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The natives also brought to barter for trinkets, skins and furs, pumpkins, squashes, grapes, and apples. When the Half Moon had reached nearly to the present site of Albany, the channel became so shallow that she could go no farther, and the ship's boat was sent some twenty miles farther on until it reached the head of navigation. When it reported this fact Hudson made preparations to return, and on the third of October, after a voyage of ten days, anchored in the bay of New York, having beaten off a party of hostile Indians, on the ninth day of the return, and killed several warriors. On this voyage Hudson first acquainted the Indians with the taste of rum, which they at once named, from its most prominent quality, " fire water." At the same time far north on the banks of Lake Iroquois, Champlain was giving the same race its first lesson in the use of gunpowder.
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
On the fourth of October, 1609, the Half Moon "went out of the mouth of the great river," and set sail for Europe. Instead of continuing on to Holland, however, Hudson put into the port of Dartmouth, England, where he proposed to spend the winter, and in the spring proceed again to the north with a different crew. A proposition to this effect, together with a full account of his discoveries, he forwarded to his employers in Holland, who re- sponded with a peremptory order for him to return at once with the Half Moon. But ere he could do this the English authorities seized him on the ground that, being an English subject, he had no right to engage in the service of a rival power; the Half Moon, therefore, proceeded without her cap- tain. The subsequent fate of this eminent naviga- tor was a sad but heroic one. The next year, 1610, he was sent by the Muscovy Company-an English corporation chartered in 1555, to prosecute the trade with Russia-into the northern seas to search for the baffling passage to India, and in pursuit of it discovered the great bay and strait still known by his name. Almost in the moment of his success, how- ever; the crew mutinied and set him adrift on the waste in an open boat with his son and other adher- ents. No traces of the party were ever after discov- ered, though an expedition was sent out from Eng- land to search for them.
Two years later, in 1611, the intrepid Dutch navi- gator Adrian Block visited Manhattan Island, coasted the shores of Long Island Sound, discovering the Connecticut River and the island still bearing his
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name, and then, returning to Holland, published a very graphic and detailed account of his voyages. But the haughty East India Company saw nothing to attract them in the western wilderness, and still continued their search for a shorter passage to the East. There were certain shrewd merchants in Amsterdam, however, who had not been admitted to a share in the profits of the East India Company, and who saw what a rich trade in furs and other commodities might be established with the new country. They proceeded to form a trading com- pany, which was formally chartered by the States- General and given the exclusive privilege of trading to "New Netherlands," for the term of three years, counting from January 1, 1615. In this charter the country was first called New Netherland. The mer- chants began by building a trading house and fort on an island, near the present site of Albany, and an- other on Manhattan Island, and enjoyed a profitable trade, but the company was endowed with no civil powers and effected no settlement. Meanwhile, at home, a company was growing up which was to exert a great influence on the destinies of Manhat- tan. This company, after thirty years of dissensions, was at length chartered by the States-General. It was known as the West India Company, and was one of the most unique and privileged corporations in history. It was a private company, yet exercised many of the functions of a sovereign state. It could make war or peace, contract alliances, administer justice, appoint or dismiss governors, judges, and men-at-arms, build forts, ships, cities-in fact, do
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any thing that a sovereign state might do to promote trade and secure its stability. It had also a mo- nopoly of the trade for the Atlantic coasts of Africa and America. Its charter granted by the States- General is dated June 3, 1621,-the very year in which the truce with Spain terminated. Its projec- tors were certain merchants of the popular or anti- Spanish party, who had, in forming it, a twofold object : the crippling of Spain by attacks on her American possessions and on the vessels trading thither; and the control of the rich trade in furs, herbs, native woods, and precious stones and metals in which the hills and woods of the New World were believed to abound. It was because this company was intended to act against the public enemy that such enormous powers were conferred upon it. As this company was the real founder of our city, some details of its organization may not be out of place. This was much like that of its great compeer, the East India Company.
It was governed by five "Chambers " or " Boards," called, respectively, the Chamber of Amsterdam (which had control of four ninths of the com- pany's interest), the Chamber of Zealand having two ninths, of Maeze with one ninth, of North Hol- land with one ninth, and of Friesland with one ninth. There were twenty managers for the Chamber of Amsterdam, twelve for that of Zealand, and four- teen for each of the other three. Each chamber had its separate directors and vessels, and fitted out its own voyages. The combined capital of the various chambers amounted to twelve millions of florins,
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INTRODUCTORY.
equal to nearly five million dollars of our money. This great company having received from the States- General a grant of the whole magnificent territory discovered by Hudson, erected it into a province and committed its affairs to the care of the Amsterdam Chamber, while the other boards began actively to prosecute operations against the Spanish. For some time the Amsterdam Chamber paid little attention to the savage province in the west. Its attention, too, was absorbed by the fierce war with Spain. Im- mense fleets, many of them numbering seventy armed vessels each, were sent against the Spanish possessions in America, and captured prizes of such value that dividends ranging from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent. were declared. Bahia, in Bra- zil, was taken in 1624, "the great silver fleet " of armed vessels carrying treasure from the South American mines to Spain in 1628, and in 1630 the rich city of Pernambuco in Brazil. All Neth- erlands rang with the exploits of the privileged West India Company. But a clause in the charter of this company provided that it should "advance the peopling of the fruitful and unsettled parts," which had been granted it, and its enemies soon began to complain that it was doing nothing to carry out the conditions of this clause. Spurred on by these attacks, the company in 1624 sent thirty families of Protestant Walloons to New Neth- erlands, with orders to make a settlement at Fort Nassau, while eight men were to remain and estab- lish a post on Manhattan Island. These first set- tlers, the Walloons, were a worthy people, inhabi-
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tants of the frontier between France and Flanders, who had distinguished themselves in the wars with Spain by their valor and military spirit.
In 1625 the company, encouraged by its South American successes, advertised for "adventurers " to the New World, offering free transportation, employ- ment, and other inducements. Many hastened to enroll themselves, and toward the close of the year three large ships and a yacht were fitted out and de- spatched to Manhattan, bearing forty-five persons, men, women, and children, with their household fur- niture, farming utensils, and one hundred and three head of cattle. This event marks the founding of the colony of New Netherlands, later known as New York. Four years before, the Pilgrims had landed on Plymouth Rock, while Boston was founded three years later. Sir Walter Raleigh's colony had already been seventeen years established at Jamestown, Va. At St. Augustine, Fla., the Spaniard had been domi- ciled for nearly sixty years-since 1565. Everywhere else along the vast stretch of coast the forest still waved and the savage held possession. But the company hesitated to organize a government and send out a governor. It feared the English, who laid claim to the whole coast of North America, by virtue of the discoveries of the Cabots -- John and Se- bastian-in 1497, and denounced the Dutch as inter- lopers. In 1625, however, this fear was removed by the forming of an alliance between England and the Netherlands, for the better prosecution of the war against Spain. The West India Company at once proceeded to form a government for the new country
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INTRODUCTORY.
and to appoint a director, or, in English, a governor. This director was Peter Minuit, of Wesel, in West- phalia, a man who had had experience of new countries while in the employ of the East India Company. He was, too, of a kind, conciliating disposi- tion, and possessed of a faculty for governing-in fact, much the best ruler that New Netherlands ever had. Minuit left Amsterdam for Manhattan in De- cember, 1625, in a ship picturesquely named the Sea Mew, and bearing with him quite a reinforcement of colonists.
PART I. THE DUTCH DYNASTY.
17-15
I.
PETER MINUIT.
SOMETIMES I allow fancy to picture the appear- ance of the island on that 4th of May, 1626, when the Sea Mew cast anchor off the point of the Battery. Nature's temples, not man's, then adorned it. Sombre forests overhung the Jersey shore and fringed the water-line of the island. A chain of low, craggy hills covered with noble forests of oak, chestnut, hickory, and other trees, with pretty grassv valleys between, extended from the Battery to near the present line of Canal Street ; on either side along the river banks were wide marshes stretching away to the north ; at Canal Street they bore directly across the island, and were so low that on high tides the water flowed across from river to river. In the sheltered valleys were the maize fields and queer villages of the Indians, and the rude log-cabins of the settlers who had come over the year before. Cow-paths crossed the marshes to the upper part of the island, which was much wilder and more savage, with precipitous ledges, and in many places dense thickets of grape-vines, creepers, blackberry
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
and other bushes which no one could penetrate. The settlers did not allow their sheep and calves to cross this marsh, lest they should be throttled by the wolves, bears, and panthers that lurked in the . thickets, and in their letters home they complained of the deer and wild turkeys that broke in and de- stroyed their crops. Minuit's first step-probably before landing his people-was to purchase the island of its Indian owners. He had been directed to do this by the company for two reasons: first, to satisfy the Indians and gain their friendship ; second, to strengthen the company's title to the country, as against the English. This recognition of the prop- erty right of the Indian was the uniform custom of the Dutch in settling New Netherlands. The bar- gain was made on the 6th of May, 1626, on the present site of the Battery, perhaps on the very spot where Verrazano had planted his cross one hundred and two years before. Old Knickerbocker's delight- ful account of the affair, in his version of the story of New York, will at once recur to the reader ; but Knickerbocker's exuberant fancy often played sad pranks with his historical faculty. The scene as it actually occurred must have been exceedingly picturesque.
On the one side were the savages, clad in deer- skins or in waist-belts of woven grass; on the other, stern, bearded men whose brave costumes and digni- fied bearing were well calculated to overawe the rude natives. The Hollanders wore long-skirted coats, some loose, some girt about the waist with a military sash, velvet breeches ending at the knee in black Holland
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PETER MINUIT.
stockings, and for foot-gear military boots with high flaring tops, or low shoes adorned with silver buckles. Their hats were made of felt, and were low in the crown with very wide brims, which were looped up or not, at the fancy of the wearer. In a sash, slung over the right shoulder and passing under the left arm, a short sword was suspended, but no other war- like weapons were visible. A strong sea-chest of the solid though clumsy workmanship peculiar to Dutch artificers stood open between the two parties, filled with beads, buttons, ribbons, gayly embroidered coats, and similar articles, which were spread out be- fore the delighted savages and were offered in ex- change for their island. The red men were only too glad to accept, and thus, for baubles worth scarcely twenty-four dollars, the island, now covered with miles of splendid buildings, passed into the hands of Europeans.
The Dutch, as we have seen, found the Indians in possession of Manhattan Island. It is quite time that the reader was introduced to these Indians. This particular tribe was called the Manhattos or Manhattans, whence the name of the island. They were a branch of the great Algonkin-Lenape family of aborigines. Their neighbors, with whom they were often at war, were the Hackensacks and Rari- tans, who lived on the opposite shore of the Hud -. son ; the Weekqueskucks, Tankitikes, and Packamies, whose territories lay north of the Raritans ; and the Canarsees, Rockaways, Menikokes, Massapeagues, Mattinecocks, Missaqueges, Corchaugs, Secatauges, and Shinnecocks, Long Island Indians. On the
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
western bank of the upper Hudson, extending in- land some seventy miles, were the fierce Mohawks, a part of the great clan of the Five Nations. Op- posite, inhabiting the country between the Hudson and the Connecticut, were the Mohegans, another powerful tribe. With these tribes the colonists were often in contact. Their first peculiarity, as noted by the curious settlers, was their color, which was of a dull copper, or obscure orange hue, like the bark of the cinnamon tree. Their clothing was, in summer, a piece of deer-skin tied around the waist, in winter the skins of animals sewed together, and hanging loosely from the shoulders. After the Dutch came they used in place of buckskin a piece of duffels, or coarse cloth, thrown over the right shoulder and falling to the knees, which served as a cloak by day and a blanket by night. The men went bareheaded. Their hair was coarse, black, and very strong. Some had hair only on one side of the head, some on both, but all wore the scalp-lock ; it was a point of honor with them. This lock was formed as follows: a strip of hair three fingers broad was first allowed to grow on the top of the head from the forehead to the neck. This was cut short, except a tuft on the top of the head three fingers long, which was made to stand erect like a cock's-comb by smearing it with bear's-grease. The women or squaws allowed their hair to grow, and bound it behind in a coil shaped like a beaver's tail, over which they drew a square cap ornamented with wampum. The Indians were ex- tremely fond of ornament ; even the implements the Dutch gave them were devoted to this use. Hecke-
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PETER MINUIT.
welder, for instance, relates that they. hung the axes and hoes given them about their necks, and used the stockings for tobacco-pouches ; and Creuxis tells of a Huron girl reared by some Ursuline nuns, who on her marriage was given a complete suit of clothes in Parisian style ; but what was the surprise of the nuns a few days later to see the young husband arrayed in the finery and strutting up and down before their convent with an air of exultation which was greatly increased on seeing the nuns at the windows smiling at his queer appearance! Wampum played an im- portant part in their economy. It was their money, their measure of value. "It was an ornament, a tribute ; it ratified treaties, confirmed alliances, sealed friendships, cemented peace, and was accepted as a blood atonement." In making it the Indian artificer took the inside of the stem of the great conks cast up on the shore, and fashioned from it a small, smooth, white bead, through which he drilled a small hole. For another kind he took the inside purple face of the mussel shell, and made beads shaped like a straw, one third of an inch long, which were then bored lengthwise, and strung on hempen threads or the dried sinews of wild animals. These were then woven into strips of a hand's width and two feet long, called " belts" of wampum. The white beads were served in the same way, but their value was only half that of the purple beads. "They value these little bones," said Dr. Mega- polensis, " as highly as many Christians do gold, silver, or pearls, valuing our money no better than they do iron.'
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In political economy these people were com- munists, socialists. The land was held in common ; the hunt, the fisheries, were free to all, and their condition is an excellent illustration of the utility of socialism when its principles are put into practice. They were anarchists, too, in that they had no law. Each did as he pleased, restrained only by his savage instincts of right and wrong. Minor crimes were unpunished. Murder was avenged by the next of kin, provided he met the murderer within twenty- four hours after the deed was committed. If he did not, the crime could be atoned for by the pay- ment of wampum. Each tribe had its own chief, and separate practices and government. The houses of the Indians were mere huts made by binding the tops of saplings together, and covering the frame thus formed with strips of birch bark ; some of the dwell- ings were communal-inhabited by many families. One shown in the engraving, found on Manhattan Island by the Dutch, was one hundred and eighty yards long by twenty feet wide. There were within it pots and kettles for cooking food, sharpened stones for axes, sharpened shells for knives, wooden bowls from which the food was eaten, beds formed of bulrushes or the skins of wild animals. The Indians used for food the flesh of animals and fish cooked whole, corn, pumpkins, roots, nuts, and ber- ries. They had boats made of birch bark or hol- lowed out of the trunks of trees, the largest being capable of holding fourteen men, or one hundred and fifty bushels of grain. Calmly considered, these savages were not a people calculated to inspire
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MANHATTAN ISLAND BEFORE THE DUTCH.
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
respect. They were uncleanly in their food, their dwellings, and their persons. They had neither arts, science, nor commerce, as we understand those terms. and there was much in their character and condition to justify the opinion freely expressed by the Dutch, that they " were children of the Devil," "mere cum- berers of the ground."
In the midst of this wild, untamed people Minuet set up his orderly government-the product of a thousand years of judicial wisdom and patriotism. Let us consider it briefly. The Director was abso- lute monarch of his little world, except that he could not execute the death penalty ; his subjects also had the right of appeal to the home company, and even from that body's decision to the States- General. Minuit was also instructed to appoint an advisory council of five of the wisest and most pru- dent men of the colony, to whose opinions he was expected to give due weight. There were but two other officers in the colony-the secretary of the Council Board and the Schout-fiscal-the latter an official who makes as great a figure in the early records of Manhattan as the Director himself. He was sheriff and constable, State's attorney to con- vict, and prisoner's council to defend, collector of the customs too, and beadle and tithing-man on Sunday. If we fancy him, with his wand of office in his hand, preceding the Burgomasters and Schepens to church on the Lord's Day, and during service patrolling the streets, seeing that no slave or Indian profaned the hour by gaming, or tapster by selling beer, we shall view him in the guise most familiar to the people.
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PETER MINUIT.
The men whom Minuit governed were little more than fiefs or servants of the company. They could not at this time hold land, not even the ground on which their dwellings stood ; nor lawfully engage in trade with the Indians, nor among themselves, nor manufacture the necessaries of life. The privileged West India Company held the right to do all these things. Minuit had brought with him a competent engineer-one Kryn Fredericke,-and his first step after forming his government was to build a fort to defend it. It was a triangular earthwork with bas- tions and red cedar palisades, and stood on a slight elevation near the point where Broadway enters the Battery. Minuit named it Fort Amsterdam. Next the busy workers opened quarries in the island crags, and of the " Manhattan stone " found there, built a rude, strong warehouse for housing the company's stores and other property. This warehouse was a creditable work-considering the means at hand for building it-with its stone walls, roof thatched with reeds, and those quaint crow-step gables dear to the heart of every Dutchman, of which one may still see a good specimen in the pretty cottage of Washing- ton Irving at Sunnyside. The next public work was a " horse mill," for the grinding of grain by horse-power-for they seem to have lacked the tools and gear to build a windmill, after the fashion of Hollanders. Some thirty small cabins were also built along the East River shore, and a store was · opened in a corner of one of the great warehouses, and placed in charge of a salaried servant of the company. Only a church and a minister were lack-
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
ing to complete the equipment of the village, but church and minister as yet there was not. That the people might not be wholly without spiritual coun- sel, however, the company had sent out two "Zuk- enstroosters," or "Consolers of the Sick " (lay read- ers, we should call them), and they called the people together on the Sabbath and expounded the Scrip- tures to them. Their church-the first church in the city of five hundred temples-was the loft of the horse-mill, rudely fitted up with benches and chairs.
Two years later, a regularly ordained pastor, the Rev. Jonas Michaelis, arrived and organized a church, whose lineal descendant we shall find in Rev. Dr. Terry's church, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-first Street. Minuit was also busy in extend- ing and cementing trade with the Indians. His
voyageurs, in sloop, ship's boat, and canoe, explored every bay and creek of the North River where an Indian lodge was planted, exchanging their beads, axes, knives, and gayly colored cloths for furs, and inviting the Indians to come down and trade with their white brothers at the fort. Many accepted the invitation, and soon parties of savages in blankets or skins, some laden with bales of fur, others with venison, turkeys, wild fowl, and other game, were familiar objects in the streets of Manhattan. The company's warehouse became a busy place.
The ship Arms of Amsterdam which sailed for Amsterdam September 23, 1626, carried home " 7,246 beaver skins, 1783 otter skins, 675 otter skins, 48 minck skins, 36 wild-cat skins, 33 minck skins, 34 rat skins, and much oak and hickory
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PETER MINUIT.
timber," the whole valued at 45,000 guilders, or nearly $19,000. This ship also took samples of the " summer grain " the colonists had gathered at their recent harvest, viz., wheat, rye, barley, oats, buck- wheat, canary seed, beans, and flax. And she bore, too, news of the birth of the "firstborn Christian, daughter" in New Netherland-Sarah Rapaelje, daughter of Jan Joris Rapaelje, born June 9, 1625.
An incident occurred this autumn which involved the colony a few years later in a terrible Indian war, and did much to destroy that confidence between the Dutch and Indians which the Director was anx- ious to cultivate. A Wukquaesguk Indian coming to town to trade, accompanied by his nephew, a mere lad, was set upon by three of the Director's negro slaves, and not only despoiled of his goods but barbarously murdered. The lad escaped, and as soon as he became a man wreaked bloody vengeance, not, as we shall see, on the guilty negroes, but on the innocent whites.
From the Indians who came to trade with him, Minuit heard scattered bits of news about his neigh- bors, the English on Plymouth Bay, and felt a desire to communicate with them. So he wrote two let- ters to Governor Bradford, of Plymouth, " in a very fair hand, the one in French and the other in Dutch," and signed by Isaac de Rasières as provin- cial secretary, inquiring after his Excellency's health, and offering to accommodate him with any Euro- pean goods the English might want in exchange for beaver skins and other wares. Governor Bradford replied very courteously, saying that he had not for-
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