dutch colony was laid. With the
steadfast persistence of fate inevitable
the English grip tightened as the English
cordon closed in.

By the year 1659 the eastern end
of Long Island — surrendered by Stuyve-
sant under the terms of the Treaty of
Hartford (1650) — was a vigorous Eng-
lish colony ; and was manifesting its vigor
in a characteristic English fashion by
crowding down into the Dutch territory
westward of the Oyster Bay line. That
thrust at close quarters was not easy to
deal with. Releases of land were ob-
tained in due form by Englishmen from
accommodating sachems in temporary
financial difficulties — or in chronic thirst
that such transactions in real estate
would provide means for temporarily
slaking — and on the land thus obtained
modest settlements were made. Present-
167

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

ly, becoming immodest, the settlers of
those settlements asserted that they were
under the jurisdiction of Connecticut; an
assertion that produced awkward con-
flicts of authority, no matter how hotly
it was denied.

Up in the north, in the back-country,
Massachusetts was reaching out to tap
the Dutch fur- trade at its source: calmly
ignoring the provisions of the Treaty of
Hartford and claiming as her own all the
territory between lines running westward
from three miles south of the Charles
and three miles north of the Merrimac
straightaway across the continent to the
Pacific. The southern line of that hand-
some claim of everything in sight down
to sunset crossed the Hudson not far
from Saugerties; and the kindly inten-
tion of the claimants was to relieve the
Dutch of all care of the upper reaches of
168

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the river, and incidentally to divert from
New Amsterdam to Boston the bulk of
the trade in furs. In presenting the
matter to Stuyvesant for consideration
(September 17, 1659) the Commissioners
shyly urged " we conceive the agreement
at Hartford, that the English should not
come within ten miles of Hudson's river,
doth not prejudice the rights of the
Massachusetts in the upland country, nor
give any rights to the Dutch there";
upon the strength of which ingenious
conception they asked that free passage
from the sea into and through the river
should be given to the English settlers —
"they demeaning themselves peaceably,
and paying such moderate duties as may
be expected in such cases" — resident
upon its upper banks. And by way of
justifying their modest request the Com-
missioners drew an airy parallel in free
169

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

international water-ways between the
Hudson on the one hand and on the
other the Elbe and the Rhine. It is
to Stuyvesant's credit that his reply
(October 29, 1659) to those cheeky Com-
missioners was a flat refusal ; and that he
immediately sent off to the Amsterdam
Chamber — in order to be in a position
to back his refusal practically — a de-
mand for "a frigate of sixteen guns."
That the frigate did not come was a mere
administrative detail quite in the natural
order of things.

By way of completing the English cor-
don, Lord Baltimore's people were press-
ing the Dutch from the south. The
Dutch trading -post on the Delaware
river — or the South river, as they called
it — was a losing venture from first to last ;
and onward from the time (1638) of the
planting of the Swedish colony on the
170

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

west shore of the Delaware, on what
nominally was Dutch territory, the gov-
ernment of New Netherland was in-
volved in snarling difficulties in its ef-
forts to maintain its rights. Before the
Swedes were reduced to approximate
order — even after their official conquest
they continued to give trouble — the much
more serious trouble with the English
colonists of Maryland began.

Those complications were brought to a
head by the formal demand (August 3,
1659) addressed by Governor Fendall,
Lord Baltimore's representative, to "the
pretended Governor of a people seated
in Delaware Bay, within his Lordship's
Province," to "depart forth of his Lord-
ship's Province" — or to take the conse-
quences! And Governor Fendall indi-
cated what the consequences were likely
to be by adding politely: "or otherwise
171

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

I desire you to hold me excused if I use
my utmost endeavour to reduce that part
of his Lordship's Province unto its due
obedience under him." The little am-
bassador who carried the Maryland gov-
ernor's courteous but peremptory letter
to the Dutch commandant on the Dela-
ware delivered it in a "pretty harsh and
bitter" manner; and emphasized its pur-
port by remarking incidentally that, " as
the tobacco is chiefly harvested," the
people of Maryland were quite at leisure
for a fight. "It now suits us," he con-
cluded— in what no doubt was meant to
be a persuasive spirit — " best in the whole
year."

But the sporting offer of the Mary-
landers to fill in the close season for
tobacco with a time-killing war did not
materialize. Their ardor was a little
cooled, perhaps, by the prompt despatch
172

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

of reinforcements to the Delaware colony
from New Amsterdam; and the assertion
of possession was refuted so logically—
on the ground that Lord Baltimore's
patent gave him rights only to unseated
lands, and therefore excluded him from
a region colonized by the Dutch at least
fifteen years before his patent was grant-
ed— that for the moment their claim was
shelved. It was by no means quieted,
however. Until the Dutch were squeezed
out and done for, the pressure of the
English upon New Netherland from the
south was continued with the same per-
sistence that characterized the pressure
of the English upon that unlucky colony
from the east and from the north. There
was no escape from those advancing ten-
tacles: behind which, resistless, was the
power of England. It was a cuttle-fish
situation that could end in only one way.

173

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

The end would have come a trifle
sooner, no doubt, had the Protector
lived a little longer or had the Restora-
ation followed directly upon his death.
During the interval between September,
1658, and May, 1660, the domestic tribu-
lations of the English gave them no time
to bother about colonial extension : they
had their hands full of matters requir-
ing immediate attention at home. But
when Charles II. resumed business as a
king the would-be ousters of the Dutch
in America instantly came to the front
again.

Lord Baltimore was at the very head
of the procession. "Charles had hardly
reached Whitehall," as Mr. Brodhead
puts it, "before Lord Baltimore instruct-
ed Captain James Neale, his agent in
Holland, to require of the West India
Company to yield up to him the lands
174

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

on the south [west] side of Delaware Bay."
The Earl of Stirling, while less prompt
than Lord Baltimore, made up for his
seemly delay by an unseemly insistence.
In a petition to the King he set forth
that the " Councell for the affaires of
New England ... in the eleaventh year
of the raigne of your Mat8 royall Father
of blessed memory did graunt unto
William Earle of Sterlyne, your peti-
tioner's Grandfather, and his heires, part
of New England and an Island adja-
cent called Long Island. . . . That yor
Peticoners Grandfather and father, and
himself e their heire, have respectively
enjoyed the same and have at their greate
costs planted many places on that Isl-
and; but of late divers Dutch have in-
truded on severall parts thereof, not ac-
knowledging themselves within your Mat8
allegiance, to your Mat8 disherison and
175

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

your Peticoner's prejudice." Wherefore
he prayed: "May your Majestie be
pleased to confirme unto your Peticdner
his said inheritance to be held imme-
diately of the Crowne of England, and
that in any future treaty betweene your
royall selfe and the Dutch such provision
may be as that the Dutch there may
submitt themselves to your Mats gov-
ernem* or depart those parts." Consid-
ering that the Stirling grant covered
Dutch territory, his lordship's neatest
turn is his reference to the intruding
"divers Dutch"; but there is an air of
easy assurance about his whole petition
that does credit to even a Scotch earl.

To Lord Baltimore's jaunty require-
ment, cited above, that the West India
Company should "yield up to him" the
lands on the west side of Delaware Bay,
the Directors gave " a proud answer " : to
176

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the effect that they "would use all the
means which God and nature had given
them to protect the inhabitants and pre-
serve their possessions. ' ' But they mani-
fested less pride, and more alarm, in a
memorial that they promptly addressed
to the States General : praying that a pro-
test should be presented by the Dutch
ambassador in London against English
aggression ; and that a demand should be
made for the restoration to New Nether-
land of the territory that the English
had " usurped." Under instructions from
their High Mightinesses, the ambassador
protested and demanded accordingly:
and with precisely the same practical re-
sult that would have followed had he
protested against the flowing of the
tides, and had he demanded the cause of
tidal eccentricities — the moon!

The Connecticut people, being keen to

177

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

assert what they were pleased to call
their rights, followed close at Lord Stir-
ling's aggressive heels. Governor Win-
throp, on behalf of the General Court
at Hartford, drew up (June 17, 1661) for
the King's consideration a "loyal ad-
dress": that wandered on lightly from
expressions of loyalty to a specific request
for a new charter by which his Majesty
would assure them in possession of their
territory against the Dutch — whom they
affably described as "noxious neigh-
bours," having "not so much as the copy
of a patent " to the lands which they held.
That there might be no room for a doubt
as to what they wanted, they asked in
set terms for a charter — calmly inclusive
of the unpatented lands of their " noxious
neighbours" — that should cover all the
country "eastward of Plymouth line,
northward to the limits of the Massachu-
178

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

setts colony, and westward to the Bay
of Delaware, if it may be"; and that
their modest petition might be presented
properly and urged effectively they com-
missioned Governor Winthrop as their
agent to carry it to England and to lay
it before the King.

In those days passages across the
Atlantic were taken where they offered.
Actually, Winthrop went down to New
Amsterdam — where he was given an
"honourable and kind reception" — and
sailed for England in the Dutch ship
De Trouw. The Governor was not a
dull man, and I think that he must
have enjoyed, in the strict privacy of his
inner consciousness, the subtle irony of
the situation : as he courteously accepted
his " honourable and kind reception " and
then went sailing eastward under Dutch
colors — and all the while having in his
179

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

pocket that document which was meant
to be a knife in the neck of his hosts at
New Amsterdam and in the neck of the
friendly power under whose flag he sailed.
Had there been a Colonial Office in those
days, and had Mr. Chamberlain been at
the head of it, how he would have relished
the story which that first colonial agent
would have had to tell him when he got
to land!

XVII

IN a way, the state of affairs in North
America in the year 1661 was very
like the state of affairs in South Africa
just before " Captain Jim " made his raid.
It all was on a smaller scale, of course, but
the facts and the conditions were much
the same. The Dutch were loosely seat-
ed in a valuable holding; their rule, ar-
bitrary and corrupt, was resented muti-
nously by in - crowding greedy English
settlers who nominally were Dutch sub-
jects; a belt of English colonies — more
complete than in South Africa — was
tightening about them; and at the back
of all the forces working for their de-
struction was the English government:
181

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

moved by the normal human desire to
take possession of other people's valuable
property ; and more deeply moved by the
instinctive feeling (which had no parallel
in South Africa) that only by crushing
the commerce of Holland could England
become the leading commercial nation
of the world.

It was against Dutch commerce that
the blow was struck which led on quickly
— and I think fortunately — to the ex-
tinction of the Dutch ownership of New
Netherland. That blow was the revi-
sion, very soon after the Restoration, of
the Navigation Act of 1651. As originally
framed, the act had forbidden the im-
portation of goods into England save in
English ships or in ships belonging to the
country in which the goods were pro-
duced. As amended, the act forbade,
after December i, 1660, the importation
182

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

or the exportation of goods into or from
any of his Majesty's plantations or terri-
tories in Asia, Africa, or America save in
English ships of which "the master and
three fourths of the mariners at least are
English."

This direct thrust at the commercial
life of Holland was not lessened in force
by the Convention agreed upon (Septem-
ber 14, 1662) between England and the
United Provinces ; rather, indeed, did the
friction over that Convention tend to
make matters worse. Mr. Brodhead, in
his kindly way, asserts that " the Dutch
fulfilled their stipulations with prompt-
ness and honor"; but, with all due def-
erence to Mr. Brodhead, the Dutch did
nothing of the sort — as the minutes of the
Council for Foreign Plantations abun-
dantly prove. On August 25, 1662, the
Council ordered that "some heads of
183

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

remedies " should be drawn up to correct
the abuses incident to "a secret trade
driven by and with the Dutch for Tobacco
of the growth of the English Plantations,
to the defrauding His Matie of his Cus-
toms and contrary to the intent of the
Act of Navigation." On June 24, 1663,
the Council issued a circular letter to the
governors of Virginia, Maryland, New
England, and the West Indian Islands,
drawing their attention to the "many
neglects, or rather contempts, of his
Maties commands for ye true observ-
ance" of the Navigation Act "through
the dayly practices and designes sett on
foote by trading into forrain parts . . .
both by land and sea as well as unto ye
Monadoes and other Plantations of y6
Hollanders " ; and in an undated docu-
ment (Trade Papers Ivii, 90) giving
"certaine reasons to prove if the Duch
184

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

bee admitted trade in Virginia it wilbe
greate loss to the Kings Matie and prej-
udice to the Plantacon," the fact is
stated that "there is now two shippes
going from Zeland to trade there w^ if
they, be admitted it wilbe losse to his
Matie at least 4000", w"* by your Lord-
shipps wisdome may be prevented."

All this, with more like it, goes to show
that the "promptness and honor" of the
Dutch in living up to the stipulations of
the Convention left a little to be desired
on the side of practicality; but it also
goes to show — since two traders are
necessary to a trade — that the English
colonies took an active part in whistling
the laws of their mother country down
the wind. This secondary fact is brought
out with clearness in a report (March 10,
1663) upon the South, or Delaware, river
colony, which contains the pregnant as-

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

sertion: "Trade will come not only from
the City's colony but from the English;
who offer, if we will trade with them, to
make a little slit in the door, whereby we
can reach them overland without hav-
ing recourse to the passage by sea, lest
trade with them may be forbidden by
the Kingdom of England, which will not
allow us that in their colony."

In this same report is the statement:
"The English afford us an instance of
the worthiness of New Netherland, which
from their Colony alone already sends
200 vessels, both large and small, to the
Islands" — an involved presentment of
fact that Mr. Brodhead misunderstands,
and in his restatement of it perverts into
meaning that the trade of New Nether-
land "with the West Indies and the
neighbouring English colonies now [1663]
employed two hundred vessels annually."
186

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

Obviously, the two hundred vessels re-
ferred to in the report hailed from Eng-
lish colonial ports; and they are cited to
show the "worthiness" — that is to say,
the fitness — of New Netherland to take
a larger share in the intercolonial trade.
But the essential fact is clear that the
many busy little ships then plying in
American waters, Dutch and English
alike, were snapping their top-sails at the
Navigation Act, and that a deal of illegal
trading was going on through that " little
slit in the door." Mr. Brodhead — in this
case with absolute correctness — sum-
marizes the situation: "The possession
of New Netherland by the Dutch was, in
truth, the main obstacle to the enforce-
ment of the restrictive colonial policy
of England." And the obstacles which
stood in the way of England's colonial
policy in those days — there is no very
187

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

marked change in these days — had to go
down.

The final diplomatic round between
England and Holland began in January
1664, when the Dutch ambassador in
London was directed to insist upon a
ratification by the British government
of the long-pending Hartford Treaty ; and
so, by a definite settlement of the boun-
dary question, clear the air. The answer
to the Dutch demand certainly did settle
the boundary question, and certainly did
clear the air. It came two months later
(March 12-22) in the shape of that epoch-
making royal patent by which the King
granted Long Island (released by the
Earl of Stirling) and all the lands and
rivers from the west side of the Connect-
icut to the east side of Delaware Bay
to his brother, the Duke of York.

The actual conquest of New Nether-
188

riON-OFTH

K ovy MANNAI>U

,-OR-N KW- AM STy 1U > AM :

(Photographed for this work from the original in the British Mus -

n" 1661-1664
owing New Amsterdam in the year that it became New York)

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

land by the force sent out by the Duke
of York to take possession of his newly
acquired property, as I have written else-
where, was "a mere bit of bellicose
etiquette: a polite changing of garrisons,
of fealty, and of flags"; and by way of
comment upon that easy shifting of
allegiance I farther have written in these
general terms: "Under the government
of the Dutch West India Company, the
New Netherland had been managed not
as a national dependency, but as a com-
mercial venture which was expected to
bring in a handsome return. Much more
than the revenue necessary to maintain a
government was required of the colonists ;
and at the same time the restrictions im-
posed upon private trade — to the end
that the trade of the Company might be
increased — were so onerous as materially
to diminish the earning power of the
189

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

individual, and correspondingly to make
the burden of taxation the heavier to
bear. Nor could there be between the
colonists and the Company — as there
could have been between the colonists
and even a severe home government — a
tie of loyalty. Indeed, the situation had
become so strained under this commercial
despotism that the inhabitants of New
Amsterdam almost openly sided with the
English when the formal demand for a
surrender was made — and the town pass-
ed into British possession, and became
New York, without the striking of a
single blow."

XVIII

ON the side of ethics, the taking over
of New Netherland by the English
admits of differing opinions. Mr. Brod-
head flat-footedly calls it " bold robbery."
Dr. Asher, himself a Dutchman, regards
it as the occupation by the English of
territory that was theirs by right of dis-
covery, of settlement, and of specific
grant. For my own part — lacking the
temerity to pass judgment upon so vexed
a question — I am content to ignore the
ethical side of that easy conquest and to
ground my approval of it on the fact that,
as things then stood in Europe and in
America, it was the only practicable
treatment of an impossible problem; to
191

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

which, with submission, I add my con-
viction that for all the parties in interest
it was the best substitute for a solution
possible under the conditions which ob-
tained.

The gain to England was so obvious
that it need not be discussed. The gain
to Holland was getting rid of a nettle of
a colony which — by involving her in an
outlay of more than a million guilders
above returns, and by most dangerously
complicating her relations with her most
powerful rival — from first to last did little
but sting her hands. The gain to the
English colonies in America was an im-
mediate enlargement of intercolonial
trade: with a resultant solidarity of in-
terests which strongly helped — a little
more than a century later — to bring about
their formal union and their definite in-
dependence. The gain to New Nether-
192

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

land — the essential matter here to be
considered — was escape from a harsh and
incompetent government, that crushed
trade and that did much to make life
unendurable, to the fostering care of a
government that developed trade in ev-
ery direction and that in its treatment
of individuals erred on the side of
laxness.

Out of that laxness came ill results.
That the morals of New Amsterdam did
not improve under English rule is not
surprising — because New Amsterdam had
no morals. On the other hand, its im-
morals — of which its supply was exces-
sive— developed vigorously, in sympathy
with its vigorously developing commercial
life. In the last decade of the seven-
teenth century — what with our pirates
and our slavers and the general disposi-
tion on the part of our leading citizens to

13 193

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

ride a hurdle race over all known laws,
including the Ten Commandments — New
York certainly was as vicious a little sea-
faring city as was to be found just then in
all Christendom. But the fact is to be
borne in mind that the evil state of af-
fairs which developed under English gov-
ernment was put an end to by an English
governor. And the farther fact is to be
borne in mind that onward from the time
of that first reform governor there has
been in this town — as there conspicuous-
ly was not in this town during the Dutch
period of its history — at least an avowed
outward respect for decency and for law.
I do not assert, of course, that this ad-
mirable sentiment has shone brilliantly
or steadfastly, or that it is not badly
snowed under at times even now; but I
do assert that until we came under Eng-
lish rule such sentiment practically did
194

not exist at all. Lord Bellomont was the
first of our governors — and this is not to
cast a slight upon the excellent reor-
ganizing work of Colonel Nicolls — who
forced us to put some of our worst
sins behind us, and so set us in the
way (along which we still are flounder-
ing) to achieve that civic rectitude which
was an unknown virtue in the Dutch
times.

Having thus, for truth's sake, set forth
the development and the curbing of our
immorals which followed our taking on
of a new nationality, I am free to make
my final point — the enormous gain in
material prosperity — in favor of that
shifting of ownership which changed New
Amsterdam into New York. When the
English took over the city (September 8,
1664) the number of houses in it — as
shown by Cortelyou's survey of the year

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

1660 — was about 350, and the population
was about 1500 souls. An authoritative
record has been preserved — in the petition
of the New York millers and merchants
against the repeal of the Bolting Act —
of exactly what this city gained in its
first thirty years of English rule. The
petition states that in the year 1678, when
the Bolting Act became operative, the
total number of houses in New York was
384; the total number of beef-cattle
slaughtered was 400; the total number
of sailing craft (3 ships, 7 boats, 8
sloops) was 18; and the total revenues
of the city were less than ^2000. The
petition farther states that in the year
1694 (there is a secondary interest here,
in that we see what the added two
centuries have done for us) the num-
ber of houses had increased to 983;
the number of beef - cattle slaughtered
196

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

(largely for profitable export to the
West Indies) to 4000; the number of
sailing craft (60 ships, 40 boats, 25
sloops) to 125; and the city's revenues
to £5000.

That statement of fact I conceive to
be the most striking commentary that
can be made upon the relative material
merits of Dutch and of English rule. The
sudden prodigious increase of the popu-
lation and of the commerce of this city
equally were due to a general easement of
political and of commercial conditions:
the first impossible while the Dutch
domination continued; and the second
rigorously withheld (of set purpose or
of set stupidity) during the four decades
that the West India Company betrayed
all the interests of New Netherland in
order to gain — yet failed to gain — its
own selfish ends. I hope that we may
197

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

be able to make as good a showing in the
Philippines at the end of our first thirty
years.

But argument for or against that bold
robbery, or that resumption of vested
rights — as our two most authoritative
historians, with a somewhat confusing
divergence of opinion, respectively de-
scribe the English acquisition of New
Netherland — no longer is necessary. As
I have written, that once burning ques-
tion became a dead issue in a time long
past. Whatever were the equities of the
conflicting Dutch and English claims to
the most valuable slice of the continent
of North America, they were quieted
legally by the Treaty of Breda. And
they have been quieted ethically — in the
flowing of the years since that remote
diplomatic agreement was executed — by
198

THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK

the passage of the property in dispute
away from both claimant races into the
possession of their descendants : who have
coalesced into a new race, and who take
their title from themselves.

INDEX

PAGE

AFRICA, South, comparison with, 181

Alabama, Confederate cruiser, 32

Albany, lobbying at, 23, 39

"Strikes" at, 26

Antwerp, commerce of, destroyed, 33

Archangel, Russian port, 7

Armada, the, 64

Arms of Amsterdam, cargo of, 1626, 85

Arms of New York, 12, 58

Arms for Indians, Barent sells, 100

Confiscated, 99

Patroons sell, 69

Public sentiment about, 100

Trade in, 98

Van Rensselaer deals in, 99

West India Company responsible for, 101

Asher, life of Hudson by, 44

On collapse of West India Company, 119

On Count John Maurice, 115

On Dutch title to New Netherland, 42

On English conquest of N. Netherland, 191

201

INDEX

PAGE

BAHIA captured, 60
Baltimore, Lord, territorial claims of, 170, 174

Barent sells arms to Indians, 100

Barneveldt, execution of, 35, 44

Opposes West India Company, 33
Baxter, George, drafts remonstrance, 1653, 156

Leader of rebellion, 1655, 97

Official interpreter, 95, 97
Baxter, Thomas, builds Wall St. palisadoes, 122

Piracies of, 126

Beaver in civic arms, 58

Belgian refugees in Holland, 30, 33

Bellomont, Lord, character of, no

Reforms by, 195

Blake, Admiral, 122

Block, Adrien, commands Tiger, 13

Discoveries of, 16
"Blood from King of Spain's heart," 63

Bogardus, daughter married, 81

Bolting Act, the, of 1698, 196

Reference to, 59

" Bosch-lopers," 99

"Boss" and city charter synchronous, 142

Bout signs remonstrance, 1649, 76

Brazil, colony in, 115

Conquests in, 60

Evacuated, 1654, 118
202

INDEX

PAGE

Breda, Treaty of, 44, 198

Bridgman, Orlando, 49

Brodhead, collector of documents, 2

On city charter, 140

On Dutch title to New Netherland, 42

On English conquest of N. Netherland, 191

Buzzard's Bay, 17

"CAPTAIN JIM'S" raid, 181

Carleton, Sir Dudley, 53

Chamberlain, Mr., 53, 180

Charter, city, Brodhead on, 140

Granted to New Amsterdam, 1653, 139

Of liberties and exemptions, 1640, 94

Stuyvesant proclaims, 140

West India Company, granted, 1621, 45

Christiansen, Hendrick, 13

Church, dissatisfaction with, 80

Subscriptions to, 81

City Tavern built, 1642, 96

Civic rectitude unknown, 195

Coenties Slip, 96

Colonial discontent, nature of, 83

Commissioners of New England, 124

Congo Protectorate, 8, 72

Connecticut sends loyal address to King, 178

Territorial claims of, 178

203

INDEX

PAGE

Connecticut river (Fresh Water), 18

Convention of 1653, 151

Frames remonstrance, 156

How organized, 155

Opposed by Stuyvesant, 154

Couwenhoven signs remonstrance, 1649, 76

Cromwell, death of, 174

Plans annexation of New Netherland, 162

Custom-house, new, 13

DELAWARE RIVER, see South river,

De Vries, D. P., his opinion of the English, 89

Honesty of, 73

Stiffens Van Twiller's backbone, 89

Director General, official title of Governor, 70

"Door, little slit in the," 186

Dutch colonists, characteristics of, 2, 9, 72

Disloyalty of, 164

"Noxious neighbours," 178

Dutch somnolence a myth, 4, 9, 14, 27, 46

Dyck, H. van, on Van Tienhoven, 144

Dyer and Underhill, piracies of, 126

EAST INDIA COMPANY, purpose of, 47

Eendracht, case of the ship, 91

Elbertsen signs remonstrance, 1649, 76

England, peace with Holland, 1654, 162
204

INDEX

PAGE

England protests planting of N.Netherland, 53

War with Holland, 1652, 122

English claim to New Netherland, 45

Colonists call convention, 152

Dissatisfied, 152

Revolt of, 163

Conquest of New Netherland, ethics of, 191

Cordon around New Netherland, 167

Grant covering New Netherland, 52

In New Amsterdam, 1642, 95

On Long Island rebel, 97

Ship, first, in Hudson river, 88

Refused trading license, 88

Exports from New Netherland, 85, 86

From New York, 1678, 1694, 195

FENDALL, Gov., claims South river colony, 171

Feudalism in America, 68

"Figurative Map, the," 20, 41

Flushing, delegates from, 153

Fort Leavenworth, comparison with, 108

Fort, the, site of, 13

Fraunces's Tavern, 16

Fresh Water (Connecticut river), 18

Fur trade, Dutch, with Russia, 6

At Manhattan, 8, 85

Values of peltries, 86

205

INDEX

PAGE

GEORGE III., our feeling toward, 84

Gravesend, delegates from, 153

HAGUE, THE, lobbying at, 22, 39

Hall signs remonstrance, 1649, 7 6

Hardenburg signs remonstrance, 1649, 76

Hartford, Treaty of, granted too much, 132

Ignored by Massachusetts, 168

Ratification of, demanded, 188

Heermans, A., and Van Tienhoven, 148

Signs remonstrance, 1649, 7 6

Hell Gate, Onrust goes through, 17

Hendricksen, Cornells, 17, 19

Heyn, Admiral Peter, 61

Holland, peace with England, 1654, 162

Political parties in, 34

Protests against English aggression, 177

Truce with Spain, 1609, 34

War with England, 1652, 122

Hongers, Hans, 40

Hoogvelt, Lysbet van, 145

Houses in New York, 1664-78-94, 195

Hudson, Henry, death of, 6

Discoveries of, 4

Life of, by Asher, 44

Report on fur trade by, 7

Hudson river called Mauritius, 13

206

INDEX

PAGE

Hudson river, Discovery of, 4

Massachusetts claims passage of, 169

INDIAN war of 1643, 71

Effects of, 103

Indians, arms sold to, 69, 98

Land grants from, 167

Sale of liquor to, forbidden, 109

Intercolonial trade, circa 1635, 1642, 88, 95

Illicit, 184

Interpreter, official, 1642, 95

Irving, misrepresentations of, i, 105, 132

JACOBSEN, C., commands the Fortune, 13

Jansen signs remonstrance, 1649 76

Johannesberg, 7 2

KAMPEN, JOAN VAN, 135
Kieft, Wm., Director General, 1638-46, 70

An ex-bankrupt, 70
Arraigned in remonstrance of 1649, 79

Church built by, 81

Death of, 71

Liberal government of, 95

Portrait hung on gallows, 70

Provokes Indian war, 71

Steals ransom money, 71
207

INDEX

PAGE

Kieft welcomes refugees from N. England, 95

Worst of all the Directors, 70

Kip signs remonstrance, 1649, 76

Kruger, President, 72

LAND grants from Indians, 167

Unfairly made, 158

Liberties and exemptions, charter of, 94

Lobbying at The Hague, 22, 38

Long Island claimed by Lord Stirling, 175

English on, 1659, 167

Granted to Duke of York, 188

Granted to Lord Stirling, . 175

Released by Lord Stirling, 188

Loockermans signs remonstrance, 1649, 76

Lothair, of Congo Protectorate, 72

Loyalty non-existent, 164

MANHATTAN ISLAND bought, 85

Settlement on, 54

Manifest, first ship's, 86

"Map, the Figurative," 20, 41

Maryland, trouble with, 171

Marylanders' sporting offer, 172

Massachusetts, pacific acts of, 127, 128, 129, 137

Territorial claims of, 168

Maurice, Count John, 115

208

INDEX

PAGE

Mauritius (Hudson) river, 13

May-day movings, 57

May, first Director General, 7°

Milner, Sir Alfred, 53

NAHANT (Pye Bay),

Narragansett Bay,

Navigation Act of 1651,

Of 1660, l82

Evasion of, l84

Negroes, permission to import, 133

New Amsterdam becomes New York, 190

City charter granted, 1653, 139

English in, 1642, 95

First permanent colonists of, 57

Founded, 5°

Immorals of, J93

In war time, 1652, 122

Named, 56

Ordered to be made clean, no

New England commissioners, 124

Confederation, 1643, 124
Desire in, to fight the Dutch, 125, 128, 162
Early trade with New Netherland, 87, 90

New Netherland, an obstacle to England, 187

Condition of, in 1624, 85

Condition of, in 1629, 66
14 209

INDEX

PAGE

New Netherland, condition of, in 1647, 103

Condition of, in 1649, 77, 108

Condition of, in 1653, 157

Condition of, in 1654, 163

Condition of, circa 1660, 113

Condition of, in 1 66 1, 181

Cromwell's plan for annexing, 162

Dutch title to, 42

Early trade with New England, 87, 90

Easy conquest of, 186

English claim to, 45, 52

Erected into a province, 58

Ethics of English conquest of, 191

Exports from, 1624, 85

Exports from, 1628-1635, 86

First official use of name, 41

Forces destructive to, 113, 120, 187

Good results of English rule, 195

Granted to Duke of York, 188

Limits defined, 1616, 19

Not named in W. I. Co. charter, 51

Price of passage to, reduced, 133

Population of, in 1629, 67

Results of English conquest of, 192

Unprepared for war, 1654, 163

Company chartered, 40

Directors of, 19
210

INDEX

PAGE

New Netherland Company, members of, 40

Newtown, delegates from, 153

New York, arms of, 12, 58

Benefited by English rule, 195

Lawlessness of, 1690—1700, 193

Pirates, 193

Reformed by Lord Bellomont, 195

Statistics of, 1664, 1678, 1694, 195

Nicholas, Saint, patron of New York, 105

Onrust, yacht, built, 12, 13

Discoveries made in, 16, 19

Goes through Hell Gate, 17

Monument to, 15

Orange, House of, a rallying centre, 34

Oyster Bay line, 167

PASSAGE, price of, to N. Netherland reduced, 133

Patroons, grants to, 68

Relics of feudalism, 68

Sell arms to Indians, 69

Peace of 1654, Holland and England, 162

Pelgrom, Paulus, 19, 40

Pernambuco captured, 60

Petition of Lord Stirling to Charles II., 175

Pilot who dared all for love, 91

Piracies on Long Island Sound, 126, 153, 154

211

INDEX

PAGE

Pirates of New York, 193

Placard encouraging discovery, 20, 21, 24

Planters' Plea, The, 66

Plymouth Company, grant to, 52

Population of New Netherland in 1629, 67

Pye Bay (Nahant), 17, 18

RAEF, SEBASTIEN, piracies of, 135

Rebellion on Long Island, 1655, 97

Refugees from Belgium, 30, 33

From New England, 95

"Rehoboam, the crowning of," no

Remonstrance of 1649, 75

Author of, 76

On Stuyvesant, 105

On Van Tienhoven, 143

Signers of, 76

Tone of, 81

Remonstrance of 1653, 155

Author of, 156

Rejected by West India Company, 160

Resented by Stuyvesant, 160

Tone of, *59

Remonstrances, various, 94. J66

Restoration, the, 174

Revenues of New York, 1678, 1694, 195

Rhode Island, disrepute of, 126

212

INDEX

PAGE

Russia, Dutch trade with, 6

SALEM, teacher of church at, 128

Santiago, battle of, 64

Schout, duties of, 142

Ship Arms of Amsterdam, 85

Eendracht, case of the, 91

English, refused trading license, 88

First, built on Manhattan, n

First English, in Hudson river, 88

First trading, at Manhattan, 8

Tiger burned, 13

Shipping of New York, 1678, 1694, 195

Ships, how built, 14

"Slate," the first, 141

Slave trade, beginning of, 133

"Slit in the door, little," 186

Smuggling, remonstrance 1649, 78

Stuyvesant tries to check, 109

South river colony, 170

Claimed by Maryland, 171, 172, 174

Illicit trade with, 185

Swedish colony on, 131, 170

Spain, colonial weakness of, 30

King of, blood from heart of, 63

Oppression of, 33

Poor fighter at sea, 64

213

INDEX

PAGE

Spain's truce with Holland, 1609, 34, 35

Ends, 1621, 44

Spanish colonies, trade with, 133

Sporting offer of Marylanders, 172

Stadt Huys built, 1642, 96

Convention of 1653 held in, 151

State rights, doctrine of, 129

States General, placard of 1614, 21

West India Company before, 37

Statute of Uses circumvented, 48

Stirling, Lord, claims Long Island, 175

Petition of, 175

Releases Long Island, 188

Stockton's "Great War Syndicate," 32

Stuyvesant, Peter, Direc. Gen., 1647-64, 103

Bad domestic policy of, 137

Characteristics of, 105, in

Charged with inciting Indian rising, 124

Concludes conventions with Virginia, 133

Derives his power "from God and

the Company," 160, 161

Fosters foreign trade, 136

Good foreign policy of, 124, 131, 136

Ineffective as a reformer, in

Irving's caricature of, 105

Lays tax on wines and liquors, no

Makes the first "slate," 141
214

INDEX

PAGE

Stuyvesant, P., opposes convention of 1653, 154

Orders town to be made clean, no

Proclaims city charter, 140

Reduces Swedish colony, 131

Reforms attempted by, 109

Resents remonstrance of 1653, 160

Temporizing policy of, 98
Terms offered by, to New England, 125

Sunset, claim down to, 168

Swedish colony founded, 1638, 170

Reduced, 1655, 131

TAMMANY methods in 1653, 141, 150

Tavern, the City, built, 1642, 96

Tax laid on wines and liquors, no

Tienhoven, Adriaen van, detected in fraud, 150

Cornelis van, character of, 143

Made schout, 142

Seduces Lysbet van Hoogvelt, 145

Tobacco, close season for, 172

Export tax on, removed, 133

Secret trade in, 184

Trade hampered, remonstrance 1649, 77

In 1624, 85

Intercolonial, circa 1635, 88

Circa 1642, 95

England objects to, 88, 90

215

INDEX

PAGE

Trade, intercolonial, illicit, 184

Made easier, 1640, 94

Secret, in tobacco, 184

With drunken savages, 109

With Spanish colonies, 133

With West Indies, 197

Wrangles over the American, 27

Treasure fleet captured, 60

Treaty of Hartford granted too much, 132

Ignored by Massachusetts, 168

Ratification demanded, 188

Trojan Horse, the, 164

Tromp, Admiral van, 122

Truce, the twelve years', 34, 44

Tweenhuyzen, Lambrecht van, 19, 40

UNDERBILL and Dyer, piracies of, 126

United Colonies of New England, the, 124

Uses, statute of, circumvented, 48

Usselincx, William, 3°

VAN CORTLANDT signs remonstrance, 1649, 7^

Van der Douck drafts remonstrance, 1649, 76

Van Rensselaer deals in arms for Indians, 99
Van Twiller drives out English trading ship, 89

Verhulst, second Director General, 70
Virginia, conventions with,- 133
216

INDEX

PAGE

Virginia, trade with, 88, 90, 133

Visscher, schipper, 123
Vries, see De Vries.

WALLOON colonists, 57

Wall Street palisadoes, 122
War between Holland and England, 1652, 122

Indian, of 1643, 71

West India Company, the, 29

Answer to Lord Baltimore, 176

Arraigned, 1649, 77

Before States General, 37

Captures treasure fleet, 60

Causes of its collapse, 114

Chartered, 45

Conquests in Brazil, 60

Inquiry into affairs of, 1638, 94
Memorial against English aggression, 177

Naval strength of, 62

No precedent for, 48

Opposed by Barne veldt, 33

Organized to make war, 47

Rapacity of, 189

Rejects remonstrance of 1653, 160

Remonstrates against truce, 62

Report on New Netherland, 1629, 60

Rights and obligations of, 45
217

INDEX

PAGE

West India Co., selfish policy of, a failure, 197

War winnings of, 61

Writes to Burgomasters and Sch^epens, 161

West Indies, illicit trade with, 184

Trade with, 88, 197

Windmill in the Fort, 80

Wines and liquors taxed, no

Winthrop, Gov., drafts address to King, 178

Goes in Dutch ship to England, 179

Kindly received at New Amsterdam, 170

Witssen, Gerrit Jacob, 19

Jonas, 19

Wooley, Charles, cited, 86

YORK, DUKE OF, grant to, 188

THE END

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