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CHAPTER XIV
MERCHANTS AND TRADE .
321
The Atlantic Passage ; Transport Expenses ; Names of Ships ; Ship-building in New Amsterdam; Shipping Regulations; Bill of Lading ; Volume of Trade; Indian Trade; Wampum and Sewan; Currency Regulations ; Treatment of Indians ; Laws against Selling Liquor and Ammunition to the Natives ; Private Trade ; Smuggling ; Great and Small Burghers ; Piracy; Opposition to its Suppression; Bellomont's Diffi- culties ; Oriental Wares ; a Merchant's Office; New Nether- land Industries; Trade Profits; Shops and Shop Goods; Confused Currency ; Barter ; Women Traders and Merchants ; Jews; Intolerance ; Disabilities ; Establishment.
INDEX
35 I
ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of Cornelis Steenwyck. Owned by the New York
Historical Society. (In Photogravure) Frontispiece Facing page
New Amsterdam (earliest known view)
8
New Amsterdam about 1670 16
Old Hopper House, Second Avenue and 83d Street, New York 24
Kip House, Kip's Bay, New York 24
Old Stone House, 152d Street, Kingsbridge Road, New York 24
Gardens of the Van Cortlandt Manor House, Croton-on- Hudson 32
Van Cortlandt Manor House (1681), Croton-on-Hudson 40 Wall of the Van Cortlandt Manor House, showing Loopholes 48 Entrance Door of the Van Cortlandt Manor House, Croton- on-Hudson 54
Hall and Stairway, Van Cortlandt Manor House 62
Old Dutch Watches. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam . 70
Mahogany Table brought from Holland in 1668 . 82
Dutch China Cabinet with Porcelain. Owned by Mr. Frans Middelkoop, New York 90
Dutch China Cabinet and Porcelain. Owned by Mr. Frans
Middelkoop, New York . 98
Miniature Silver Articles and Silver Toys. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam 108
Dutch Silver from the Van Cortlandt Manor House
II2
xxii
ILLUSTRATIONS
Facing page
Silver Tankard. Owned by Sara de Rapelje
116 A Family Meal (seventeenth century) . . I20
Dutch Kitchen. Jan Steen
I26
Old Church Bench or Stool. Albany Institute and Historical and Art Society . I32
Napkin Press (seventeenth century). Owned by Mr. Frans Middelkoop, New York 138
Voorhuis in the Doll's House. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam I44
Bedroom, Doll's House. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam I 50 Show Room, Doll's House. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam I 56
Kitchen, Doll's House. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam 162
Old Dutch School Scenes 166
General View of Doll's House. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam 172 Porcelain and Earthenware. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam 178
Drinking-Glasses. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam 184
Porcelain, Earthenware Ornament and Glass Tumbler in the Van Cortlandt Manor House 190
Flowers. Jan Van Huysam 196
The Parrot Cage. Jan Steen 202
Country House. Pieter de Hooch 208
Glass Drinking Vessels. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam 216
A Dutch Bride in State (seventeenth century) 224
Porcelain and Earthenware. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam 232
Dutch Clock in the Van Cortlandt Manor House 240
Old Chest, Linen Press, and Two Warming-Pans. Owned
by Mr. Frans Middelkoop, New York 246
Dutch Cradle and Child's Chair. Albany Institute and His- torical and Art Society 254
Silver Spoons. Rijks Museum, Amsterdam 262 Tavern Scene. Teniers 266
Clover Leaf Drinking Cup 272
Old Dutch Tankard . 272
ILLUSTRATIONS
xxiii
Facing page
A Tavern Brawl. Adriaen Brouwer
288
Pulling the Goose
296
St. Nicholas Eve. Jan Steen
300
Three Kings' Evening (Twelfth Night)
304
Sports on the Ice
308
Kermis. Teniers
316
Winter Scene. Ostade
330
Old Dutch House in Broad Street, New Amsterdam (1698)
344
CHAPTER I
SETTLEMENT AND EARLY CONDITIONS OF NEW NETHERLAND
HE history of the early voyages and settle- ments of the Dutch is told by a writer during Minuit's directorship of the new colony. He says :
This country, or the river, Montagne, called by our's Mauritius, was first sailed to by the worthy Hendrick Christiaensen van Cleef. It so happened that he and the worthy Adriaen Block chartered a ship with the skipper, Ryser, and accomplished his voyage thither, bringing back with him two sons of the principal sachems there.
Hudson, the famous English pilot, had been there also, to reach the South Sea, but found no passage.
This aforesaid Hendrick Christiaensz, after he had dis- solved partnership with Adriaen Block, made ten voyages thither, in virtue of a grant from the Lords States who gave him that privilege for the first establishment of the place. On the expiration of that privilege, this country was granted to the West India Company, to draw their profits thence.
The West India Company being chartered to navigate these Rivers did not neglect to do so, but equipped in the spring [of 1623] a vessel of 130 lasts, called the New Netherland, with thirty families, mostly Walloons, to plant a colony there. They sailed in the beginning of
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March, and directing their course by the Canary Islands, steered towards the Wild Coast, and gained the westwind which luckily [took] them in the beginning of May into the River called, first Rio de Montagnes, now the River Mauritius, lying in 401/2 degrees.
The ship sailed up to the Maykans, 44 miles, near which they built and completed a Fort named Orange, with 4 bastions, on an Island by them called Castle Island. They forthwith put the spade in the ground and began to plant, and before the Mackerel sailed, the grain was nearly as high as a man, so that they are bravely advanced. They also placed a Fort named Wilhelmus on Prince's Island, heretofore called Murderer's Island; it is open in front, and has a curtain in the rear and is garrisoned by sixteen men for the defence of the River below. On leaving there, the course lies for the west wind, and having got it, to the Bermudas and so along the channel in a short time towards Patria. The Yacht, the Mackerel, sailed out last year on the 16th June and arrived yonder on the 12th of December. . .
The fur and other trade belongs to the West India Company, others being forbidden to trade there. Rich beavers, otters, martins and foxes are found there. This cargo consists of five hundred otter skins, and fifteen hundred beavers and a few other things, which were in four parcels of twenty-eight thousand some hundred guilders.1
On Jan. 9, 1626, Peter Minuit sailed in the Sea-Mere, Captain Adriaen Joris, and arrived at Manhattan on May 4. The next ship sent out by the West India Company was the Arms of Amsterdam, which arrived on July 27, 1626, and started on her return voyage on Sept. 23, 1626, with a valuable cargo of furs and wood under charge of Peter Barentsen, the Indian trader. She arrived in Amsterdam on November 4; and on
1 The cargo of the New Netherland was sold in Amsterdam, Dec. 20, 1624.
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SETTLEMENT AND EARLY CONDITIONS
the following day the Secretary thus informed the States-General :
There arrived here yesterday the ship called the Arms of Amsterdam, which sailed from the river Mauritius [the Hudson], in New Netherland, on the 23d of Septem- ber. Report is brought that our people there are diligent and live peaceably; their wives have also borne them children. They have purchased the Island of Manhattes from the Indians for the sum of sixty guilders; it con- tains 11,000 morgens of land. They have sown all kinds of grain in the middle of May, and reaped in the middle of August. I send you some samples of the summer grains, as wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, canary seed, beans and flax.
The cargo of the ship consists of 7246 skins of beaver, 853 otter, 81 mink, 36 cat lynx, 34 small rat, together with a considerable quantity of oak timber and nutwood.
Our historian continues :
The Company there administers Justice in criminal matters as far as imposing fines (boet-straffe), but not as far as capital punishment. Should it happen that any one deserves that, he must be sent to Holland with his sentence. Cornelis Hoorn was, in the year 1624, the first Director there; Willem Van Hulst was the second in the year 1625. He returns now. . ·
Respecting these Colonies they have already a prosper- ous beginning; and the hope is that they will not fall through provided they be zealously sustained, not only in that place but in the South River. For their increase and prosperous advancement, it is highly necessary that those sent out be first of all well provided with means both of support and defence, and that being Freemen, they be settled there on a free tenure; that all they work for and gain be their's to dispose of and to sell according to their pleasure ; that whoever is placed over them as Commander act as their Father, not as their Executioner, leading them with a gentle hand.
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In the year 1628, there already resided on the Island of the Manhates, two hundred and seventy souls, men, women and children, under Governor Minuit, Verhulst's successor, living there in peace with the Natives. But as the land, in many places being full of weeds and wild productions, could not be properly cultivated in conse- quence of the scantiness of the population, the said Lords Directors of the West India Company, the better to people their lands, and to bring the country to produce more abundantly, resolved to grant divers Privileges, Free- doms and Exemptions to all Patroons, Masters or Indi- viduals who should plant any Colonies or Cattle in New Netherland.
After Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan, no time was lost in providing for the security of the settle- ment. The engineer, Krijn Frederijcke, staked out a fort on the southern point of the island to which the name Fort Amsterdam was given. The Company's counting-house was a stone building with a thatched roof, but the other houses were of wood. Director Minuit and the Opper Koopman, De Rasieres, lived together; and there were about thirty houses on the east side of the river. Frances Moelmacker began to build a horse mill with a large room above to be used as a meeting-place for religious services; for although there was as yet no regular clergyman, two Comforters of the Sick (Kranck-besoeckers), Sebastiaen Jansen Krol and Jan Huych, read the Bible and held meetings on Sundays. Another officer of the colony was Jan Lempo, the schout, or sheriff.
Each colonist had his own farm on the Company's land, and was supplied with cows; but the milk was for his own profit. These temporary homes were out- side the Fort; but as soon as that should be completed the people intended to reside within its walls, for the sake of greater security. Two years later, when the
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SETTLEMENT AND EARLY CONDITIONS
Three Kings, Captain Jan Jacobsen, and the Arms of Amsterdam, Captain Adriaen Joris, were sent by Direc- tor Minuit to the West India Company, arriving in Amsterdam in October, 1628, with furs and timber, they brought the good news that Fort Amsterdam was completed with four bastions, and faced with stone; that the colony numbered two hundred and seventy souls, including men, women, and children; that the cattle throve well, and that everything seemed pros- perous. At this period the colonists supported them- selves chiefly by farming, and any deficiencies were supplied by the West India Company.
During Minuit's administration Staten Island was also purchased.
The letter of Jonas Michaëlius ( 1628) gives a good picture of the infant colony, and the difficulties the early settlers had to face :
As to what concerns myself and my household: I find myself by the loss of my good and helping partner very much hindered and distressed, - for my two little daugh- ters are yet small; maidservants are not here to be had, at least none whom they advise me to take; and the Angola slaves are thievish, lazy and useless trash. The young man whom I took with me, I discharged after Whitsuntide, for the reason that I could not employ him out of doors at any working of the land, and, in doors, he was a burden to me instead of an assistance. He is now elsewhere at service with the boers.
The promise which the Lords Masters of the Company had made me to make myself a home, instead of a free table which otherwise belonged to me, is wholly of no avail. For their Honours well know that there are no houses, cows nor laborers to be obtained here for money.
The country yields many good things for the support of life, but they are all to be gathered in an uncultivated and wild state. It is necessary that there should be better
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regulations established, and people who have the knowl- edge and the implements for gathering things in their season, should collect them together, as undoubtedly will gradually be the case. In the meanwhile I wish the Lords Managers to be courteously inquired of, how I can have the opportunity to possess a portion of land, and at my own expense to support myself upon it. For as long as there is no more accommodation to be obtained here from the country people, I would be compelled to order every- thing from Fatherland at great expense, and with much risk and trouble, or else live here upon these poor and hard rations alone, which would badly suit me and my children. We want ten or twelve farmers with horses, cows and labourers in proportion, to furnish us with bread and fresh butter, milk and cheese.
Having been recalled, Minuit left in the Union in 1632, and was succeeded by Wouter Van Twiller, of Nieuwkerke, a clerk in the employ of the West India Company and a relative of the Patroon Van Rensselaer. He arrived at Fort Amsterdam in the Company's ship, De Zoutberg (the Salt Mountain), of two hundred and eighty tons, manned by fifty-two men and which car- ried twenty guns and one hundred and four soldiers, - the first military force sent to New Netherland.
During his administration Dominie Everardus Bo- gardus arrived, and also the first schoolmaster, Adam Roelantsen ; a church was built on Pearl Street, and the block-house was succeeded by a fort that was finished in 1635. Van Twiller also bought Pagganck, or Nut Island (now Governor's Island), and two islands in Hell Gate.
Director Van Twiller was succeeded by Willem Kieft, who arrived on March 28, 1638, in the Herring (two hundred and eighty tons and twenty guns). The new Director's administration was not at first pros- perous, for the West India Company gave up the
SETTLEMENT AND EARLY CONDITIONS 7
privileged trade with the Indians, opening this com- merce to all the inhabitants of the Dutch prov- inces; and many colonists were thus drawn to New Netherland.
On the other hand the English came both from Virginia and N. England, on account of the good opportunity to plant tobacco here, first divers servants, whose time had expired; afterwards families, and finally, entire colo- nies, having been forced to quit that place, in order to enjoy freedom of conscience, and to escape from the in- supportable government of N. England, and because many more commodities were to be obtained here than there, so that in place of seven bouweries and two or three plantations which were here, thirty bouweries were to be seen as well cultivated and stocked as in Europe [and] one hundred plantations which in two or three [years] would become regular bouweries, for after the tobacco was out of the ground, corn was planted there without ploughing, and the winter was employed prepar- ing new lands. The English colonies had settled under us by patent on equal terms with the others. Each of these was in appearance not less than one hundred fam- ilies strong, exclusive of the Colonie of Rensselaerswyck, which is prospering, with that of Mynders, Meyndertsz and Cornelius Melyn, who began first. Also the village of N. Amsterdam around the fort, one hundred families, so that there was appearance of producing supplies in a year for fourteen thousand souls without straitening the country, and had there not been a want of labourers or farm servants, twice as much could be raised.
During Kieft's administration a new stone church was built within the Fort, building lots were granted, citizens were allowed a vote in public affairs, and a . body of " Eight men " was selected to advise the gov- ernor in the Indian trouble. The Indian war made Kieft unpopular, and he was recalled. He set sail in
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DUTCH NEW YORK
the Princess in July, 1647. The boat suffered ship- wreck, and he and the other passengers, including Dominie Bogardus, were drowned.
Father Jogues, 1643, says :
For the garrison of the said Fort, and of another which they had built still further up against the incursions of the Indians, their enemies, there were sixty soldiers. They were beginning to face the gates and bastions with stone. Within the fort there was a stone church, which was quite large, the house of the Governor, whom they call Director-General, quite neatly built of brick, the storehouses and barracks.
On this Island of Manhate and in its environs, there may well be four or five hundred men of different sects and nations : the Director General told me that there were men of eighteen kinds of languages; they are scattered here and there on the river, above and below, as the beauty and convenience of the spot invited each to settle: some mechanics, however, who ply their trade, are ranged under the fort; all the others being exposed to the incursions of the Indians, who, in the year 1643, while I was there, had actually killed some two score Hollanders, and burnt many houses and barns full of wheat.
There is no religious exercise except the Calvinist, and orders are to admit none but Calvinists, however this is not observed; there being in the Colony besides the Calvinists, Catholics, English Puritans, Lutherans, Ana- baptists, whom they call Mnites, etc., etc.
When any one first comes to settle in the country, they lend him horses, cows, etc .; they give him provisions, all which he returns as soon as he is at ease; and as to the land, after ten years he pays to the West India Company the tenth of the produce which he raises. .
The first comers found lands quite fit for use formerly cleared by the savages who had fields there. Those who came later have cleared in the woods which are mostly oak. The soil is good. Deer hunting is abundant in the
l' Fort nieuw Amsterdam of de Manhatans,
NEW AMSTERDAM (EARLIEST KNOWN VIEW)
SETTLEMENT AND EARLY CONDITIONS 9
fall. There are some houses built of stone: lime they make of oyster shells, of which there are great heaps, made formerly by the savages, who subsist in part by that fishery. . . .
Ascending the river to the 43d degree, you meet the second Dutch settlement, which the tide reaches but does not pass.
There are two things in this settlement (which is called Renselaerswick, as if to say, settlement of Renselaers, who is a rich Amsterdam merchant) Ist, a miserable little fort called Fort Orange, built of logs, with four or five pieces of Breteuil cannon, and as many swivels. This has been reserved, and is maintained by the West India Company. This fort was formerly on an island which the river makes; it is now on the main land towards the Hiroquois, a little above the said island. Secondly, a colony sent here by this Renselaers, who is the patroon. This colony is composed of about a hundred persons who reside in some twenty-five or thirty houses built along the river, as each found convenient. In the principal house lives the patroon's agent; the Minister has his apart, in which service is performed. There is also a kind of Baliff here, whom they call the Seneschal, who admin- isters justice. Their houses are all merely of boards and thatched. There is as yet no mason work except in the chimneys. The forests, furnishing many large pines, they make boards by means of their mills, which they have for the purpose.
Montanus (1671) thus describes what would be the first view obtained by the settlers of their future home:
On the Manhattan's island stands New Amsterdam, five miles from the ocean: ships run up to the harbour there from the sea with one tide. The city hath an earthen fort. Within the fort, and on the outermost bastion towards the river, stand a wind mill and a very high staff, on which a flag is hoisted whenever any vessels are seen in Godyn's bay. The church rises with a double
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DUTCH NEW YORK
roof between which a square tower looms aloft. On one side is the prison, on the other side of the church the Governor's house. Without the walls are the houses mostly built by the Amsterdamers. On the river side stand the gallows and whipping-post. A handsome public tavern adorns the farthest point. Between the fort and this tavern is a row of suitable dwelling-houses : among which stand out the warehouses of the West India Company.
A view of New Amsterdam at this period faces page 16, and an earlier view, page 8.
The beautiful scenery and the vast natural resources of the country, as well as its attractions for the farmer, formed the theme of many an enthusiastic letter and treatise by early travelers. A charming description of the landscape, climate, physical features, produc- tions, etc., is afforded by Adriaen Van der Donck in 1654. He says :
The whole country has a waving surface, and in some places high hills and protruding mountains, particularly those named the Highlands, which is a place of high, connected mountain land, about three miles broad, extend- ing in curved forms throughout the country; separated in some places and then again connected. There also is much fine level land, intersected with brooks, affording pasturage of great length and breadth, but mostly along the rivers and near the salt side. Inland, most of the country is waving, with hills which generally are not steep, but ascend gradually. We sometimes in travelling imperceptibly find ourselves on high elevated situations, from which we overlook large portions of the country. The neighbouring eminence, the surrounding valleys and the highest trees are overlooked, and again lost in the distant space. Here our attention is arrested in the beautiful landscape around us, here the painter can find rare and beautiful subjects for the employment of his brush; and here also the huntsman is animated when he
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SETTLEMENT AND EARLY CONDITIONS
views the enchanting prospects presented to the eyes; on the hills, at the brooks and in the valleys, where the game abounds, and where the deer are feeding or gamboling or resting in the shades in full view. .
Near the rivers and watersides there are large extensive plains containing several hundred morgens; in one place more and in another less, which are very convenient for plantations, villages and towns. There also are brook- lands and fresh and salt meadows; some so extensive that the eye cannot oversee the same. Those are good for pasturage and hay, although the same are overflowed by the spring tides, particularly near the seaboard. These meadows resemble the low and outlands of the Nether- lands. Most of them could be dyked and cultivated. We also find meadow grounds far inland, which are all fresh and make good hayland. Where the meadows are boggy and wet, such failings are easily remedied by cutting and breaking the bogs in winter and letting off the water in the spring. There also would be much more meadow ground, but as the soil is natural for wood, and as the birds and the winds carry the seeds in every direction ; hence, those moist, low grounds are covered with timber and underwoods which we call cripple bushes.
Montanus also writes in 1671:
New Netherland hath, moreover, divers remarkable waterfalls tumbling down from lofty rocks, broad creeks and hills, fresh lakes and rivulets and pleasant springs and fountains, which smoke in winter, are right cold in summer, and, nevertheless, are much drank. Meanwhile the inhabitants are at no time much incommoded by floods, nor by the sea, inasmuch as at spring tide the water scarcely ever rises a foot higher; nor by freshets which cover only some low lands for a short while, and enrich them by their alluvium. The sea-coast rises hilly out of sand and clay wherefore it produces abundantly all sorts of herbs and trees.
The oak usually grows sixty to seventy feet high, for
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the most part free of knots, for which reason it is well adapted to ship-building. The Hickory trees furnish a hot and lasting fire and a curious appearance whenever the bush is cut away either for the purpose of more open hunting, or for clearing the ground for a bouwery.
Van der Donck also tells us that the country was so thickly wooded that those who cultivated the land cut down the trees ruthlessly, collected the wood into great heaps and burned it to get it out of the way. The Indians and the Dutch were also careless regarding the chestnuts. The Indians destroyed the trees by strip- ping off the bark for thatching their huts, and they frequently cut off the limbs to gather the nuts, - a practice followed by the Dutch. Pine trees grew so large inland that they were heavy and tall enough to be used for masts and spars of ships; the wild ash was plentiful, and there were also maples, linden, birch, yew, poplar, fir, alder, willow, thorn, sassafras, per- simmon, mulberry, wild cherry, crab, and oak trees. The white-wood, also known as canoe-wood because the Indians made canoes of it, was used by the settlers for flooring, because it was bright and free of knots.
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