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Staten Island, was called Staaten Eylandt by the Dutch, and Aquehonga Manacknong by the Indians residing there. They were Mohiccans, a tribe of the
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HISTORIC TALES
Lenni Lenape or Delawares. Seals were once nume- rous back of the Island, and in New- York harbour, near to the Communipaw side. Robins' reef near there (originally spelt Robyns rift), meant the scals' place ; " Robyn" being the name of a seal. Governor's Island was originally called Nooten Eylandt, or Nut Island, in reference to its abundance of nut trees ; and was formerly nearly joined to Long Island by a low intervening morass and a small dividing creek.
On the morning of the 12th September, Capt. Hud- son entered the mouth of the " Groot Rivier" and cast anchor, when 2S canoes, full of men, women, and children, came off to them ; but from fear of treachery they were not permitted to board. At noon his ship went onward two leagues higher. And now, having begun the memorable exploration of the river, we shall endeavour to mark his daily progress of ascent and descent, and carefully note the names of Indian tribes, and the names which they bestowed on localities ; for as their names were always expressive of things about the place, their preservation may some day serve to elucidate some dubious question in history.
In two days more Hudson reached the high and wild regions of West Point, where, looking around upon the elevation of 1500 feet, he records that " the land grew very high and mountainous." These moun- tain regions bore the name of Mateawan ; and there the Indians held the traditionary tale of the fearful mam- moth, called by them the Yagesho, which sometimes dismayed these highland Wabingi. The scenery was grand and sublime. " He perceived (says Moulton) at one time the narrow stream upon which he had entered, abruptly struggling with the angles of the hills, through
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broken rocks, under overhanging precipices, or along the base of perpendicular iron-bound summits, whose opposite sides indicated a former umon which some convulsion of nature had severed. Here a perpendicu- lar presented, there a declivity ; here terrace rose upon terrace, there rocks upon rocks : the whole a wild and magnificent scene." How their hearts must have throbbed with pure sublimity of emotion, seeing such rugged and horrific wilds, contemplating their own loneliness, so far in an unknown and dubious region ; fearing dangers, yet delighted with actual vision, with scenery so grand and picturesque !
By the 15th September he had passed the high mountains between Peekskill and Newburgh, making 50 miles in one day, and observing " great store of sal- mons in the river" (now all gone). He came at night to the place of the present Catskill Landing, where he found "a very loving people and very old man, by whom he and his crew were very well used." The manner of this reception may be interesting now to contemplate. Hudson was taken ashore in one of their canoes with an old man, a chief. The house he en- tered was neatly made of bark of trees, well finished within and without. He saw much of Indian corn and beans drying, enough to load three ships ; mats were spread to sit on, and eatables were immediately brought to them in wooden bowls. Two men were quickly sent off with bows and arrows for game, and soon returned with two pigeons. They also killed a fat dog, and skinned it with shells. Pumpkins, grapes, plums, and tobacco, grew about the place.
The next day, the 17th, Hudson anchored in the neighbourhood of the present Hudson city, little dream-
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ing then of his ever giving name to the place or to the river. About this place he lingered some time, as be- ing near the head of navigation, and still more he rested near the same place on his return, by reason of head winds ; just as if there were some mysterious connec- tion between his choice of a stopping-place and the choice made by posterity, in the year 1784, of a city in the same place to bear his distinguished name ! It was in this vicinity that their eyes were gratified with the sublime heights of the Kaatberges, where the highest, the Round Top, lifted its awful form 3,800 feet.
After making the necessary soundings, by boat, over the Overslaugh, the yatch reached in safety the Castle Island just below Albany. She was of course of easy draft, and must have been a small vessel, though called a ship ; probably of the burthen of sixty tons.
On the 19th September he again weighed anchor, and ascended six miles higher up; thus making his highest point of ascension equal to the upper end of the present Albany. The particulars of his stay there are related under the article concerning that settlement.
On the 23d, Hudson started on his return from Al- bany. In their descent they stopped in the neighbour- hood of the present Red Hook, and caught within an hour " two dozen of mullets, breames, basses, and bar- bils." When they anchored off the present Pough- keepsie, they were visited by some natives bringing with them Indian corn.
By the 29th he had arrived at the head of the Highlands, called by him "the northernmost of the mountains," where he anchored in or near the bay of the present Newburgh ; and then he could not forbear to make the remark, since so obvious to others, that
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" here was a very pleasant place to build a towne." Newburgh, so beautiful in its aspect and surrounding scenery seen from the river, has every thing to delight the eye. At this place he was visited by the Wa- bingi.
The next stopping-place was in the vicinity of Stony . Point, and at the mouth of Haverstraw Bay. Here the natives, the proper Highlanders, came in numbers to the ship, expressing their admiration at what they saw of the great canoe and the white skins. One of them, in his eagerness to get something away which might gratify curiosity at home, had attempted clandes- tinely to enter the cabin windows, when the mate with heedless cruelty struck off his hand with a sabre, and the poor fellow fell back into the water and was drowned.
The next day, the 2d of October, they reached the neighbourhood of Fort Washington, where they were assailed with the arrows of some assembled natives, who came off in canoes. Fire arms and cannon were discharged in return, by which nine of the Indians were killed ; a deplorable severity.
On the 4th October Hudson " left the great mouth of the great river," and with full sail put off to sea. Thus terminated about one month of successful exploration, in a fine season, and with almost continual fine weather. He was just eleven days in ascending and eleven more in returning. Several times he was grounded, but was readily got off. Such small vessels was the practice of the age. Vessels of only 20 to 30 tons went out to Virginia from England. A steam vessel, since, bearing the name of " Hudson," performs now the same voyage in almost as many hours as Hudson then used days !
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Such were the results to which he was so unconsciously opening his introductory measures,
As a navigator, Hudson seems to have been prudent, skilful, dignified, and humane; and well deserved to have Lived to have witnessed some of the developments of his eventful discovery. But his noble career was soon closed. After arriving at Dartmouth in England, on the 7th November, after a safe voyage, and acquiring great fame for his discovery, he embarked again in April 1610, on his favourite expedition-the discovery of the north-west passage to India. In the neighbourhood of Iceland his crew mutinied; and on Sunday the 21st June, 1611, they forced Capt. Hudson and his youthful son, and seven others, adrift in a shallop ; and, painful to tell, they were never heard of more! Whether they got to Digg's cape, which was purposed, and massa- cred ; or whether involved in inextricable masses of driving ice and perished, heaven only knows. The mutineers, after much peril and sufferings of hunger, and a loss of more than half their number, reached Ire- land September 6, 1611.
None of the name of Hudson appeared to survive and to enjoy, as a family pre-eminence, the honours of this famed navigator, probably because he may have left no male issue. One of his family connection, Wm. Hudson, who settled at Philadelphia at the foundation of that city, was a distinguished man ; once a clergy- man in Barbadoes, he became a friend, and left a re- spectable family, now extinct in its male issue.
Another exploration was instituted by the West India Company, in sending out, in 1614, two ships com- manded by Capt. Adrian Blok and Hendrick Christia- anse. The former arrived first, and his ship having
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accidentally burned, he built another on the East River ; a first demonstration to the simple natives of the superior skill of the Charistooni-iron workers. With this vessel he made his examinations along that river to Helle-gadt. To the Sound he gave the name of Groot Bai-great bay, and examined, as he proceeded, the places along its shores. At the far end he met with Schipper Christiaanse, and both vessels soon after proceeded to their investigations up the great river, the Hudson ; leaving behind them to perpetuate their memory Blok Island and Christiaanse Eylandt, the same since called No Man's land or Martha's Vineyard. They proceeded up to Castle Island, Albany, and there made a settlement.
It may be mentioned in conclusion, as to the nations and residences of the Indians, that the Mohiccans (Mohicanni) dwelt on the eastern side of the Hudson, from the Tappan sea up to its head. The Mohawks (spelt Maquas and Mackwaas) held all the western side, from the head waters to the Kaatskill mountains. The Wabingi, called Wappingers in later years by the Eng- lish, together with the Sankikani, occupied from thence down to Amboy bay. The Mohawks on the western side, were in general unfriendly to the Mohiccans on the other side, and eventually became their conquerors.
The " Racks" so called, along the river, were Dutch names for Reaches. Thus, Martelaers rack meant the Martyr's reach or struggling place ; Lange rack, was- Long reach ; and Klauver rack, Clover reach, &c.
It might perhaps serve to show the former peaceful state of the Hudson waters, to state a fact recorded by Vander Donck, as a fact known to himself. at the time, and sufficiently strange to us now, that in the spring of
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1647, two whales swam up the river many miles : one returned and stranded about 10 or 12 miles from the sea- shore ; the other kept on, and stranded not far from Cahoe's Falls, at what is since called Whale Island, opposite the city of Troy. The oil was secured by the inhabitants, but the flesh long tainted the air of the country. Kalm, in 1749, confirmed the above, in say- ing it was then a report at Albany that a whale had once got up the river quite to the town : he also men- tioned that porpoises even then occasionally got up there.
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THE FIRST COLONISTS.
"First in the race, that won their country's fame."
THE earliest colonists who came out for professed pur- poses of permanent settlement, were those brought out . in 1623, in the ship of Capt. Kornelis Jacobse Mey. Soon after, two ships of the West India Company brought out as professed agriculturists, the Waalons from. the river Waal, and having for their first governor or director, Peter Minuit. They appear to have settled in 1625 upon Long Island, at a bend of the shore at .Brooklyn, called Wal-bocht, a word importing the Waa- loon bend : a place since noted for being, at its high river bank, the depository of eleren thousand of the American dead, from the prison ships in the time of the war of the revolution. Jan Joris Rapaelje appears to have been their chief man ; and his daughter Sarah,
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- born 9th June, 1625, and afterwards the widow Foley, was long honoured as " the first-born child ;" and for that cause was presented a iract of land by the governor, in consideration of that distinction and her widowhood.
The terms of encouragement to agriculturists and settlers was great, and especially to those who should go out to the " Groot Rivier" of Hudson, with the en- terprize, force, and capital of Patroons ; a name denoting something baronial and lordly in rank and means. They were such as should undertake to plant a colony of fifty souls, upwards of 15 years old ; taking them out, if needful, in divisions of a fourth cach in four years. To such the preference was given in absolute property, of such lands as they should choose, being four miles along the river and as far back as they desired ; and all goods which they should want at any time import- ed, was to be done for them at $7} a ton. The passen- gers were to have been transported in the ships of the company, paying only for passage and provisions six stuyvers daily, equal to but 12} cents per day. Only think what an inconsiderable sum to allure emigrants to settle a land such as New-York is now known to be. And yet but very few so took up lands as virtual lords of manors ! All other individuals going out as settlers, were free to take up as much land "as they should have ability and property to improve ;" and pro- vided also, that " they should satisfy the Indians for the land they should settle upon." One of the most exception- able features in the terms, in our sense of morality now, was, that the company would " use their endeavour to supply the colonists with as many blacks as they con- veniently can." 'To this cause the hateful traffic began ; and the Indians, who first saw them, pronounced
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HISTORIC TALES
them a. race of devils. Killian Van Renselaer, a direc- tor and merchant of Amsterdam, was among the first- named Patroons, who procured his location at and about the present Albany, to which lands he in 1630 gave the name of Renselaerwyck. The Patroon himself settled on the first large island below the present Alba- ny, where he laid out a place called Renselaerburgh. Those who can now pass the place in the steamboats should look out the position, and reflect on its change from then to now ! The same family, now resident in Albany and very wealthy, bear now the name of "the Patroon." Michael Pauuw, another director, took up the lands of " Hobocan Hackingh, lying opposite the island Manhates," New-York, to which he gave the name of Pavonia ; but as he never made any settlements, his lands reverted.
NOTICES OF EARLY DUTCH TIMES.
" Such once ;- no longer such,-are passed away."
IN endeavouring to rescue from oblivion some of the early traits of character which marked the age of the founders, we may, with Mr. Moulton's history, notice but to condemn it-that "affectation of squeamishness in some, who now revolt at the idea of coming in contact with the rude founders of our country ; as if such facts of our domestic history were beneath the dignity of his- tory, so called : they would restrict it only to great personages and great events; and thus by too much
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generalization lose in individual interest more than could be gained in abstract philosophy and politics."
We shall therefore endeavour to exhibit something characteristic of the times, the doings, and the familiar concerns, of those Dutch burghers.
The Dutch Reformed were always thorough church- going members, and fully fraught with ardent zeal for all the faith of Calvin. They therefore gave no counte- nance to Lutherans, Jews, Quakers, &c. But when the English came to rule, it sufficiently chagrined them to see Governor Lovelace so lax, as in 1674 to autho- rize the Lutheran congregation to erect a church, and to " seek benevolence from their brethren here and on the Delaware." It was about this time that Edmundson, a friend from England, was allowed to preach to such as would assemble. He held his first meeting at an inn, where the magistrates also attended, probably as much to check and restrain errors as to profit them- selves. The celebrated Geo. Fox was also in the neighbourhood, preaching on Long Island, and particu- larly to a congregation under a great oak tree, still standing at Flushing, the property of the Bowne family. All this toleration was strikingly different from the pre- vious rule under the Dutch governor Stuyvesant. He had ordered the head of the above-named family out to Holland for trial, for the public performance of his reli- gious views as a Quaker. About that time the public peace had been disturbed by those Quakers, whom the Friends themselves sometimes censured as "ranters." Such a one, as the records state, " pretending to be di- vinely inspired, came into the city and made terrible hue and cry in the streets and on the bridge, crying woe, woe, to the crowne of pride and the drunkards of
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Ephraim : Twoo woes past, and the third comming, except you repent. Repent-repent, as the kingdom of God is at hand !" He also entered the church, mak- ing a great noise, for the purpose of disturbance, as their manner was. Finally, he was prosecuted, flogged, and banished.
The Dutch Reformed Church-" the Gereformeerde Kerck," was erected within the fort by Gov. Keift in - 1642, being a stone structure, with split oaken shingles then called " wooden slate." The cause and manner of its establishment has been curiously related by De Vries, saying, "as I was every day with Comdr. Keift, I told him, that as he had now made a fine tavern-the . Stadt-herberg, at Coenties slip-that we also wanted very badly a church ; for until then we had nothing but a mean barn (in appearance) for our worship; whereas in New England, their first concern was a fine church, and we ought to do the same. Wherefore, I told him I would contribute a hundred guilders, and he, as governor, should precede me. Whereupon we agreed, and chose J. P. Kuyter and I. C. Damen, with themselves, as four Kerck-Meesters to superintend the building. John and Richard Ogden contracted to build the same of stone for 2500 guilders, say 416/. It was to be 72 feet by 52 feet, and 16 feet high. After its con- struction, the town bell was removed to it. There it was a kind of fac totum, and may possibly account for the present partiality for campanalary music still so fostered and prevalent in New-York. All mechanics and labourers began and ended work at the ringing; all tavern-keepers shut house after the ringing ; courts and suitors assembled at the ringing ; and deaths and funerals were announced by the toll.
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New-York, like other colonies, had also its plague of . witchcraft. In 1665 a man and wife were arraigned and tried as witches, and a special verdict of guilty was brought in by the jury against one of them. In 1672 the inhabitants of West Chester complained to the governor and council against a witch which had come among them ; she having been before imprisoned and condemned as a witch at Hartford. In 1673 a similar complaint was also made ; but the military governor, Capt. Colve, a son of the ocean, not under this land in- fluence perhaps, treated it as idle or superstitious, and so dismissed the suit. We thus see that Salem was not exclusive in her alarms ; but that New-York, Con- necticut, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, each severally had their trials of witchcraft. .
The city schoolmasters were always, ex officio, clerks, choristers, and visiters of the sick.
In the early times reed and straw roofs and wooden chimneys were so common in ordinary houses, that they had regularly appointed overseers to inspect them and guard them against fires.
They were accustomed to plant May-poles on New Year's and May-days. Sometimes they planted a May-pole, adorned with ragged stockings, before the door of a newly-wedded bridegroom.
The Dutch were remarkable in their choice of high sounding names for their vessels; an old record, de- scribing a collection at one time in New-York, gives such names as the following, to wit: The Angel Ga- briel, King David, Queen Esther, King Solomon, Arms of Renselaerwyck, Arms of Stuyvesant. The Great Christopher, the Crowned Sea Beers, the Spotted Cow, &c.
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New-York was once distinguished for its manufacture and trade in Indian wampum, called seawant, deriving the material from Long Island, which place the Indians called Sewanhacky, importing the Land of Shells. They made the chief of it from periwinkles and quahaugs, (clams), and sometimes from the inside of oyster shells .* This when rounded into proper shape, became the pro- per money of the Indians ; and with this, all who pur- posed to trade with them for. furs, &c. provided them- selves at New-York. A. letter of governor Penn's is on record, wherein he speaks of his having sent there from Philadelphia to make " his purchases of wampum, at great prices." For numerous years, while coin was scarce or unnecessary, it was the custom to pay off the company's officers, and even the clergy too, in seawant or beavers. The current value of the seawant was six beads of the white, or three of the black, for an En- glish penny. The value and importance once attached to this seemingly strange money in our consideration now, may be seen set forth, in 1641, in an ordinance of the city council sanctioned by governor Keift, saying, " that a great deal of bad seawant, nasty rough things, imported from other places," was in circulation, while " the good splendid seawant, usually called Manhat- tan's seawant, was out of sight or exported, which must cause the ruin of the country !" Therefore, it is added, that " all coarse seawant, well stringed, should pass at six for one stuyver only ; but that the well polished, at
* Heckewelder says, " The universal name the Monseys had for New-York was Laapawachking, the place of stringing wam- pum beads. Those Indians saying, that once the Indians there were every where seen stringing beads and wampum which the whites gave them."
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four for a stuyver." In 1657 they were publicly re- duced from 6 to S for a stuyver, which is twopence. The wampum was used greatly by the Indians to de- corate and ornament their persons. The women strung theirs, and hung them round their necks and sewed them on their moccasins and mantles.
The Dutch bore several names among the Indians. They called them Swannakwak or Swanekens ; also Assyreoni, the cloth makers ; Charistooni, the iron work- ers ; Sankhicanni, the fire workers, in allusion to their use of matchlocks.
The lands on York Island, without the bounds of the town walls, along Wall street, appertained to the com- pany, and were either used for public grazing grounds for the town cows, sheep, er swine, or else for the Go- vernor's farms, under the names of Bouwerys. The Bouwery or farm sold to governor Stuyvesant in 1631, now so invaluable as building lots in the hands of his descendants, was originally purchased by him for 6,400 guilders (1,066l.), and having besides the land, "a dwelling-house, barn, reek-lands, six cows, two horses, and two young negroes."
On another farm the company erected a wint molen (wind-will) for the use of the town. Its site was by the Broadway, between the present Liberty and Court- land streets. The first having decayed, it was ordered, in 1662, that there be another on the same ground " outside of the city land-port (gate) on the company's farm."
There was once a water mill near the kolch, having its outlet of water to the North river. In order to ob- tain more water for the mill, the use of the vallies was granted to the miller ; and as the race he had dug ad-
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mitted the salt water occasionally into the kolch of fresh water, to its injury, he was required by law, in 1661, to hang a waste gate so as to bar the passage of the salt water.
We may close this article with some little notices and recollections of Dutch manners, as they appeared in their last remains when receding from the innovations of later times, to wit :
Capt. Graydon, who was a prisoner on Long Island in the war of independence, and was quartered at Flat Bush, speaks of his neighbours as a quiet inoffen- sive people ; as too unaspiring and contented to have ever made a revolution from their own impulse. Their religion, like their other habits, were all plain and un- ostentatious : A silent grace before meat was their general family habit. The principal personage in every Dutch village was the "domine" or minister ; and their manner of preaching was extremely colloquial and familiar. Their most frequent diet was clams, called clippers ; and their unvaried supper was supon (mush) ; sometimes with milk, but more generally with butter- milk, blended with molasses. Their blacks, when they had them, were very free and familiar ; sometimes sauntering about among the whites at meal time, with hat on head, and freely joining occasionally in conver- sation, as if they were one and all of the same house- hold.
The hospitality and simple plainness of New-York city, down to the period of 1790 and 1800, was very peculiar. All felt and praised it. Nothing was too good, and no attention too engrossing for a stranger. It was a passport to every thing kind and generous. All who were introduced, invited him to their home and
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