USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 26
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and David Provoost who, he said, were not only selling arms to the Indians but also threatening that the Dutch would fight the English and engage the savages to help them.
Up the North River also old troubles were growing more acute. During the sixteen years that elapsed between the establishment of Rensselaerswyck and the death of the patroon in 1646 he had sent out only two hundred and ten settlers. A few had joined them who had immigrated in other ways, but the American-born among them were not yet grown and the settlement was still small. It was still administered from Holland by the two trustees of Kiliaen's son Johan, known as the second patroon. One of these trustees was Wouter Van Twiller. To take control on the spot they sent out Brandt Van Slechtenhorst. He boldly denied Stuyvesant's right to any authority within the patroonship. Stuyvesant insisted that the Company had the same rights there as in the other communities that had been formed within the province. In the spring of 1648 he went up to Fort Orange, forbade the patroon's officials to pass any trading regulations without his sanction, and ordered that no building in the little village of Beverwyck should stand within musket-shot of the fort which could not be protected if closely encircled. The site was part of the patroonship, Van Slechtenhorst main- tained, adding that under any conditions the fort was a use- less semblance of a stronghold. Giving orders for its repair Stuyvesant returned to Manhattan and sent up a few soldiers with directions to demolish any houses that might be begun on the forbidden tract. More wise than he, the soldiers re- frained from violence; but they quarrelled so with the local authorities that the Indians marvelled and, highly indignant at the presence of 'Wooden Leg's dogs,' could hardly be kept from doing them hurt.
On Manhattan Wooden Leg's people more and more loudly complained that he did not impartially administer the laws against smuggling, exacted tariff dues to the amount of thirty per cent, which was much more than the Company had pre-
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scribed, unduly favored the traders from New England at their expense, and was trying to engross the 'trade of the whole colony' for himself, having shops of his own, brew-houses, and shares in ships. When he condemned to death three persons whom he accused of trafficking in firearms 'many good men' protested so strenuously that he commuted the sentence. When he tried to collect the debts owing to the Company, including the tenths from the harvests which were to be paid after ten years' occupancy of land and were now falling due, the people cried that he was not discharging the Company's own debts and the Nine Men pointed out to him the 'desolate and ruinous' condition of his province. He consented to postpone the collection but otherwise, he said, could do no more than obey the Company's orders. Then the commonalty decided to appeal over the Company's head to the States General. Stuyvesant commended the idea but said that it must be carried out as he should prescribe. The English settlers, whom the Dutch had expected to support them, de- cided to stand aloof, and for the moment the project dropped.
Evidently, Stuyvesant's intention that six of the Nine Men should retire each year was not carried out. Only three new members - Adriaen Van der Donck, Oloff Stevensen, and Elbert Elbertsen who took the places of Damen, Bout, and Thomas Hall - were sitting in 1649. The board then asked the governor's permission to consult with the commonalty about sending delegates to Holland. He himself, he answered, must be the channel for all communications with the home authorities. The Nine Men promised to give him copies of whatever they might write but said that to appeal through him would be detrimental to the welfare of the province. Forbidden to call a public meeting they instructed their president, Van der Donck, to take the opinions of their con- stituents separately and secretly and to keep a journal from which an appeal could be compiled. Jansen, a member of the board in whose house Van der Donck was lodging, and Thomas Hall the ex-member told the governor what was going on. Then General Stuyvesant 'burned with rage.'
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In person he searched Van der Donck's room and seized a rough draft of his journal. Upon its evidence he arrested and imprisoned the writer on a charge of crimen lesœ majes- tatis; he also arrested another of the Nine Men, Augustine Herrman; and to stop the agitation he revived Kieft's decree that no documents should be legal unless drawn up by Secre- tary Van Tienhoven, and forbade Domine Backerus to read from the pulpit without express permission anything that touched upon public affairs.
In spite of the Company's orders he had not mustered the burgher guard at regular intervals. Yet its organization per- sisted and its officers were looked upon as in some sort repre- sentatives of the people. Jacobus Van Couwenhoven was at this time captain of the company, Martin Cregier lieutenant, and Augustine Herrman one of the ensigns. Wishing to get support for himself Stuyvesant summoned these and the other officers and three or four delegates chosen by the com- monalty to consult with his council, and told them that he meant to call two deputies from each 'colony,' including the English towns on Long Island, so that they might con- sider the sending of a 'mission' to the fatherland to promote the welfare of the province. As Vice-Director Van Dincklagen protested because all this was done without his concurrence and demanded the release of Van der Donck on bail, the gov- ernor released him but deposed him from the Board of Nine Men until such time as he should either prove or recant cer- tain of the statements in his journal.
Meanwhile it was discovered that Stuyvesant, who had thought that transgressions of the law against the selling of arms deserved capital punishment, had himself imported a small consignment for the up-river Indians. He asserted that it was by the Company's orders, but popular feeling grew very hot and the return of Cornelis Melyn from Holland fanned it into a flame.
Although the West India Company had secured a renewal of its charter its prospects were darker than ever. The Treaty
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of Münster, concluded by the United Netherlands with Spain in 1648, formally and finally established their independence. Spain kept the Flemish provinces; but as by the treaty the river Scheldt remained closed to commerce, a provision that held good until the time of the Napoleonic wars, and as Antwerp thus lost all hope of resuming its old rank among the seaports of the north, the commercial preëminence of the Republic was assured. The general Peace of Westphalia followed close upon the Treaty of Münster, ending the Thirty Years' War and establishing that idea with regard to a 'bal- ance of power,' among the nations of the continent which, ostensibly inspired by dynastic considerations, really by commercial ambitions, was to figure so largely in future wars and treaties. Of course this general peace interfered with the privateering and smuggling industries from which the West India Company, making Curaçoa the centre of contra- band trade in the Western world, had drawn a great part of its profits. Before the end of 1648 the Portuguese established in Brazil a trading association designed especially to oppose the Dutch Company; and this Company then declared that its 'total ruin and decline' must be expected if the govern- ment would not promptly give it aid.
To Stuyvesant it wrote that the low condition of his prov- ince was evidently the result of Kieft's neglect of duty, and that in trying to amend it he must use gentle methods with white men and red men. It reproved him for examining merchants' books and visiting their stores to discover smug- gled goods, saying that such courses were contrary to the freedom in traffic which it had provisionally granted because, being as yet unable to retain the trade of the province for itself, it was obliged to 'content itself with the duty .. until more favorable circumstances.' In this explanation lies the key to the Company's whole course with regard to New Netherland. It always wanted all the profits, it never gave any right or privilege except when it was forced to, and almost always it hoped to retract what it had bestowed.
Its true temper showed plainly in the matter of Melyn and
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Kuyter and their complaints. It maintained, as firmly as did Governor Stuyvesant, that no appeals should be allowed to the home government. In spite of its efforts, however, the States General recognized this right in the case of Kuyter and Melyn, suspended the sentence that Stuyvesant had pronounced against them, and in a mandamus which recited the grievances of the appellants, the causes and results of the war that Governor Kieft had 'commenced against the Indians,' and the consequent danger that the province might be mastered by the English who had 'already got a smack of the productiveness and of the convenient navigable rivers of our New Netherland,' they summoned Director Stuyvesant and the members of his government to defend the aforesaid sentence at the Hague in person or by attorney. Pending a final decision of their case Kuyter and Melyn were per- mitted to return to New Netherland and there to enjoy their liberty and their property on the same footing as the other inhabitants, receiving from the States General a passport to this effect. The Company wrote to Stuyvesant that he might better not have meddled with the affairs of his predecessor in office. The Prince of Orange sent him a personal letter forbidding him to molest Melyn and Kuyter, and authorized them to serve him with the mandamus by the hand of any person they might select. Presumably they had explained that no such paper would be served by the regular officials under Stuyvesant's control.
After a hard voyage, says the account in the Breeden Raedt, Melyn arrived at New Amsterdam on January 1, 1649. Kuy- ter did not come with him. Twice Stuyvesant sent the secretary and the schout-fiscal to demand all his papers. Melyn gave them only his passport from the States General, saying that he would produce the others before the council in due time. The governor would then have thrown him into jail had not Van Dincklagen protested. The next morn- ing, summoned again, Melyn appeared before the council and delivered all the 'orders and despatches' he had brought, and Stuyvesant promised to obey them. But he refused to
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exonerate Melyn as publicly as he had condemned him. Melyn bided his time. On March 8 the commonalty con- vened in the church at the call of the governor who intended to have his 'ample commission' read to them and thus to vindicate his 'sovereign government' and to 'kill dead' or at least to suspend the orders of the States General. Hav- ing the mandamus still in his possession Melyn now con- fided it to Arnoldus Van Hardenbergh who was 'invited' to read it in the presence of the whole commonalty, some three hundred persons, and agreed so to do. Stuyvesant asked Melyn whether he meant thus to have the mandamus exe- cuted, and when Melyn said 'Yes' he seized the document from Van Hardenbergh's hands
. . . so that the seal of their High Mightinesses hung to the parch- ment in halves, and if it had been paper only it could have been torn by this irreverent grabbing. When those who stood next to him ear- nestly admonished him to have respect for their High Mightinesses, a copy of the mandate was placed in his hands by Melyn and the orig- inal mandate was again put in the hand of the person executing it, who read it out loud, and required his answer thereto. Shortly after- wards, the lowest part of the seal fell off.
The words of the mandamus that figured in this lively scene may be read in our Colonial Documents, translated from the copy that was preserved in the archives of the States General. The mandamus itself is now in the library of the New York Historical Society with a number of papers that once belonged to Cornelis Melyn and his son. It is a large sheet, not in fact of paper but of vellum, folded into letter shape. It bears one uninjured incumbent seal with the device of their High Mightinesses the States General, a lion rampant holding a sword and a sheaf of seven arrows; and with it are preserved two similar seals which, as clearly may be seen, were torn from the sheet, - one from the outside, the other from the inside near the signature. It is possible that there was also a large pendant seal and that this was the one to which the Breeden Raedt refers as
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having fallen off. But even as it stands the mandamus may well be thought to show proof of the irascible governor's 'irreverent grabbing.'
In a letter to the States General the governor protested against the
. . . mutinous and indecent service on us of the mandamus pub- licly in the church on the 8th of March in the presence of the entire population of the Manhattans and adjoining villages then assembled on the public affairs of the country. . .
The meeting broke up in disorder, he said, so that public business was neglected and 'massacre and bloodshed' might have followed if he had not converted himself 'from the high- est to the lowest' and permitted the 'indecent service of the summons.'
Much more than this he was obliged to permit. He refused to go back to Holland, saying that he would send an attorney to represent him, and he continued to persecute Cornelis Melyn; but in regard to the major question of the day his wishes and prohibitions went for nothing now that public opinion was thoroughly aroused. The Nine Men prepared the much-desired Petition to the States General, attached to it many pages of Additional Observations, and also drew up that Remonstrance of New Netherland to the States General of the United Netherlands which to-day is one of the main fountains of knowledge regarding the early history of the province.
'In the name and on behalf of the Commonalty of New Netherland' the Petition and the Observations were signed on July 26, 1649, and the Remonstrance on July 28, all three by the same eleven persons - by the Nine Men then in office, including Van der Donck whom Stuyvesant had unseated, and by two who had previously served, Bout and Thomas Hall. Evidently Hall and Jansen had repented of their mo- mentary defection from the people's cause. All the eleven signed without comment excepting Oloff Stevensen who would not deny his friendship for Governor Kieft and opposite
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his name at the foot of the Remonstrance wrote: 'Under protest; obliged to sign as to the Heer Kieft's administration.' On all three papers the signatures are these, of course with diversities in spelling:
Adriaen Van der Donck, Michiel Jansen,
Augustine Herrman, Arnoldus Van Hardenbergh, Jacob Van Couwenhoven,
Thomas Hall,
Elbert Elbertsen,
Oloff Stevensen,
Govert Lockermans, Hendrick Hendricksen Kip,
Jan Evertsen Bout.
Two of these three papers, the Petition and the Remon- strance, were undoubtedly written by Van der Donck, for he had compiled the journal upon which they were based and some years later he adapted parts of the Remonstrance for use in a book published under his own name. The more bluntly . vernacular style of the Observations seems to show the collaboration of less polished pens.
The Petition is a brief but bold, clear, and comprehensive statement of the needs of the province and the proper remedies therefor. It names eight causes for the 'very poor and most low condition' of New Netherland:
1. Unsuitable government; 2. Scanty privileges and exemptions ; 3. Onerous imposts, duties, exactions, and such like; 4. Long-con- tinued war; 5. The loss of the Princess; 6. A superabundance of petty traders and peddlers (Schotten en Chinezen), and a want of farmers and farm servants; 7. Great dearth in general; 8. and lastly, The insufferable arrogance of the natives or Indians arising from our smaller numbers, etc.
Among the remedies suggested are: exemption from im- posts, tenths, and other burdens until the country shall be- come more populous and prosperous; freedom to trade in the produce of the country 'every way and everywhere' as is permitted in the fatherland itself; encouragement for the fish- eries; the free transportation of agricultural immigrants; and the settlement of the boundaries of the province. But the
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THE REMONSTRANCE OF NEW NETHERLAND
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main demands are that, in view of the 'harsh proceedings and want of means' of the West India Company, the States General shall themselves assume the ownership and control of New Netherland, and shall grant it
. .. suitable burgher (borgerlycke) government such as your High Mightinesses shall consider adapted to this province and somewhat resembling the laudable government of our Fatherland.
The Additional Observations, forming a commentary upon the Petition, are framed as a series of short statements eluci- dated by a multitude of foot-notes. They say that the gov- ernment of the province, as administered in Holland by the Company, in New Netherland by its servants, is 'bad and intolerable.' They say that the petty traders
. .. who swarm hither with great industry reap immense profit and exhaust the country without adding anything to its population and security, but if they skim a little fat off the pot they can take to their heels again.
They do not blame the New Englanders for protesting against the trading regulations of New Netherland because these are, in fact,
so selfish, onerous, and intolerable, yea, so devoid of good faith, that it is impossible to act in accordance with them.
Unjustly they censure the Company instead of the States General for the delay in settling boundary lines with New England. But truthfully they say that the Indians had never been troublesome until Kieft's war aroused and enraged them. Now, they explain, the only way to defend the prov- ince against its enemies, white and red, is to increase its population and to break the tyrannous rule of the Company. If, they add, the 'Dutch freemen' of the province were de- pendent only upon their fatherland as such and were granted a suitable local government, then they would enjoy
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. . . firm, valid, and inviolable privileges whereby every man could with honesty be secure of his life, honor, and property in future, which now he is not.
The Remonstrance of New Netherland as it stands trans- lated in our Colonial Documents covers more than forty quarto pages of close print. Intended to supply a solid foundation for the summarized statements and prayers of the Petition, it embraces a description of the country, its products, and its aborigines, an historical sketch of the internal fortunes and the border troubles of New Nether- land, a statement of the Dutch title to its soil, and a remon- strance against the policy of the West India Company which includes a more detailed review of those 'sad and senseless extravagances' the administrations of Kieft and Stuyvesant. Throughout it is well conceived and well composed, instruc- tive in matter, picturesque in manner, and ardent yet con- trolled in temper.
The West India Company, it says, had got 'no profit but heavy monthly bills' from its province because it had de- voted itself to trade instead of to agricultural colonization, had incurred many needless outlays, one of which was the building of the great ship New Netherland, and had not hon- estly fulfilled its promises to the settlers especially in the way of supplying their needs and keeping tariff dues within rea- sonable bounds:
We highly approve of inspection according to the orders given by the Company to its officers. . .. But it ought nevertheless to be executed without partiality, which is not always the case. The duty is high; of inspection and seizures there is no lack, and thus lawful trade is turned aside except some little which is carried on only pro forma in order to push smuggling under this cloak. Meanwhile the Christians are treated almost like Indians in the purchase of necessaries which they cannot do without; this causes great complaint, distress, and poverty.
Also, it appears from the witness of the Additional Observa- tions, the goods of Christian merchants were treated even
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worse than those of Christian travellers sometimes have been in the modern port of New York:
. . . the cargo is discharged into the Company's warehouse and there it proceeds so as to be a grief and vexation to behold, for it is all measured anew, unpacked, thrown about, and counted without either rule or order; besides which the Company's servants bite sharp and carry away.
Another crying evil, says the Remonstrance, was the despotic attitude of the governors, who comported themselves as though they were 'sovereigns of the country' and declared that there was no appeal to the courts of the fatherland - a statement which it was easy for them to make effectual as the people were few and the majority were 'very simple and uninformed' while those who were more intelligent and could 'walk on their own feet' were carefully conciliated. Kieft had spent no money for the public good except upon the church. That money the people had willingly contributed. What had become of the school fund they had raised no one could say. Stuyvesant had spent nothing except to finish the church and to build a wooden wharf. Each of these undertakings was 'of great use and very convenient,' but the governor was collecting annually about 30,000 guilders from the people in the way of 'duties, confiscations, excise etc.,' and he had promised to expend the whole for 'com- mendable and necessary public works.'
Director Stuyvesant's chance to assist his people, the Remonstrance explains, was much better than Director Kieft's for he had no war on his hands. Yet he was even more haughty - 'the word Mijn Heer Generael (My Lord General) and such like titles ' had never been known in the province until he arrived. He was as tyrannical as Kieft in taxing his people without their consent and even more 'active and malignant' in looking up causes for prosecution. Many instances are cited in proof of this last charge. To show why the governor's councillors stood by each other to uphold 'the pretended sovereignty,' their faults and deficiencies are set forth and so
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are the bullying methods that Stuyvesant employed when they differed from him in judgment, losing control of his temper, making 'such faces that it was frightful,' and using 'foul language better befitting the fishmarket than the coun- cil board.' Vice-Director Van Dincklagen had of late begun to protest, but he had to submit to many things, for the director told him at the council board that if he would not obey his wishes he would treat him worse than Wouter Van Twiller had ever done. For twenty-nine months Van Dyck the schout-fiscal had been excluded from the council, Stuyvesant saying that he could not keep a secret. He dared to do noth- ing, and this was perhaps as well for he drank so hard that he had a screw loose in his head. But upon Secretary Van Tienhoven falls the heaviest weight of reprobation :
He is crafty, subtile, intelligent, sharp-witted - good gifts when properly applied. .. . He is a great adept at dissimulation and even when laughing intends to bite. . .. In his words and acts he is loose, false, deceitful, and given to lying; prodigal of promises and when it comes to performance, nobody is at home. The origin of the war is attributed principally to him and some of his friends. The Director was led astray by his false reports and lies, and this is the opinion of both reliable Indians and Christians. Now if the Voice of the People be, according to the maxim, the Voice of God, of this man hardly any good can with truth be said, and no evil concealed. With the excep- tion of the Director and his party the whole country cries out against him as a villain, a murderer, and a traitor, and that he must quit this country or there will not be any peace with the Indians.
Furthermore, Van Tienhoven was noted among Indians and Christians for grossly dissolute living. Yet Stuyvesant had taken him over from Kieft as his chief adviser and confidant.
According to the Observations the Englishmen on the Con- necticut admitted that the land belonged to the Dutch, ex- cused their own presence by pointing out its richness and the fact that the Dutch had let it 'lie waste,' and although de- termined to remain there were willing to abide by any decision in respect to its government at which the powers in Europe might arrive. The Remonstrance, on the other hand, says
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