USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 20
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CHAPTER VII
THE INDIAN WAR
1643-1645
(GOVERNOR KIEFT)
It is known to all right-thinking men here that the Indians have lived as lambs among us until a few years ago, injuring no one, affording every assistance to our nation. . . . The Director hath, by various uncalled-for proceedings, from time to time so estranged them from us and embittered them against the Dutch nation that we do not believe anything will bring them back unless the Lord God, who bends all men's hearts to his will, propitiate them. - The Eight Men of New Amsterdam to the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company. 1644.
EIGHTEEN languages were spoken among the four or five hundred people of different sects and nations at Fort Am- sterdam. So, Father Jogues recorded, Governor Kieft had told him. Under the walls of the fort, he added, scarcely any one lived except 'mechanics who ply their trades,' but all the farmers and traders 'scattered here and there on the river above and below' resorted to the village to transact their business and their law affairs. The public records also bear witness to the presence of one or more individuals from almost a score of European lands. There were already living or tarrying on Manhattan Dutchmen and Flemings, Walloons and Frenchmen, Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes, with some Englishmen and an occasional Scotchman, Irish- man, German, Pole, Bohemian, Portuguese, and Italian. No Spaniards can be identified. The term Norman or Noor- man, which often occurs, meant a Scandinavian (Northman) while Normand meant a Norman in our sense of the word.
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The names of many of these pioneer New Netherlanders are still well known in New York. Some have already been mentioned - Rapelye, Bergen, Bogart, Bogardus, De Forest, Van Dyck, Ver Planck, Opdyck, Kierstede, La Montagne, Ogden, and Cornell. Others introduced by the time of Gov- ernor Kieft were Hardenberg, Hendricks, De Witt, Duryea, Provoost, Wynkoop, De Kay, Snedeker, Blauvelt, Meserole, Riker, Coster, Van Vorst, Duyckinck, Wendell, Brinckerhoff, and Cowenhoven; and among those of English origin Valen- tine, Lawrence, Townsend, Thorne, and Underhill. A few of the first American bearers of these names were men of good birth and education but most of them had been farmers, artisans, or sailors at home and were described as 'wholly without means' on their arrival in the New World.
Of course good birth is not disproved by the fact that a man came penniless to America and worked here in some fashion which in Europe was thought ignoble. On the other hand, men of lowly birth as well as lowly occupation could achieve prominence in New Netherland. For example, Gov- ert Lockermans, according to the testimony of Secretary Van Tienhoven, came in 1633 as cook's mate on one of the Company's vessels and was taken by Van Twiller into the Company's service as clerk but soon became a 'freeman.' Then he served as skipper of the first regular packet-boat plying between New Amsterdam and Fort Orange, took charge of the business of a firm in Holland, traded on his own account, and in after years was one of the richest men in the province and one of the few whose name sometimes appears on the records with the respectful Heer (Mr.) pre- fixed.
It is also well to remember, when the forefathers of New York are in question, that neither the early use of a coat of arms nor the bearing of a sonorous surname with the particle van or de testified to aristocratic lineage.
Feudal customs did not bequeath to the Netherland prov- inces as perfectly developed, rigidly persistent a social system as to other parts of Europe. While they were under Spanish
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rule titles were bestowed by various overlords but family devices were not regulated. Under the Republic no titles were conferred and the old nobility lost power and prestige, everywhere almost 'extinguished,' Sir William Temple wrote, during 'the long wars with Spain,' and shorn of influence by the upgrowth of a burgher aristocracy graduated from the walks of trade. Therefore at the time when New Nether- land was settled few Hollanders had an inherited right to use armorial bearings; and this fact made it seem permissible to those who cared for such trappings to adopt, as they grew prosperous in the New World, coats of arms with whatever devices they might select. In regard to names conditions were just as free and were more confused.
Amid the masses of the population hereditary surnames scarcely existed as yet. The common usage was the same that still prevails among the immigrants who come to us from Scandinavia. To the Christian name was added merely the father's with a suffix meaning son - zoon or zen (abbre- viated in writing to z.), sen, se, or s. A William who was the son of a John was Willem Janszoon (Jansz.), Janssen, Jansen, or Jans, while his son John was Jan Willemsen, subject to as many variations. Thus the son of Roelof and Annetje Jans was known as Jan Roelofsen, and Sarah, the eldest daughter of Joris Rapelje (the first-born daughter of New Netherland), was sometimes called Sarah Joresey. As the years went on, these patronymics often became permanent surnames: Jan- sen or Willemsen was established, like Johnson or William- son among the English, as the family name. Or, as confu- sions thus naturally arose, a more distinctive appellation was assumed or bestowed and was often attached to the patro- nymic by the particle van or de.
Although the Dutch van means 'of' it does not now, like the German von, denote noble or gentle birth, nor did it have this significance in the seventeenth century. While great Dutch landowners had often assumed it with the name of their estates so had the lessee of such an estate or of part of it, . or even a minor tenant or servant - just as many of our own
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negroes appropriated the surnames of their masters. Used with the name of a city, town, village, or district it served to distinguish some one who had moved from this place to another. The remarkable number, says Winkler, of names with van denoting foreign lands and places bears witness to the multitude of the strangers who settled in the Low Countries, and the equally large number of those denoting home localities shows how greatly the native population shifted as a result of the chances of war and of commercial develop- ment. The van was also used with a mere Christian name, with that of some landmark near a dwelling, and with In later characterizing epithets of many another sort. times it was sometimes assumed as a mark of gentility like the German von - and sometimes very illogically, as when it was set before a name which already had a prefix or suf- fix of the same meaning as its own. Furthermore, many noble families dropped their old names as well as their titles in republican times. When the Republic had come to an end, when the provinces formed part of the empire of Napoleon, the use of surnames was still so far from universal that the people were ordered to assume them in order to facilitate the keeping of what would now be called registers of vital statistics. And then some of the old families took new names while others resumed the old ones that they had discarded.
Thus it will be understood that in the Holland of to-day surnames have slight historical significance. Families of high and of low degree often bear the same name, with or without the van, and many noble names lack the particle while it frequently appears over the doors of shops and on hucksters' carts. It is the same with ver, as in Ver Planck, which is merely a contraction of van der, 'of the.'
Still less significance as a mark of high birth had the de in Netherland names. Even the French de lacked its present value until Louis XIV ennobled it, so to say, at a later time than the birth-time of New Netherland. And the role of the Dutch de, which means not 'of' but 'the,' has always been simply to attach to the Christian name or patronymic some
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identifying nickname or geographical adjective. So it is, of course, with other prefixes like ter and ten, contractions meaning 'at the' or 'by the,' and with op which means 'on.' Thus De Wolf ('the wolf'), De Haas ('the hare'), De Meyer ('the farmer'), and De Ruyter ('the horseman'), to cite names well known in New York, are no more aristocratic in origin than Paauw ('peacock'), nor Vandervoort ('of the ford') than Gansevoort ('goose-ford'). The name of an early settler on Long Island, Pieter Andriessen De Schoorsteen- veger, has a less grandiose sound when it is translated into Peter Anderson the Chimneysweep.
Among the Dutch and Flemish names that have survived in New York many were of Old World origin, most of them, like Van Dyck, Op Dyck, and Vam Dam ('of the dike,' 'on the dike,' and 'of the dam'), being common names in Hol- land. Very often, however, surnames were assumed on this side of the ocean, sometimes being used at first only in sign- ing legal papers. In neither case does a likeness between an American name and one that now exists in the Netherlands afford proof of kinship.
Naturally many of the names here assumed denoted the bearer's place of birth. Some of these, like Van Amsterdam and De Swede, seem to have died out while others survive, like Van Antwerp and Van Wyck, the latter referring to a little town on a branch of the Scheldt. Many surnames brought to America or adopted here denoted trades. Bleecker is 'bleacher,' Coster is 'sexton,' Brower is 'brewer.' Knicker- bocker, which Washington Irving established as a synonym for Dutch-American aristocracy, is properly Knickerbacker, a baker or burner of china knick-knacks. Latinized names were imported from the fatherland where they were assumed, very often, as a proof of university education. Such were the names of the three clergymen, Michaelius, Bogardus, and Megapolensis, transmogrified from Michielzoon or Mich- ielsen, Bogert, and Mecklenburg. Nicknames, of course, grew up in numbers. For instance, the first bearer of a name now honorably known in many parts of America was a tailor
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whose signature for years was Hendrick Hendricksen but afterwards Hendrick Hendricksen Kip - kip meaning a hen or the band that ties a bundle of dried fish.
These facts explain why it is that in the chronicles of New Netherland so many persons appear under different names. After Kip acquired his surname he was sometimes referred to as Hendrick Snyder Kip, snyder meaning tailor, and occasionally as Hendrick Op Kippenburg, Kippenburg being the name he gave his residence. Kuyter was commonly called simply Jochem Pietersen, and Captain De Vries, whose surname meant 'the Frieslander,' simply David Pietersen or occasionally David Pietersen Van Hoorn, Hoorn being his place of birth. The carpenter, Hans Hansen, who married Sarah Rapelje was variously labelled with identifying names, appearing in the records as Hans Hansen Noorman or De Noorman (the Norwegian), as Hans Hansen Van Bergen in Noorwegen, a form that fully described his birthplace, and more curtly as Hans Hansen Bergen. His descendants, who happen to be Bergens, might just as well have been De Noor- mans. Nicholas De Meyer who became a leading citizen in English times usually wrote his name N. D. Meijer (ij being used in Dutch as equivalent to y) but was sometimes written about as Nicholas Meyer Van Hamburg, sometimes as Nicholas Van Holstein or as Nicholas De Meijer Van Hol- stein. Cornelis Maessen, one of the tobacco planters whom Van Rensselaer sent to his colony in its early days, stood on the list of settlers as Cornelis Maessen Van Buermalsen. His son was known for a time as Martin Cornelissen but eventually adapted and adopted the name of his father's birthplace and transmitted it to his children's children. One of these in the fifth generation was the President of the United States, Martin Van Buren. Again, a certain Oloff Stevensen, possibly a Scandinavian as Oloff is not a Dutch name, came out in 1637 as a private soldier in the employ of the West India Company. A correspondent of Van Rensselaer's, he seems to have been an educated person. Kieft appointed him one of the first inspectors of tobacco; and, quickly ris-
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ing through minor civil posts to be the Company's collector of customs and going into business on his own account as a brewer, he made himself one of the most influential men in the province, married a sister of Govert Lockermans, added Van Cortlandt to the two names that had sufficed him for many years, and founded a family which for generations played a leading part in New York. The Van Cortlandt coat of arms with its windmill sails seems to bear witness to its assumption by an ambitious New World brewer.
English surnames were by this time well established. They show few confusing variations except such as were wrought by Dutch pens dealing phonetically with unfamiliar sounds.
The most conspicuous Englishmen in New Netherland in the time of Governor Kieft were Isaac Allerton and John Underhill.
Allerton has already been mentioned as one of the early settlers at Plymouth. In fact, he was one of the chief of those who came on the Mayflower with the party from Leyden, one of the ten to whose names, on the list that Bradford drew up of these first emigrants to New England, he prefixed the 'Master' (Mr.) which denoted gentle birth. Yet Allerton had worked as a tailor at Leyden where he was admitted a freeman of the city. At Plymouth he served as assistant governor, was one of eight persons who assumed for a time the responsibility for the debt owed by the colony to its backers, and more than once was sent as its agent to England. Bradford accuses him of managing its affairs rashly or dis- honestly, but the charges are not specific and are not sus- tained by other evidence. The most prosperous for a time of the Plymouth settlers Allerton was the first trader in New England who could rightly be called a merchant. Choosing the spot as the headquarters for his large fleet of fishing boats he was the founder of Marblehead. Commercial misfortunes overtaking him, in 1638 . he removed to New Amsterdam where he stayed ten years, acting as consignee of the English
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vessels that traded in the port and, in partnership with Govert Lockermans, growing prosperous again through coastwise ventures and the traffic in tobacco. His ware- house stood on the East River shore near the present site of Fulton Market.
John Underhill came of a Warwickshire family of military antecedents - the family from which William Shakespeare, when he grew prosperous, bought New Place, then the largest house in Stratford-on-Avon. He had served with credit in the army in the Low Countries, Ireland, and Spain, and had married a Dutch wife. The first person of his profession to find employment in New England, he was hired by the new- born Company of Massachusetts Bay at a salary of £50 a year, came out with Winthrop in 1630, drilled the militia of Boston and Roxbury, and commanded the Massachusetts contingent when the allied New Englanders crushed the Pequots. Of this war his tract called News from America, published in 1638 when he had gone back for a time to Eng- land, gives a more complete and a more picturesque account than does Gardiner's Relation.
Returning to Massachusetts Underhill, as Winthrop relates, was one of the half-dozen 'principal signers' of a petition on behalf of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson who 'stood to justify' it and were therefore deprived of their offices and disenfran- chised. Other grievances the commonwealth had against him. Once it accused him of sin on two special counts: he had called its people Scribes and Pharisees and had said that he came to his 'assurance of salvation' while smoking a pipe of tobacco. Giving many dramatic details Winthrop tells furthermore of charges of seduction and adultery in answer to which Underhill publicly apologized with hypo- critical tears; but it is hard now to judge of the degree of truth in these tales, for Underhill displeased the authorities by his advocacy of free speech as well as by his free ways of life, and, moreover, certain words were used by the Puritans in a sense that they do not now convey. In 1638, in the most amusing letter that has come down to us from Puritan days,
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Underhill informed his friend Hansard Knowles that he had been 'convened' before Sir Henry Vane, then governor of the Bay Colony, Cotton, Hugh Peters, and others for com- mitting 'a certain act of adultery' with one Mistress Miriam Wilbore - that is, for pointedly staring at her 'at the lec- ture in Boston.' The lady, he explained, had
. . . since been dealt with for coming to that lecture with a pair of wanton open worked gloves, slit at the thumbs and fingers for the purpose of taking snuff. For, as Master Cotton observed, for what end should those vain openings be, but for the intent of taking filthy snuff ? and he quoted Gregory Nazianzen upon good works.
Underhill, he confessed, had indeed stared at Mistress Wilbore but 'did not look at the woman lustfully.' Then
Master Peters said, 'Why did you not look at Sister Newell, or Sister Upham?' I said, Verily they are not desirable women, as to temporal graces. Then Hugh Peters and all cried, 'It is enough, he hath confessed,' and so passed excommunication. I said, Where is the law by which you condemn me? Winthrop said, 'There is a committee to draught laws; I am sure Brother Peters has made a law against this very sin.' Master Cotton read from his Bible, 'Whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.'
Evidently the free-spoken soldier had a sense of humor which may well have exasperated beyond the bounds of veracious comment those whom he pitied as 'proud Phari- sees ' seriously laboring 'about the mint and cummin.' To judge by his writings he was as pious as they; yet by his own confession his ways of living were loose; and so, as will appear, was his reading of the obligations imposed by an oath of allegiance.
Banished from Boston he figured for a time as the governor of Piscataqua (Dover). Ousted from this place and driven to a public acknowledgment of his transgressions at Boston, he secured forgiveness from its rulers but never lived under them again. In 1639, while he was at Dover, Governor Kieft
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issued a permit to 'Governor Onderhill' who resided 'toward the north' and a few families, allowing them to settle in his province on the customary terms. Underhill, however, settled at Stamford in New Haven Colony where he must have been well esteemed as he served as commander of the local militia, assistant justice, and delegate to the general court. He did not appear on Manhattan until it sadly needed his help against Indian enemies.
The mixture of many nationalities on and near Manhat- tan bore natural fruit in a broadening of that democratic spirit which even in a purely Dutch community would have contrasted strongly with the spirit of the New England colo- nies, always excepting Rhode Island.
Although in these colonies there were many men of demo- cratic temper and ideals, and although even the dominant spirit was republican as it expressed itself in outward politi- cal forms, it was for the most part oligarchical in the adminis- tration of such forms and aristocratic in essence. In Mas- sachusetts all freeholders could attend town meeting and all had to pay taxes and to help in the support of the orthodox clergy, but the 'freemen' who were entitled to hold office and to vote for the governor and the members of the general court included none but adherents in good standing of the established Puritan church; and these, as the years went on, formed an ever decreasing minority until at the time of the Restoration, when Charles II wished the colony to abolish the religious test, not more than one in five or six of its adult males could vote. Moreover, many of its leading men ex- plicitly expressed anti-democratic sentiments. One was John Cotton. One was Governor Winthrop who wrote that among most civilized nations democracy was 'accounted the meanest and worst form of government.' Another was Nathaniel Ward who framed the code called the Body of Liberties, adopted in 1641. He doubted, he wrote to Win- throp, whether such things should be submitted 'to the com- mon consideration of the freemen.' Both commonwealth and
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church, he thought, had perhaps 'descended too low already,' adding :
I see the spirits of people run high and what they get they hold. They may not be denied their proper and lawful liberties, but I ques- tion whether it be of God to interest the inferior sort in that which should be reserved 'inter optimates penes quos est sancire leges.'
New Haven also established religio-political tests; and while Plymouth did not, nor Connecticut except for the office of governor, neither granted the franchise except upon certificates of moral qualification.
In Virginia social distinctions were marked from the first and were emphasized by the advent of great numbers of bond- servants. As strong a line was not drawn in New England between the laborer and those of higher social standing yet great deference was paid to good blood, education, wealth, and the social position that these implied. In Massachu- setts the right to be called 'Mr.' was reserved to those who by virtue of their birth could claim it in England, and to magistrates, ministers, and physicians; and it was formally taken away from any one who while holding it disgraced him- self. In New Haven on a list of seventy freemen drawn up in 1639 'Mr.' was prefixed to eighteen names and 'Goodman' to six while the others had no prefix at all. Discriminating sumptuary statutes were frequently enacted in Connecticut and in Massachusetts where, says Winthrop of the year 1634, many laws were passed 'against tobacco and immodest fash- ions and costly apparel.' On the lists of Harvard College the students were ranked not alphabetically but according to their social standing; and this system, which conferred certain privileges on the socially elect, persisted until 1773. In New Haven as well as in Massachusetts seats in the meeting- house were allotted with scrupulous regard to the same prin- ciples of discrimination. In short, the 'gentry' and the 'generality' were clearly and officially differentiated. In Massachusetts especially all high offices were reserved to the gentry, and above this class again stood the clerical clique -
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at the top in dignity and in authority although without offi- cial recognition of its preëminence. The spirit thus shown naturally resulted in quasi-permanent place-holding although it did not effect the creation of hereditary offices.
In New Amsterdam there were as yet no political privileges but there were no oligarchical restrictions, there was no aris- tocratic atmosphere; and, when political agitation began, the humblest free settler had as good a chance as his richer and better-born neighbors to make his voice heard and his influence felt and to win the prize of office. There was less civil liberty but more natural liberty. There were none but ex officio distinctions of rank and these, of course, did not amount to distinctions of class. No sumptuary laws were ever thought of, and no ordinances concerned themselves with forms of address or with social questions of any sort. Persons who were addressed in Holland as Heer or Sieur were some- times so denominated in public papers; but no rule was fol- lowed, and the same terms were soon occasionally bestowed, without any regard to Old World antecedents, upon men who by their own efforts had raised themselves in the New World above the level of the mass of their fellows. The ex-cook Govert Lockermans is an instance in point.
Only a Dutch colony could contentedly have become so cosmopolitan in blood that all class distinctions of necessity disappeared. The New Englanders must have thought that a mixed and unstratified population like New Amsterdam's could never mould itself into a coherent, promisingly vital community. Yet race antagonisms among its white inhab- itants seem to have played no part at all in its troubles until, at a later day than Governor Kieft's, the desire of the English to secure the province for themselves grew strong.
Although no people surpassed the Dutch in the love of liberty and none had kept pace with them in securing its best fruits, they were not as well practised as the English in for- mulating liberal political ideas and principles. The settlers near Fort Amsterdam troubled themselves little about the
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government which they had pledged themselves to obey until they realized that it limited their personal freedom and in- jured their corporate welfare. Then, through their Twelve Men, they asked for a share in its management. The request came to nothing, but fair promises from Governor Kieft, peace with the Indians, and increasing prosperity quieted endeavor for a while. When fresh troubles came a more emphatic demand soon followed.
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