USA > New York > The Empire State: a compendious history of the commonwealth of New York > Part 4
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THE HALF MOON.
Hudson returned to his first anchorage in the beautiful harbor into which it has been elaimed Verazzano, the Florentine navigator, had sailed more than fourscore years before. He took formal possession of the country in the name of the States-General of Holland, sailed out upon the Atlantic, and hastened to Europe to tell his glad tidings to his employers. He first landed in England, and there told his wonderful story. As he was an English subject, King James claimed the land he had discovered as a rightful possession of the British crown. It was within the bounds of the North Virginia charter which he had granted. Added to these considerations was jealousy of the commercial advantages the Hollanders might derive from Hudson's discovery. The monarch, determined to secure to his crown every political right to the territory and every commercial advantage possible for his subjects, would not allow
13
INDIAN NAMES OF THE HUDSON RIVER.
the navigator and his vessel to leave England for a long time ; but Hudson had sent his log-book, his charts, and a full account of his discoveries to the authorities of the Dutch East India Company at Am- sterdam.
These accounts so powerfully excited the cupidity of the Dutch that while King James was devising schemes for British political and com- Inercial advantages, adventurers from Holland had opened a brisk fur trade with the Indians on the island of Manhattan. Acting upon the principle and the practice of the saying, " Possession is nine points of the law," the Dutch, at the mouth of the river discovered by Hudson, kept British authority and dominion at bay more than fifty years .*
* The Indians on the upper portion of the great river discovered by Hudson called it Ca-ho-ha-ta-tea ; those of the middle portion, Shat-te-muc, and the Delawares and the dwellers in its lower portion, Ma-hi-can-ittuck, the " place of the Mohicans." The Dutch named it the Mauritius, in honor of their great prince, Maurice, Stadtholder of the Netherlands ; and the English named it Hudson's River in compliment of its discoverer. Until within a comparatively few years, it was frequently called North River. It was so designated at an early period to distinguish it from the Delaware, which was called the South River.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
CHAPTER HI.
IN less than three years after his great discovery Hudson and his gallant little yacht perished. Not permitted to leave England, IIndson entered the service of an English company, and in the spring of 1610 he sailed in (mest of a north-west passage to India. Passing Iceland, he saw Heela flaming. Rounding the southern capes of Greenland, he went through Davis's Strait to the ice-floe beyond, and entered the great bay that bears his name. There he endured a dreary winter, and at midsummer, 1611, his mutinous crew thrust him into a frail and open shallop, with his son and seven others, and cast them adrift to perish in the waste of waters. Philip Staffe, the ship's carpenter, obtained leave to share the fate of his commander. The Half Moon sailed to the East Indies in the spring of 1611, and in March, the next year, she was wrecked and lost on the island of Manritins.
Hudson's discovery bore abundant fruit immediately. Wealthy mer- chants of Amsterdam sent a ship from the Texel laden with cheap mer- chandise suitable for traffic with the Indians for the furs and peltries of the beaver, the otter, and the bear. As soon as the Half Moon returned to New Amsterdam she, too, was sent on a like errand to Manhattan. which became the entrepot for the collection and exportation of furs gathered by the Indians from the regions of the Delaware and the Housatonic rivers, and even from the far-off Mohawk Valley, where dwelt the eastern nation of the Iroquois Republie. This was the begin- ning of peaceful intercourse between the Europeans and the dusky Five Nations.
Many private adventurers were soon engaged in traffic with the Indians, and the Hongers, the Pelgraves, and the Van Tweenhnysens, of Holland, were getting rich on the enormous profits derived from the trade .* Captains De Witt and Christiansen, Block and Mey were becoming famous navigators in connection with this trade before the free cities of Holland had cast a political glance toward the newly-dis- covered country. But when its importance became manifest, and King
Hans Hongers, Paul Pelgrave, and Lambrecht Tweenhuysen, merchants of Amster- dam, were the earliest Dutch traders for furs with the Indians at Manhattan. In 1612 they equipped two vessels, the Fortune and the Tiger, for trade along the Hudson River These vessels were commanded respectively by Captains Christiansen and Block.
15
PLANTING THE SEED OF EMPIRE.
James of Great Britain began to growl because the Dutch were monopolizing the fur trade upon his claimed domain, the States-General of Holland # seriously considered the matter.
Within five years after Hudson departed from Manhattan a little seed of empire, less promising than that planted by Dido, Ceerops, or Romulus, but of far higher destiny, was deposited there. In December, 1613, Adrien Block, a bold Duteli navigator, was about to sail from Manhattan for Amsterdam with a cargo of bear-skins when fire reduced his vessel-the Tiger-to ashes. The small storehouse of the traffickers- could not afford shelter to Block's crew, and the wigwams of the Indians, freely offered, could not shield them from the biting frosts ; so they built log-cabins, and from the stately oaks which towered around them they constructed another vessel, which they called the Onrust-the " Restless"-forty-four feet long and eleven feet wide, and of sixteen tons burden. With another cargo of furs the Onrust sailed for Ilolland in the spring of 1614.+ That little collection of huts on the site of the stately warehouses of Beaver Street, and that little vessel, which was launched at the foot of Broadway, composed the fertile little seed of empire planted on Manhattan -- the tiny beginning of the great commer- cial metropolis of the Western Hemisphere.
Doubtful as to the real disposition of the Indians around them, the Dutch seem to have palisaded their storehouses at the southern end of Manhattan Island for a defenee if necessary. In 1614 Captain Chris- tiansen, who had made ten voyages to Manhattan Island, sailed up the Mauritius (now the Iludson River), and on an island a little below the site of Albany he erected a fortified trading-house, and called it Fort Nassau. This was on the borders of the Iroquois Republie. The islet was afterward called Castle Island.
Meanwhile the several United Provinces of the Netherlands had peti- tioned the States-General or Congress of Holland to pass an ordinance seeuring a monopoly of the trade with the Indians on the Mauritius for a limited time to Duteh adventurers who might undertake the business. This was done in the spring of 1614.
Merchants of Amsterdam and Hoorn formed a company, and at the
# The name given to the Parliament or Congress of the United Provinces of Holland. + Block, the first shipbuilder on Manhattan Island, sailed up the East River into Long Island Sound ; discovered the Connecticut River ; explored the New England coasts eastward ; entered and explored Narragansett Bay ; sailed to Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod, and at the latter place left the Onrust, and proceeded to Holland in a vessel commanded by Captain Christiansen. He was afterward sent in command of some ves- sels employed in the whale-fishery near Spitzbergen, in 1615.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
middle of August, 1614, they sent a deputation to the Dutch court at the Hague to obtain a charter of special privileges promised by the ordinance. Before an oval table in the Binnenhof, a room in the ancient palace of the Counts of Holland, the chief representative of the merchants, Cap- tain IIendrieksen, stood and spread before their High Mightinesses, the members of the States-General, twelve in number, a " figurative map" of their discoveries in the Western Hemisphere. IIe gave details of the adventures of the navigators and traders, their expenses and losses.
THE BINNENHOF (The Palace of the Counts of Holland at the Hague*).
The leading representative of the State, before whom Hendrieksen pleaded, was the famous John Van Olden Barneveldt, t the Advocate of Holland.
# For four hundred years the Counts of Holland made their residence at the Hague. There yet stands a straggling pile of buildings surrounding a vast quadrangle on one side of which is the Binnenhof, the palace of the Counts of Holland for many genera- tions. There, in a spacious hall, the States-General constantly held their ordinary meetings.
+ Barneveldt was a most liberal and enlightened statesman of Holland, and one of the most loyal of citizens, He was persecuted by political and religious fanaticism, and the spite of Prince Maurice, the Stadtholder, and was finally beheaded in front of the Binnen- hof on May 19th, 1619, condemned on a false charge of treason.
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CHARTER OF NEW NETHERLAND.
CHAMPLAIN'S ATTACK ON THE INDIAN FORT .*
(From a print in a narrative of his voyages.)
A charter was granted to the merchants on October 14th, 1614, which defined the region wherein they were permitted to operate as " between the fortieth and forty-fifthi degree" of north latitude-between the par- allels of Cape May and Nova Scotia. In that document the name of NEW NETHERLAND was given to the domain lying " between Virginia and New France." Notwithstanding this domain was included in the royal grant to the Plymouth Company of England, no settlement had been made by the English above Richmond, in Virginia, and no formal terri- torial jurisdiction had been claimed by them ; and the Dutch were not disturbed in their traffic or political jurisdiction for a long time.
The Dutch on Manhattan Island and at Fort Nassau were continually exploring the neighboring regions and assiduously cultivating the friend-
* The fort was really the fortified " walls" that enclosed an Iroquois village. It was composed of quadruple palisades of large timber, thirty feet high, "interlocked the one with the other," wrote Champlain, " with an interval of not more than half a foot between them, with galleries in the form of parapets, defended by double pieces of timber, proof against our arquebuses, and on one side they had a pond with a never-failing supply of water, from which proceeded a number of gutters which they had laid along the interme- diate space, throwing the water withont, and rendering it effectual inside, for the purpose of extingnishing fire." The galleries were well supplied with stones which the garrison hurled upon their enemies. An attempt was made to set fire to the fort, but failed. The assailants constructed movable towers of timber to overlook the parapets, in which to place four or five arquebusiers. See next page.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
ship of the barbarians around them, while the French in Canada were arousing the hostility of the Iroquois by joining their enemies in making war upon them. This was done to secure the friendship of the Canadian Indians.
In the early autumn of 1615 Samuel Champlain (already noticed), then at Montreal, with ten Frenchmen carrying fire-arms, joined the Hurons and Adirondacks in an expedition against the Iroquois. They went up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, landed on its sonth-eastern shore, and moving south-westward, penetrated the country to Lakes Oneida and Onondaga. There they attacked a stronghold of the Iroquois, and after a severe struggle for four hours, the invaders were repulsed, and finally retreated. During the fight Champlain was twice wounded, and, unable to walk, was carried on a frame of wicker-work. IIe was compelled to pass the winter in the Huron country north of Lake Ontario, and did not return to Montreal until May, 1616, where he was received with joy as one risen from the dead.
The Indians who immediately surrounded the Dutch on Manhattan were the Metowacks on Long Island, the Monatons on Staten Island, the Raritans and Ilackensaeks on the New Jersey shore, and the Weekquaesgeeks beyond the Harlem River. The Manhattans occupied the island that bears their name.
In 1616 Captain IIendrieksen sailed from Manhattan in the little Restless built by Block, on an exploring voyage. He entered Delaware Bay, which Hudson had discovered seven years before, and explored the adjoining coasts and the river above as far as the rapids at Trenton. He was charmed with the beanty and evident fertility of the country around these waters. On the site of Philadelphia (which was founded sixty-six years afterward) he ransomed three captive Dutehmen. On his return to Manhattan this first European explorer of Delaware Bay and River proceeded to Holland to assist his employers in obtaining a separate charter which would give them the monopoly of trade with the inhab- itants of the newly-discovered territory.
Again the energetic Captain Hendrieksen appeared before their High Mightinesses in the Binnenhof, displayed his maps and arguments, and gave a glowing account of his discoveries. Doubtful of their right to any territorial jurisdiction below the fortieth degree, the States-General, after due deliberation, decided to postpone the matter " indefinitely."
The floods of the Mohawk River sweeping in fury down the Mauritius with their heavy burden of floating iee compelled the Dutch to abandon Fort Nassau, on Castle Island, in the spring of 1617. The island was submerged, and the fort was almost demolished. A new one was built
19
TREATY WITH INDIANS.
on the main at the mouth of the Tawasentha Creek (now Norman's Kill), and there soon afterward the first formal treaty of alliance between the Dutch and the Iroquois Confederaey was consummated. It was renewed in 1645, and in 1664 a new league of friendship with the barbarians was formed by the English. This remained inviolate until the kindling of the old war for American independence in 1775.
At the great council at Tawasentha other powerful tribes were repre- sented, but the supremacy of the Five Nations was affirmed and acknowl- edged by the others, even with tokens of great humiliation. When the long belt of peace and alliance was held by the Dutch at one end and by the Iroquois at the other end, the middle portion rested upon the shoulders of the Mohi- cans (Mohegans) and the Minsees, and also upon the shoulders of the Lenni-Lenapes as a " nation of women." So the Hollanders wisely and righteously acquired the friend- ship of these "Romans of the West."
Success had attended the Dutch in New Netherland from the beginning, and wise men in Holland were beginning A WAMPUM BELT .* to prophesy that a flourishing Belgic Empire would arise beyond the Atlantic. Speculations concerning the bright future of Holland were everywhere indulged in. The sovereignty of the United Provinees had lately been recognized, and the Netherlands now ranked among the leading nations of the earth. For fully twoscore years political and religious toleration had prevailed in the Low Countries, as Holland was called. There was no official restraint upon conscience. Holland had become an asylum for the per- secuted in all lands-of the active thinkers and workers who had been compelled to seek a refuge somewhere for conscience' sake. The world
* Wampum was the currency of the Indians, especially of those who lived in the region of the sea. It was made of portions of the common clam shell in the form of cylindrical beads, white and bluish black. Each color had a distinct and fixed value. They were strung in little chains, or fastened upon deer-skin belts, often in alternate layers of white and black. As currency their value was estimated at about two cents of our coins for three black beads, or six of white beads. A fathom in length and three inches in width of white wampum was valued at about $2.50, and a fathom of blue black, at about $5.
.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
of bigots outside sneered. Amsterdam was pointed at as a " common har- bor of all opinions and all heresies." Holland was stigmatized as a " cage of unclean birds," where " all strange religions flock together," and an English poet wrote of Amsterdam,
" The Universal Church is only there."
Occasionally, however, the old spirit of intolerance would crop ont and acts of violence would be performed when political ambition, dis-
COSTUMES OF THE HOLLANDERS, 1630.
guised under the form of religions controversy, actuated the authorities of State, as in 1619, when Grotius, the eminent scholar, was condeumed to imprisonment for life, and the venerable patriot, John Van Olden Barneveldt, was doomed to decapitation. It was at this juncture that schemes for the establishment of a colony of families in New Netherland began to be contemplated. Excellent materials for such a colony were then abundant in Holland, and the political and social condition of the
21
CONDITION OF HOLLAND.
Low Countries favored such an enterprise. The fendal system there had begun to decay. Industry was made honorable. In the new era which had gradually dawned on the Netherlands the owner of the soil was no longer the head of a band of armed depredators who were his dependents, but the careful proprietor of broad acres, and devoted to industry and thrift. The nobles, who composed the landlord elass, grad- ually came down from the stilts of exclusiveness, and in habits, and even in costume, imitated the working people in a degree. The latter became elevated in the social scale ; their rights were respected, and their relative valne in the State was duly estimated. Ceaseless toil in Holland was necessary to preserve the hollow land from the invasion of
DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY'S HOUSE.
the sea, and the common needs assimilated all classes in a country where all must work or drown.
Stimulated by the glowing accounts of the country and climate in the region of America watered by the Mauritius, and satisfied with the scant liberty accorded them by the Dutch Government, the English Puritan congregation of the Rev. John Robinson, then at Leyden, earnestly desired to emigrate to New Netherland. They proposed this enterprise to the Associated Merchants in 161S, whose charter of privileges had just expired. Mr. Robinson proposed to form a colony at Manhattan
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
under " the Prince of Orange and their High and Mighty Lords, the States-General."
The Association of Merchants eagerly listened to Robinson's proposal. They offered to transport his whole congregation to Manhattan free of cost, and to furnish each family with cattle. They petitioned the Prince of Orange to sanction the scheme. Maurice referred the matter to the States-General. That body had a more ambitious scheme in contem- plation. Nearly thirty years before, the wise Usselincx had suggested the formation of a Dutch West India Company. The project was now revived, and the States-General authorized the organization of such a company-a grand commercial monopoly. A charter was granted on June 3d, 1621. Colonization was neither the motive nor the main object of the establishment of the Dutch West India Company. The grand idea was the promo- tion of trade. That was an age of great monopo- lies, and the Dutch West India Company was one of the greatest monopolies of the time. It was incorporated for twenty-four years, with a pledge of a renewal of its charter ; and it became the sovereign of the central portion of the original United States of America. It was vested with the exclusive privilege to traffic and plant colonies on the coast of Africa from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope, and on the coasts of America from the Strait of Magellan to the remotest north. It provided that none of the inhabitants of DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY'S FLAG. the United Provinces of the Netherlands should be permitted to sail thence to the coasts of Africa between the points specified, nor to the coasts of America or the West Indies between Newfoundland and Cape Horn, upon pain of a forfeiture of ships and cargoes.
This great monopoly was vested with enormons powers and immense franchises that it might act with independence. It might conquer prov- inces at its own risk, hoist its flag of red, white, and blue over for- tresses, and make contracts and alliances with princes and other rulers within the limits of its charter. It might build forts ; appoint and dis- charge governors and other officers and soldiers ; administer justice and regulate commerce.
The States-General gave to the company a million guilders ($380,- 000), and became stockholders to the same amount. They agreed to defend the company against every person, in free navigation and
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THE DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY.
traffic, but not any specified territory. They also agreed, in case of war, to assist the company by furnishing sixteen war-ships of three hundred tons burden and four yachts of eighty tons, all fully equipped. The vessels were to be manned and supported by the company. The whole fleet was to be under an admiral appointed by the States-General. In war the latter was to be known only as allies and patrons.
The company had five separate chambers of management, one in each of five principal cities in the Netherlands. The general executive powers were vested in nineteen delegates, entitled The College of Nine- teen. In this college the States-General had one representative. The special charge of New Netherland was entrusted to the branch at Amster- dam.# Thus the Government gave to a new mercantile corporation almost unlimited powers to subdue, colonize, and govern the unoccupied regions of Africa and America. The company was not finally organized until June, 1623. On the 21st of that month its books of subscription were closed, and the company began to prosecute their purposes with energy.
Although the Dutch West India Company was primarily a commercial corporation, its first grand effort was the planting of a colony in New Netherland. Good policy dictated this step. In the summer of 1619 an English vessel sent by the Plymouth Company on a voyage of dis- covery, attempting to pass the dangerous eddies at Hell Gate, + lost its anchor, and was carried by the strong currents of the East River far into the broad bay at Manhattan. Her commander (Captain Dermer) did not stop to parley with the Dutch traffickers, who saluted him, but sailed on to Virginia. On his return he stopped at Manhattan and warned the Dutch traders to leave " His Majesty's domain" as quickly as possible.
" We found no English here, and hope we have not offended," said the good-natured Dntchmen, and went on smoking their pipes, planting their gardens, catching beavers and otters, and buying furs and peltries of the Indians as complacently as if they had never heard of his English Majesty.
Dermer's report of what he saw at Manhattan aronsed the-slumbering energies of the English, and especially of the Plymouth Company, char-
* The most active members of the Amsterdam Chamber were Jonas Witsen, Hendrick Hamel, Samuel Godyn, Samuel Blommaert, John de Laet (the historian), Killian van Rensselaer, Michael Pauw, and Peter Evertsen Hult.
+ Formerly a dangerous passage at the entrance to the East River from Long Island Sound, made so by a whirlpool caused by a sunken reef of rocks at certain times of the tide. The danger has been removed by the action of exploded nitro-glycerine applied by a Government engineer. The early Dutch navigators gave it the name of " Helle Gat."
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
tered by King James in 1606. They had made feeble attempts to plant colonies on the shores of the vast wilderness now known as New Eng- land. In 1614 the famous John Smith, the real founder of Virginia, explored its coasts and principal rivers, and gave it the name which it bears. Ile attempted to plant a colony there under the auspices of the company, but failed. At length (1620) the company obtained a new charter (under the name of Council of Plymouth), which extended the limits of their domain to the forty-eighth degree of latitude. The com- pany immediately put forth energetic efforts to establish a colony there.
Pastor Robinson's congregation in Holland were still eager to emigrate to America. They obtained a patent from the Virginia Company to settle in the unoccupied region in the " northern part of Virginia," which extended to the fortieth degree of latitude. They formed a partnership with London capitalists, and late in 1620 one hundred and one men, women, and children of the congregation-pioneers-crossed the stormy Atlantic in the little Mayflower, intending to land on the coasts of Delaware or Maryland. By accident or by the providence of God they reached the continent on the shores of Cape Cod Bay. Find- ing themselves far north of the region designated in their charter, the principal emigrants drew up and signed a democratic constitution, in the cabin of the Mayflower, for their government, and chose a governor, their spiritual head being Elder William Brewster. These " Pilgrims," as they called themselves, landed in the deep snow on the bleak coast of Massachusetts late in December, and at a spot which they named New Plymonth they built a little village of log-huts and laid the foundations of a State.
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