USA > New York > Courts and lawyers of New York; a history, 1609-1925, Volume I > Part 5
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The three years, 1615-17, were marked by several important and exciting happenings. Cornelius Hendricksen, who had
8. The STATES GENERAL of the United Netherlands, to all to whom these presents shall come, Greeting.
Whereas, Gerrit Jacobz Witssen, antient Burgomaster of the City of Amsterdam, Jonas Witssen, Simon Morrissen, owners of the ship named the "Little Fox," whereof Jan de With has been Skipper; Hans Hongers, Paulus Pelgrom, Lambrecht van Tweehuyzen, owners of the two ships named the "Tiger" and the "Fortune," whereof Adriaen Block and Hen- drick Christiaensen were Skippers; Arnolt van Lydergen, Wessel Schenck, Hans Claessen and Berent Sweertssen, owners of the Ship named the "Nightingale," whereof Thys Volckertssen was Skipper, merchants of the aforesaid city of Amsterdam; and Peter Clementssen Brouwer, Jan Clem- entssen Kies and Cornelius Volckertssen, Merchants of the city of Hoorn, owners of the Ship called the "Fortuyn," whereof Cornelis Jacobssen May was Skipper, all now associated in one Company, have respectfully repre- sented to us that they, the petitioners, after great expenses and damages by loss of ships and other dangers, had, during the present year, discov- ered and found with the above named five ships certain New Lands situate in America, between New France and Virginia, the Seacoasts whereof lie between forty and forty-five degrees of Latitude, and now called New Netherland : And whereas We Did, in the month of March last, for the promotion and increase of Commerce, cause to be published a certain General Consent and Charter setting forth that whosoever should there- after discover new havens, lands, places or passages, might frequent, or cause to be frequented, for four voyages, such newly discovered and found
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been left at Cape Cod with the "Onrust" in 1614, explored the Delaware Bay and River, "probably as far as the falls near Trenton," in 1616, in that little vessel; and on the site of Philadelphia he had ransomed three Dutch traders who had fallen into the hands of the Indians.º Evidently, the natives had not looked with friendly eyes upon the evidences that were before them, in the building of trading-posts and forts at Manhattan, Albany, and elsewhere, that the white men were
places, passages, havens, or lands, to the exclusion of all others from vis- iting or frequenting the same from the United Netherlands, until the said first discoveries and finders shall, themselves, have completed the said four voyages, or caused the same to be done within the time prescribed for that purpose, under the penalties expressed in the said Octroy, &c., they request that we would accord to them due Act of the aforesaid Octroy in the usual form :
Which, being considered, We, therefore, in our Assembly having heard the pertinent Report of the Petitioners, relative to the discoveries, and find- ing of the said new Countries between the above named limits and degrees, and also of their adventures, have consented and granted, and by these presents do consent and grant, to the said Petitioners now united into one Company, that they shall be privileged exclusively to frequent, or cause to be visited, the above newly discovered lands, situate in America, between New France and Virginia, whereof the Seacoasts lie between the fortieth and forty-fifth degree of Latitude, now named New Netherland, as can be seen by a Figurative Map hereunto annexed, and that for four voyages within the term of three years, commencing the first of January, Sixteen hundred and fifteen next ensuing, or sooner, without it being permitted to any other person from the United Netherlands to sail to, navigate, or frequent the said newly discovered lands, havens, or places, either directly or indirectly, within the said three Years, on pain of Confiscation of the vessel and Cargo wherewith infraction hereof shall be attempted, and a fine of Fifty thousand Netherland Ducats for the benefit of said discoverers or finders; provided, nevertheless, that by these presents we do not intent to prejudice or deminish any of our former grants or Charters; And it is also Our intention that if any disputes or differences arise from these Our Concessions, they shall be decided by Ourselves.
We therefore expressly command all Governors, Justices, Officers, Magistrates, and inhabitants of the aforesaid United Countries, that they allow the said Company peacefully and quietly to enjoy the whole benefit of this our Grant and consent, ceasing all contradictions and obstacles to the contrary. For such we have found to appertain to the public service. Given under Our Seal, paraph and signature of our Secretary at the Hague, the xith of October, 1614."
9. Efforts were made to obtain a four years' trading charter for that region also, but the States General, considering the domain as part of the province of Virginia, would not grant one-Lossing's "Our Country," vol. 1, p. 215.
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not merely temporary dwellers in their domain. Trading had been vigorously prosecuted on the Hudson River, with at least one very deplorable result. Captain Christiaensen was mur- dered by an Indian "soon after he had finished the trading house and defences at Fort Nassau (Albany)." There is rea- son to believe that this was in 1615.10
Christiaensen probably had been the chief superintendent, or factor, of the New York and Hudson sectors, and possibly of the whole region of the New Netherland. His place and responsibility were taken by Jacob Eelkins, a former Amster- dam clerk. Eelkins administered the trust well, and estab- lished better relations with the Indians. Fort Nassau (Albany) seems to have been an important outstation, but the main station probably was on Manhattan Island, the storehouses there being large and making "the little hamlet a social vil- lage." The Fort Nassau station was abandoned in 1618, for in the spring of that year a freshet had seriously weakened the defences on Castle Island, and had caused Eelkins to remove the trading post during that summer to the mouth of the Tawasentha, now known as Norman's Kill. He erected a fort on the bluff, and there, a little later, "a treaty of friendship was made with the Five Nations (the Iroquois Confederacy), and which was kept inviolate until New Netherland passed into the possession of the English, and long afterwards." Had he not done so, overwhelming disaster might have ended the New Netherland experiment in its infancy, "for that confederacy
10. The states-general, in the latter part of 1614, chartered a company for the colonization of the country visited by this expedition. . . . This region was called New Netherland. To prosecute the business of the com- pany so chartered, Christiansen, one of the commanders in the former ex- pedition of five vessels, built a fort or trading post on Castle Island, near the present city of Albany .- "Encyc. Britannica," in sketch of The United States of America.
10. Hendrick Christiansen was murdered by an Indian soon after he had finished the trading house and defences at Fort Nassau, and was suc- ceeded in command by Jacob Eelkins, who had been a clerk in Amster- dam .- "New York Civil List" (1888), p. 6.
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was strong enough to have swept from the face of the earth all European intruders."
The charter was not renewed to the Amsterdam Company in 1618, but no other charter was granted for a few years. It was a period in which any Dutch trader had equal right to gather for himself what advantage he could in trading with the natives of the region. There were several reasons why the Dutch Government was inactive during this period. Dutch merchants who had noted with what marked success the Amsterdam Company had carried on their exploitation of the American Indian during the period of the charter exerted all political pressure possible to prevent a renewal of the monopoly ; but there were other cogent reasons why the colonization or exploitation of New Netherland was of less immediate impor- tance to the United Netherlands than other matters which gravely affected the home situation at that time. The strug- gle between the States-General and the ruling house was at its height; and in 1619 reached such a grave crisis that Jan van Olden Barneveldt, the Grand Pensionary or Chief Magistrate of Holland, an incorruptible patriot representing the Popular Party, the Remonstrants, fell a victim of his "jealous, malicious and unscrupulous prince," Maurice of Nassau pursuing the feud to the bitter end, which was the execution of Barneveldt in 1619. Grotius, also of the Provincial Party, was condemned to imprisonment for life.
While for a time the internal struggle, and the greater dan- ger ever present in the suspended sword of Spain, which might fall at any moment, palsied action by the States-General in matters of New Netherland, these grave happenings actually hastened the colonization of the new land. "Indeed, it may be said that the occupation of New Netherland by the Dutch was due entirely to the great continental struggle, in which the Dutch Republic played so important a part. The existence of the States-General being threatened, they sought to save
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themselves by extraordinary exertions in their foreign rela- tions." If the homeland should revert to an intolerable mon- archy, the people might at least have a new land, in which they might work out their republican plans with greater safety. This feasibly may be deemed to have been one of the factors which impelled the States-General, in 1621, to incorporate a trading company, empowered to colonize and govern New Netherland-with immense latitude of governmental authority -for a term of twenty-four years, with a pledge of renewal. By this legislative act, the States-General, in the days of inse- curity and danger for the people in Europe, indicated that it contemplated the development of a separate and independent State, one in which "the only relation toward the mother coun- try was that of alliance and obligation to aid in war against alien enemies." Another impelling factor with the States- General may have been the warning conveyed by an English captain to the Dutch he had been surprised to find well estab- lished on Manhattan Island one summer day in 1619, when he sought refuge in New York Bay. This Englishman, Captain Dermer, warned the "traffickers to leave His Majesty's domain as quickly as possible"; and although the New Amsterdam Dutch "went on smoking their pipes, planting their gardens, and catching beavers and otters," after having quietly parried Captain Dermer's thrust with the remark: "We found no Englishmen here, and hope we have not offended," they prob- ably lost no time in reporting the incident to the home author- ities. A Frenchman, who happened to come into New York waters a year or so later, was equally incensed at sight of the Dutch settlers, though his demand was that the latter recog- nize the sovereignty of France. Possibly, also, the departure of the English Pilgrims from Holland in 1620, and the action of the English king, James I, in granting the Plymouth Com- pany a charter to colonize "New England," between 40° and 48° N., was not the least factor which brought to the States-
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General of the United Netherlands in 1621 the realization that unless they took speedy action the New Netherland across the seas might forever be lost to Holland. So they proceeded to charter the Dutch West India Company. And, to make sure that the company so chartered should be able to grasp-for themselves and Holland-whatever advantage they might find in any part of the western continent, they clothed the Dutch West India Company with "almost regal powers to colonize, govern, and defend not only that little domain on the Hudson, but the whole unoccupied coasts of America from Newfoundland to Cape Horn, and the western coast of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope far northward."
CHAPTER V. THE DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY .*
The West India Company was chartered on June 3, 1621, with jurisdiction for twenty-four years from the first day of July of that year. The charter was patterned somewhat after that granted to the Dutch East India Company; and among its extraordinary powers were the rights to employ soldiers and fleets, build forts, negotiate treaties "with the princes and natives of the countries comprehended therein," and establish the necessary offices for the keeping of "good order, police, and justice"; in fact, anything that would promote trade. The charter forbade all the inhabitants of the United Netherlands to sail within the sphere of trading of the Dutch West India Company save those who served that corporation.
But, while the charter contained all the guarantees of freedom in social, political, and religious life necessary for the founding of a free state, the home government held supreme supervision, the court of final resort being the States-General. In all vital governmental functioning by the West India Company the States-General was represented. The government of the West India Company was vested in five separate chambers of man- agers, one chamber in each of five cities of the mother coun- try. Executive powers were entrusted to a board, or college, of nineteen delegates, one of whom was to represent the
*AUTHORITIES-O'Callaghan's "History of New Netherland"; Hart's "History of the United States" Smith's "History of New York"; "History of the United Netherlands"; "Encyclopedia Britannica"; "History of the Bench and Bar of New York" (New York History Co., 1897) ; "Civil List of New York," 1888; Green's "History of the English People"; Ches- ter's "Legal and Judicial History of New York"; Lossing's "Our Coun- try"; Champlain Tercentenary Commission Reports, State of New York; Thalheimer's "Outline of General History"; Henry Cabot Lodge's "A Short History of the English Colonies in America"; John Lord's "American Founders-Beacon Lights of History."
C.&L-4
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States-General. The government was to provide the company with ships of war in case of need, but the admiral to command said ships of war must be the appointee of the States-General. And while the company might make "conquests of territories and treaties with native chiefs at their own risk," they were required to submit their instructions to their governors to the approval of the home parliament; and their officers, civil and military, were all required to take the oath of allegiance to the States-General.
Colonization was not, however, the main purpose of the corporation. Its members, those who subscribed its author- ized capital of seven millions of florins ($2,800,000), were mainly men of trade, shrewd, prosaic, level-headed merchants of a great commercial nation ; and their money was proffered to promote trade enterprises, not to further national schemes for territorial expansion. True, they recognized that the Dutch West India Company was to be, to all intents, an armed com- mercial monopoly, and that armed conflict with ships of Spain and Portugal might be before them; but such a contingency would be only in defence of commercial possessions, or to win trading spheres. The States-General may have hoped, or shrewdly calculated, that the operations of the West India Company would ultimately develop a populous Dutch colony based on agricultural production and not commerce; but the original undertakers of the West India Company undoubtedly considered that their syndicate was to be essentially a com- mercial corporation, one that would function just as the Dutch East India Company had for two previous decades. Commerce had been the aim of all Dutch efforts in America up to that time; and trading posts, with the necessary protecting forts, were the only degrees of settlement that the promoters of the West India Company originally planned to establish. For the protection of their trade routes, or rather of their sphere of trading, they were soon, however, forced to encourage legiti-
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mate colonization ; and this, indeed, was a stated condition of their charter; nevertheless, all the acts of succeeding adminis- trations in New Netherland, under the West India Company, indicate that commerce was the propelling factor, the main objective. Such cannot be said of all American colonies. Adventure gave birth to Viriginia; religious persecution set- tled New England; but New York seems to have grown from the seed of commerce.1 Loyalty probably was as strong in the early settlers in Manhattan and New Netherland as in other American peoples ; sincerity and honesty of purpose were per- haps as evident in them as in others; their personal traits were, it may be assumed, as commendable as those of their English neighbors; but it would seem that nationalism was not very strong in the earliest colonists of New York. Indeed, it would be surprising if it were, buffeted as they had been for decades in Europe, in the maelstrom of conflicting nations.
Viewed in the light of the more stable conditions of national existence in modern times, some of the actions of leading men of the New Netherland project must be classed as unpatriotic. William Usselincx, the merchant who first suggested a plan for the organization of a Dutch West India Company, was not averse to forming a Swedish West India Company, in 1627, for the colonization of the Delaware River region, which he knew had been discovered by Dutchmen. Again, Peter Minuit,
I. Adventure brought men to Virginia; politics and religion to New England; philanthropy to Georgia; but New York was founded by trade for trade and for nothing else. The settlement on the island of Manhattan was due to the active spirit of Dutch commerce-"A Short History of the English Colonies in America," by Henry Cabot Lodge, p. 285.
I. Among the causes which gave birth to the province of New Nether- land, and stimulated the industry of its citizens, none were so marked as the desire of gain. Religious persecutions peopled New England and Virginia. Colonists were drawn to the inhospitable coasts of the former by the prelates; to the fertile bottoms of the latter by the Roundheads. But neither religious nor political persecution stimulated in any way the settle- ment of America by the Dutch. Trade was their great aim, and edicts and ordinances for its regulation, especially with the Indians, entered largely into their legislation .- O'Callaghan's "History of New Netherland," vol. II, 338.
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who took office on Manhattan Island in 1626, as the first Director-General of New Netherland, did not mind enlisting in like capacity in the service of Sweden, in 1638, and had no qualms in purchasing from the Indians for the Queen of Sweden title to land which he must have known was within the recognized limits of New Netherland.2 He built a fort on the site of the present city of Wilmington, Delaware, within sixteen miles of a Dutch fort; and to the protesting Dutch governor he replied: "The Queen of Sweden has as good a right to build a fort here as the Dutch West India Company." Apparently, the national spirit was not as strong then as now. The struggles of one royal house against another ; the rapidity with which governments changed ; the almost chronic state of war in Europe, a scourge which descended heaviest upon the backs of the common people; the hardships and insecurity of life and home which followed change in ecclesiastical polity ; and many other movements in which the people were the unfortunate pawns, vital in the combat but impotent to control its action, must have dulled the national spirit very generally among the masses in Europe. The legions of Spain were recruited mainly from mercenary adventurers of many nations, among men who would fight and sack for any power so long as pay and loot were regularly forthcoming ; royal forces were constantly see-sawing through French, German, and Austrian countries, making the lot of the peasant indescribably miser- able ; and even in England, where some semblance of personal independence existed, the common people had had good reason to doubt their power in the House of Commons, and had begun to more than murmur against the actions of their headstrong king. Indeed, of all European peoples of that time, it seems quite possible that the national spirit was strongest in the
2. He landed at the site of Newcastle in April, 1638, and purchased from the Indians the whole territory from Cape Henlopen to the falls of the Delaware River at Trenton, without the slightest regard to the claims of the Dutch .- Lossing's "Our Country."
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Dutch. Their great hero, William the Silent, would have stirred it in them; and they could not have endured the eighty years of bitter struggle for independence, had not a stern nationalism been developed in them.3 The state of the Wal- loons, the people who were the first to settle in New Netherland, was less encouraging, however. In the first decades of the sev- enteenth century, they surely must have looked upon themselves as altogether without a country. The Walloons spoke the French tongue, but they belonged to the Low Countries, to the north- ern, or Belgic, provinces of the Netherlands. These, however, had not joined with the southern provinces when the United Netherlands had been formed in 1597, and their political status was different. Religious toleration was denied them, and, as Protestants, they had been driven from their home provinces by the lash of persecution in the hands of the Spaniards. They had crossed into Holland in thousands, Amsterdam and Ley- den receiving very many of these Walloon refugees. There, they had become friendly with the English refugees, listening with interest to all that the English told them of the new land across the sea. The Walloons would have gladly emigrated to the English colony of Virginia, had the London Company met their inquiries with favorable terms of settlement; hence, it may be inferred that financial advantage rather than national affinity was the factor which drew the Walloons to New Netherland instead of to Virginia. That the Dutch trading
3. Too high praise cannot be given to those brave and industrious people who redeemed their morasses from the sea, who grew rich and powerful without the natural advantages of soil and climate, who fought for eighty years against the whole power of Spain, who nobly secured their independence against overwhelming forces, who increased steadily in pop- ulation and wealth when obliged to open their dikes upon their cultivated fields, who established universities and institutions of learning when almost driven to despair, and who became the richest people in Europe, whitening the ocean with their ships, establishing banks and colonies, creating a new style of painting, and teaching immortal lessons in government when they occupied a country but little larger than Wales. Civilization is as proud of such a country as Holland is of Greece itself .- Dr. John Lord in "Ameri- can Founders"; vol. xi-29, "Beacon Lights of History."
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company permitted them to settle in the land they governed may be attributed to like reasons.
The West India Company was not able to complete its organization immediately; indeed, almost two years were des- tined to elapse before the corporation could take final form. During this period, matters of urgent importance were dealt with by a temporary organization. The vital question of land- title came before them for early consideration. The situation certainly was beclouded. It was evident that the region of the English corporation, the Plymouth Company, chartered in 1620, overlapped that of the Dutch West India Company. During 1620, the States-General probably had confidently hoped that the vehement opposition by the English Parliament would defeat the plan of the English king to grant the Plymouth charter, which the House of Commons had denounced as out- rageous, in fact as the "delegation of despotic power to a grasping company of traders." But the Dutch Government soon knew that King James was stronger than Parliament. Another ominous aspect lay in the certainty that the French looked upon the activities of both the English and the Dutch in America as encroachments upon their rightful colonial domain ; the English king had been tendered the remonstrances of France, through their ambassador, against the Plymouth Company's patent; and the Dutch in Manhattan had not been left ignorant of the contention of the French, for a French expedition had appeared off Manhattan Island, a landing had been made, and possession of the land had been formally taken by the French commander, in the name of the king of France. During the previous decade, the Dutch traders had been bent on trade rather than ceremony, but in view of this French action, it perhaps occurred to the Dutch Company that some such ceremony by their own agents might strengthen their title. But they probably viewed the English claim with more concern, though it seems that the States-General had taken as
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