USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 40
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Its people were not conscious, like the New Englanders, of a high responsibility as the tenders of precarious beacon fires, religious and political, in a land of promise. Yet they knew that they were living in such a land and they had, therefore, a sense of corporate pride not to be measured by counting their numbers; for a little colony that is opening up the resources of a rich new continent may well feel itself superior in importance to a city of many thousands upon older soil. The men of New Amsterdam understood as clearly as covetous Englishmen that they had possessed themselves of the very best part of that 'large northern empire' claimed by the kings of England and France; and this fact would by itself have sufficed to differentiate them widely from the inhabitants of any town of fifteen hundred souls in the Holland of their time or of ours.
Although their city was still a frontier post in a truer sense than Boston, for Boston contained many more people and was much more solidly flanked and protected by lesser settle- ments, it probably presented the more civilized appearance. Some observers praised Boston highly but Colonel Cart- wright, one of the royal commissioners sent from England in 1664, wrote in the following year that its houses were 'gener- ally wooden' and its streets 'crooked and unpaved with little decency and no uniformity.' In New Amsterdam also, Stuyvesant wrote when he arrived in 1647, the houses were
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chiefly of wood. By 1664 they were mostly of brick with tiled roofs while those on the outlying farmsteads were often of stone. The annual rent of an ordinary house in the city seems to have been about fifteen beaver skins, or from 120 to 180 guilders.
Near the fort the houses were compactly placed. Else- where within the wall there was room for great trees and shady groves of aboriginal growth, and for open spaces brightened by the rich native flora, by crops of rye, barley, and tobacco, and by the fruit trees and garden flowers that the Hollander always carried with him from his fatherland. Indeed, there was an 'excess of large gardens,' said the West India Com- pany when it got Cortelyou's map; if more closely built upon, the place might be more easily defended.
As standards of cleanliness and comfort were much higher among the Dutch than among the English at this period, New Amsterdam would undoubtedly have given less pain than Boston to the senses of a modern sanitarian. For a long period after it became New York all strangers noticed how spotless its Dutch traditions kept it within doors; and the outward dishevelment of its early years was greatly bettered after the city magistrates took it in charge. Then, with the aid of the provincial government, they gradually improved the streets, appointing official 'fence viewers,' refusing to let poor structures occupy good sites, ordering away pig- sties, hen-houses, and other nuisances, and, to lessen the risk of fire, prohibiting hay stacks and wooden chimneys. Hogs had been at first the only scavengers, entering the yards from the streets. They were never entirely banished and, although their owners were ordered to supply them with nose- rings so that they could not root up the footways, in 1653 one of the many pompous, long-winded, but usually sensible communications that Stuyvesant addressed to the city magistrates said that he saw 'with great grief' the damage done to the earthen walls of the fort by hogs 'especially now again in the spring when the grass comes out.' He begged that the magistrates would fence in the fort to 'prevent the pigs';
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and the people were duly ordered to keep the animals in their sties until a fence could be built.
Soon after Brower Straet was paved 'with cobble stones' in 1658 and given the name that it still retains as Stone Street other streets were improved in the same way. Along each side of the Heere Gracht or Great Canal ran a street, and along the East River shore, from the mouth of the Heere Gracht to the Water Poort at the end of the city wall, a fine walk protected by the schoeynge or sea-wall of planks and therefore called De Waal or Lang de Waal. The path at a little distance from the inner side of the city wall, which afterwards developed into Wall Street, was called the Cingel (the Circuit).
Near the wharf at the mouth of the Heere Gracht a small market house was built in 1656, and on the Plain in front of the fort, now the Bowling Green, a meat market in 1659 - a substantial structure with a tiled roof. There were no market places in all New England towns as there were in all Dutch towns, and not until 1740 was a public market house built in Boston. An annual cattle fair held at New Amsterdam for six weeks in the autumn was called a 'free market,' which meant that strangers as well as burghers then had liberty to trade at retail and were exempt from arrest. Proclamations put into English brought farmers with their herds and flocks from points as distant as Stamford in New Haven Colony and the eastern parts of Long Island; and for thirty years or more this Dutch institution survived in New York.
The earliest garden of a scientific sort in any of the colonies was undoubtedly the 'herb garden,' probably a part of the West India Company's large garden near the fort, which Van der Donck described as already falling into decay before he left New Amsterdam to carry the people's Remonstrance to Holland in 1649. Stuyvesant either revived it or laid out another, for at his request the Company sent him seeds and medicinal plants from the botanic garden at Leyden. The present City Hall Park is a fragment of the common land, called De Vlackte (the Flat) and afterwards the Commons, where, well
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outside the city wall, the citizens had free pasturage for their cattle.
In 1658, dissatisfied with the governor's house in the fort, Stuyvesant got the city magistrates to confirm his title to what they called the 'abandoned lots' which had belonged to the ‘bankrupt fugitive,' piratical Thomas Baxter. This site, near the southeastern corner of the fort, the governor had already 'ornamented' with an 'expensive and handsome residence' fronting on the public wharf where his official barge could lie at his doorstep. After the English came in they called it Whitehall, a name still borne by the narrow street which led to it from the Plain and was called by the Dutch Marcktveld (Marketfield).
Behind Jacobus Van Couwenhoven's house stood his 'great stone brewery.' Oloff Stevensen Van Cortlandt's house had a similar companion. Just outside the city wall, almost all across the island, stretched the great Damen Bouwerie, granted by Governor Kieft to his friend of the 'bloody hands.' Here, on the Maagde Paetje or Maiden Lane, so called be- cause of a brook frequented by washerwomen, stood Damen's brewery which his stepson Jan Vinje managed until he became a farmer, brewer, and miller on his own account. On the East River shore outside the wall were Isaac Allerton's ware- houses, Govert Lockerman's estate surrounded by a palisade, and Thomas Hall's with 'house, brewery, horse-mill, and other buildings.' Many of the burghers who lived in the city had farms and country houses elsewhere on Manhattan.
In 1858 there was found in the British Museum a large manu- script map brightly colored in red, blue, green, and yellow, which is labelled The Duke's Plan - referring of course to the Duke of York for whom the province was seized in 1664 - but also A Description of the Towne of Mannados or New Amster- dam as it was in September, 1661. It shows the lower end of the island, in a sadly contracted harbor, with the Waal, the Heere Gracht, and the city wall well indicated, five bastions mounted with cannon protecting the wall, a battery on the
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East River shore in front of the Stadt Huis, and a large windmill on the North River shore close to the northwestern angle of the fort. No localities bear names except the governor's city house, his garden far away on the west side of the Heere Weg just south of the spot which is now Trinity Churchyard, and Isaac Allerton's group of buildings. The street lines are fairly accurate if tested by those that still exist, but the many large formal gardens which fill the interiors of the blocks must be credited to the draughtsman's desire to make his map as pretty as possible.
Many of the houses in the city had crow-stepped gables turned toward the street and roofs of vari-colored tiles. Some had projecting beams in the gable for the hoisting of goods into the store-rooms beneath the roof, and the characteristic Dutch porch or 'stoop' raised several feet above the ground. Inside, there were no stoves but enormous stone fireplaces bordered with blue and white tiles; there were great bed- steads built into the walls, solid pieces of furniture, stores of household linen and handsome clothes, and treasures of pewter and silver; also, though rarely, large looking-glasses, marble tables, clocks, 'alabaster images,' 'great china pots,' and, in Stuyvesant's house at least, cabinets of ebony which were probably receptacles for porcelain treasures. These were more likely of Japanese than of Chinese origin, for after 1641 Nagasaki was an important trading post for the Dutch. The burghers of New Amsterdam had a great deal more silverware than the New Englanders who in other ways were much richer, but they did not regard it as an extravagance. It played the part now played by the savings-bank. 'Money and plate' is a frequent conjunction of terms in inventories and wills.
From the same lists it appears that chairs, always straight- backed, were sometimes covered with Russia leather or with velvet and silver lace. The 'carpets' often mentioned were small rugs, or, more commonly, table-covers; sand was the universal floor covering. The wonderful blooming of art in the Netherlands had so developed the popular love for pic-
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tures and the belief in them as good investments that they abounded everywhere, even in the cottages of peasants. In New Amsterdam also they were numerous, relatively much more numerous than books.
Modest in size and put to modest uses were these comfort- able Dutch-American houses, trade and family life going on together beneath the same roof as was the contemporary custom in European towns. The kitchen was the family sitting-room. Like the smaller chambers the room for formal uses, which we should call the parlor, held a bedstead; and here stood the Dutchwoman's most indispensable article of furniture, her big kas or clothes-chest. The plentiful wadded petticoats and suits of clothing that filled the kas were of sorts that many years' wear could not damage. Much house- hold linen was needed where, according to the general Euro- pean practice, it was allowed to accumulate for the great bleacheries that were undertaken only twice or four times in a year. Mighty smokers though they were, Dutchmen, say their own historians, rarely smoked indoors. But the ex- treme care that they bestowed upon the cleanliness of the house and its furnishings, say the same authorities, did not extend to their persons or to their clothing when in use. If Sir William Temple made no such remarks when he spoke with wonder of the niceties of Dutch housekeeping it was because, low as was then the standard of personal cleanliness in Holland, it was still lower elsewhere.
All the shops in New Amsterdam were general stores on a larger or smaller scale. The best one was kept by Cornelis Steenwyck who was one of the few Great Burghers and in later years was thought the richest man in the province. Taverns were of much more importance in the life of the com- munity than they are to-day - the citizens' only substitutes for the modern hotel, restaurant, dance-house, club-house, exchange, and newspaper. Some of them were kept by promi- nent men like Martin Cregier and Salamon La Chair, a notary public who left his wine business in his wife's charge when, on his little yacht, he was making professional tours of the
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province. A record book in La Chair's handwriting, pre- served in the office of the city clerk of New York, shows that he had a collection of law-books for reference and also that he may well have needed to supplement in some way the profits of his profession. It says, for instance, that his fee for estab- lishing the right of the people of Gravesend to Coney Island was twenty-four guilders' worth of 'grey peas' on which he had to pay the freight, and for some aid given to Sir Henry Moody 'an English book of no use.'
The fruits and vegetables of Holland flourished in the garden-plots and truck-farms of Manhattan. Rye and barley grew in the unexhausted soil higher than the head of a man. Breweries being many, so of course were hop gardens while, as Father Jogues had noted, both wheat and oats were used in the making of beer. Other edibles besides the invaluable maize had been acquired from the red men; and the riches, incredible to a newly arrived European, of virgin woods and waters were now turned to good account by the skilful hands of the Dutch housewife. There were many kinds of fish and of shell-fish, including lobsters sometimes five or six feet long although those thought best for the table were from a foot to a foot and a half in length. Venison was so cheaply pro- cured from Indian hunters that the mutton for which the first settlers had pined was now little esteemed. Wild turkeys abounded, as many as 'five hundred in a flock.' Pigeons and partridges darkened the sky in their flight. Manifold kinds of geese and ducks lay in clouds on river and bay, while thousands of swans sometimes made their shores appear as though bordered by 'white napery.' Wild strawberries reddened the fields; and, wherever one turned, wild vines clothed 'the largest and loftiest trees' with garlands of grapes 'large and sweet as in Holland.' If the accounts of these things written by Van der Donck, Domine Megapolensis, and the poet Steendam could have come to the ears of the peas- ants of Europe as readily as such information would reach the lowliest and most remote to-day, surely New Netherland would not have had to beg for settlers.
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Entertainments under the domestic roof were limited to family festivals but these were many and jovial; even funer- als were almost festivities, so plentiful was the proffered sup- ply of food, drink, and tobacco. The men constantly met at their 'clubs' in the taverns; and here, indoors or on the gar- den turf, the young people danced. Public occasions in country places near by, like the founding of a new town or the dedication of a new church, were marked by ceremonies that included a banquet given by the people of the locality to the governor or his representatives.
At New Amsterdam the celebration of Christmas and other old church festivals was not thought, as in 1659 the general court of Massachusetts pronounced it, a 'great dishonor' to God. Most characteristically Dutch were the St. Nicholas Day and New Year's Day observances, but Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide were also celebrated by the Dutch Calvinist as heartily as by any Catholic. Nor was New Amsterdam's Sunday by any means the Sabbath of New England. All avoidable kinds of labor, all amusements, and all sales of drinks were strictly forbidden 'before, during, and between' the hours of service; but when Stuyvesant tried to extend such prohibitions to cover the whole twenty-four hours the city magistrates refused to publish his ordinance, saying that it was too severe and 'contrary to the freedoms' of the father- land. The many days of prayer and humiliation and the rarer thanksgiving days appointed by the governor were ob- served in the same manner as the Sabbath. In 1655 when a merchant applied to the council for permission 'to make a lottery of a certain quantity of Bibles, Testaments, and other books,' asking also that persons be appointed to value the stock and 'to select something for the poor,' the matter was referred to the city court which resolved 'that the same being advantageous shall be proceeded with.'
Stuyvesant's Sunday ordinances show what sports his people enjoyed on week-days and on the Sabbath after their devotions had been performed: 'going on pleasure parties in
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boat, car, or wagon,' 'fishing, fowling, and roving in search of nuts and strawberries,' playing at dice, cards, bowls, shovel-board, and tennis, and at troch, a game with balls and hoops often played on the grass. Golf was also a Dutch game, described as played with a small ball, a crooked club, and a series of small holes in the turf. Turkey shooting was a common pastime in New Netherland. With small success, apparently, the governor in council issued ordinances against firing guns, beating drums, and selling liquor on New Year's Day and May Day, against the erection of May-poles as like- wise conducive to disorderly conduct, and against the rough sport called pulling or riding the goose. This, says a solemn communication addressed by the governor and council to the city magistrates, was enjoyed by certain farmers' servants 'on the feast of Bacchus at Shrove-tide' but was a 'pagan and popish' sport and, moreover, 'altogether unprofitable, unnecessary, and censurable' despite the fact that, as the burgomasters and schepens had pointed out, it was 'tolerated and looked at through the fingers in some places in Father- land.' Certain servants who had engaged in it after being warned against it had thereupon been arrested and brought before the council. Then 'threatening, cursing, deriding, and laughing at the chief magistracy,' they had been committed to prison. And by this fact the burgomasters and schepens had felt as deeply aggrieved, said their official superiors,
. . as if we can issue no order or forbid no rabble to celebrate the feast of Bacchus without the advice, knowledge, and consent of the Burgomasters and Schepens, much less have power to correct such persons as transgress the Christian and Holy Commandment without the cognizance and consent of an inferior court of justice.
The director and council, their irate letter furthermore says, understood their own authority better than did others and therefore notified the city magistrates that these should con- fine themselves to their proper duties as set forth in the in- structions given them, should no longer trouble and torment the director-general in regard to his ordinances, and should understand
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. . . that the establishing of an inferior court of justice ... does in no wise infringe on or diminish the power and authority of the Director General and Council to enact any ordinances or issue particular inter- dicts, especially those which tend to the glory of God, the best interests of the inhabitants, or will prevent more sins, scandals, debaucheries, and crimes and properly correct, fine, and punish obstinate transgressors.
In the following year when the farmers again made ready to pull the goose and the city court was formally asked by the council whether it intended to permit such transgression of the ordinances of a higher power, it decided that the schout should ex officio inform the farmers that their intention was illegal. It is plain that the conduct of public affairs must have been difficult in a place where the respective functions of two sets of officials were so vaguely defined; and also that stagnation was not the atmosphere of a place where so small a matter could raise such a squall.
In New Amsterdam there were no vehicles built for pur- poses of pleasure or mere comfort -only utilitarian carts. And there were no side-saddles; the women rode on pillions behind the men. In winter, however, Holland itself hardly offered better chances for the true Dutch joys of skating and sleigh- ing than the frozen rivers and ponds, marshes and meadows of Manhattan. English visitors delighted to watch men and women flying over the ice with great market-baskets on their heads. But they were slow to adopt useful inventions novel to their eyes, for two or three generations seem to have passed before the slee of New Netherland made its way into New England. When iron lacked, its runners were shod with split saplings.
In summer a spot called the Locust Trees, on the bluff overlooking the North River back of Governor Stuyvesant's garden, was a favorite trysting and loitering place. More than one primeval tree appears to have been preserved within the city limits to shelter the pipe-smoking burgher who might not smoke in his own home. Nutten (Governor's) Island was some sort of a pleasure ground; and the Bowery village, said Domine Selyns writing to the classis of Amsterdam, was 'a
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place of relaxation and pleasure whither people go from the Manhattans for the evening service.'
In the year 1649 there were 15,000 whites and 300 negro slaves in Virginia; by 1671 there were 40,000 whites and 2000 blacks. There were never many blacks in Stuyvesant's province. The first that came directly from Africa arrived in 1655. Scarcely any others followed along this route. In 1660 Cornelis Steenwyck and some other merchants asked for permission to bring slaves, as the West India Company allowed, from the coast of Africa; but, so far as the records tell, neither these nor any other New Netherlanders ever actually engaged in the traffic. Some negroes were sent up from Brazil, more from Curaçoa which was the Dutch as Bar- badoes was the English emporium for the slave trade; and some, captured on Spanish or Portuguese ships, were brought in by Dutch privateers. One or two were occasionally im- ported from Curaçoa by individual colonists. As a rule they were sent by the Company to be sold for its benefit or by mer- chants in Holland under special licenses from the Company. In 1660 forty were auctioned off on the Company's account and paid for 'in produce.' The burgomasters then asked for four able-bodied men for the use of the city and got three. There was some trading in slaves at this time between New Amsterdam and New England; and so many newly arrived blacks were sent down to Virginia that in 1655 the director in council laid a duty of ten per cent of the selling price upon all that should be sent out of the province. In 1664 when the Company sent in three hundred of them on the ship Gideon - the largest consignment ever received in New Netherland - it ordered that they should be employed in agriculture and not exported, and that at least one-third of their selling price should be sent to the Company itself 'in beavers'; otherwise it would 'lose all desire,' it said, 'to continue supplying slaves.' It very soon lost all chance. What else there is to tell about the Gideon and its human cargo forms part of the story of the surrender of Manhattan to the English.
VOL. I. - 2 H
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Almost all the negroes in the province, barring those that the West India Company retained, were employed as house- hold servants; and sometimes they were disposed of by will in ways that showed a genuine concern for their welfare. None could be chastised without the permission of the magis- trates. Some the governor manumitted freely or on very easy terms - three women, for instance, upon condition that, taking turns each week, one of them should come to do his housework. Others, called 'half slaves,' worked week- and-week or month-and-month about for the Company and for themselves. As in the time of Governor Kieft free ne- groes could own real estate. Forty of them helped to com- pose the congregation at Stuyvesant's Bowery chapel and, it is recorded, grew deeply attached to Domine Selyns. They lived together, he wrote home, in a 'negro quarter.' It lay between the Kalck Hoek Pond and the Bowery.
Indentured servants of mature age, bound at first for seven, eight, or ten years, after 1660 for four years, swarmed in Vir- ginia. At the time when there were only two thousand negroes in the colony Governor Berkeley estimated that fifteen hundred bondsmen arrived each year. In Massachusetts there were not nearly as many, yet there were a considerable number including hundreds of Scotchmen taken by Cromwell's troops in battle and sent to Boston to be sold for terms of seven or eight years. Even in its latter days New Netherland had few such persons although master-mechanics sometimes brought over workmen who had agreed to serve them for a certain time. The only records of shipments made by the home authorities relate to some companies of young people, chiefly girls, who were sent from the almshouse at Amster- dam to the orphan-house at New Amsterdam to be bound out to respectable families. As most of them married young, indoor servants were even harder to find and to keep than farm laborers.
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