Maud Wilder Goodwin
Dutch and English on the Hudson: A Chronicle of Colonial New York

CHAPTER I
UP THE GREAT RIVER

Geography is the maker of history. The course of Dutch settlement in America was predetermined by a river which runs its length of a hundred and fifty miles from the mountains to the sea through the heart of a fertile country and which offers a natural highway for transportation of merchandise and for communication between colonies. No man, however, could foresee the development of the Empire State when, on that memorable September day in 1609, a small Dutch yacht named the Halve Maene or Half Moon, under the command of Captain Henry Hudson, slipped in past the low hook of sand in front of the Navesink Heights, and sounded her way to an anchorage in what is now the outer harbor of New York.

Robert Juet of Limehouse, one of the adventurers sailing with Hudson, writes in his journal:

At three of the clock in the afternoone we came to three great rivers, so we stood along to the northermost, thinking to have gone into it; but we found it to have a very shoald barre before it, for we had but ten foot water; then wee cast about to the southward and found two fathoms, three fathoms, and three and a quarter, till we came to the souther side of them; then we had five and sixe fathoms and anchored. So wee sent in our boate to sound and they found no lesse water than foure, five, six, and seven fathoms and returned in an hour and a half. So wee weighed and went in and rode in five fathoms, oozie ground, and saw many salmons, mullets and rayes very great.

So quietly is chronicled one of the epoch-making events of history, an event which opened a rich territory and gave to the United Netherlands their foothold in the New World, where Spain, France, and England had already established their claims. Let us try to call to our minds the picture of the Half Moon as she lies there in harbor, a quaint, clumsily built boat of forty lasts, or eighty tons, burden. From her bow projects a beakhead, a sort of gallery, painted and carved, and used as a place of rest or of punishment for the sailors. At the tip of the beakhead is the figurehead, a red lion with a golden mane. The ship's bow is green, with ornaments of sailors' heads painted red and yellow. Both forecastle and poop are high, the latter painted a blue mottled with white clouds. The stern below is rich in color and carving. Its upper panels show a blue ground picked out with stars and set in it a crescent holding a profile of the traditional Man in the Moon. The panel below bears the arms of the City of Amsterdam and the letters V.O.C. forming the monogram of the Dutch East India Company – Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie.

Five carved heads uphold the stern, above which hangs one of those ornate lanterns which the Dutch love so well. To add to all this wealth of color, flags are flying from every masthead. At the foretop flutters the tricolor of red, white, and black, with the arms of Amsterdam in a field of white. At the maintop flames the flag of the seven provinces of the Netherlands, emblazoned with a red lion rampant, bearing in his paws a sword and seven arrows. The bowsprit bears a small flag of orange, white, and blue, while from the stern flies the Dutch East India Company's special banner. It is no wonder that such an apparition causes the simple natives ashore to believe first that some marvelous bird has swept in from the sea, and then that a mysterious messenger from the Great Spirit has appeared in all his celestial robes.

If Hudson's object had been stage-setting for the benefit of the natives, he could not have arranged his effects better. The next day, when the ship had moved to a good harbor, the people of the country were allowed to come aboard to barter "greene Tabacco" for knives and beads. Hudson probably thought that the savages might learn a lesson in regard to the power of the newcomers by an inspection of the interior of the ship. The cannon which protruded their black noses amidships held their threat of destruction even when they were not belching thunder and lightning. The forecastle with its neatly arranged berths must have seemed a strange contrast to the bare ground on which the savages were accustomed to sleep, and the brightness of polished and engraved brass tablets caught the untutored eyes which could not decipher the inscriptions. There were three of these tablets, the mottoes of which, being translated, read: Honor thy father and thy mother! Do not fight without cause! Good advice makes the wheels run smoothly!

Perhaps the thing which interested the Indians most was the great wooden block fastened to the deck behind the mainmast. This strange object was fashioned in the shape of a man's head, and through it passed the ropes used to hoist the yards. It was called sometimes "the silent servant," sometimes "the knighthead." To the Indians it must have seemed the final touch of necromancy, and they were prepared to bow down in awe before a race of beings who could thus make blocks of wood serve them.

Trusting, no doubt, to the impression which he had made on the minds of the natives, Hudson decided to go ashore. The Indians crowded around him and "sang in their fashion" – a motley horde, as strange to the ship's crew as the Half Moon and its company seemed marvelous to the aborigines. Men, women, and children, dressed in fur or tricked out with feathers, stood about or floated in their boats hewn from solid logs, the men carrying pipes of red copper in which they smoked that precious product, tobacco – the consolation prize offered by the New World to the Old in lieu of the hoped-for passage to Cathay.

Everything seemed to breathe assurance of peaceful relations between the red man and the white; but if the newcomers did not at the moment realize the nature of the Indians, their eyes were opened to possibilities of treachery by the happenings of the next day. John Colman and a boat's crew were sent out to take further soundings before the Half Moon should proceed on her journey. As the boat was returning to report a safe course ahead, the crew, only five in number, were set upon by two war-canoes filled with Indians, whose volley of arrows struck terror to their hearts. Colman was mortally wounded in the throat by an arrow, and two of his companions were seriously, though not fatally, hurt. Keeping up a running fight, the survivors escaped under cover of darkness. During the night, as they crouched with their dead comrade in the boat, the sailors must have thought the minutes hours and the hours days. To add to their discomfort rain was falling, and they drifted forlornly at the mercy of the current. When at last dawn came, they could make out the ship at a great distance; but it was ten o'clock in the morning before they reached her safe shelter. So ended the brief dream of ideal friendship and confidence between the red men and the whites.

After Colman had been buried in a grave by the side of the beautiful sheet of water which he had known for so short a time, the Half Moon worked her way cautiously from the Lower Bay through the Narrows to the inner harbor and reached the tip of the island which stands at its head. What is now a bewildering mass of towers and palaces of industry, looking down upon a far-extended fleet of steam and sailing vessels, was then a point, wooded to the water's edge, with a scattered Indian village nestling among the trees.

A Moravian missionary, writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century, set down an account from the red man's point of view of the arrival of the Half Moon. This account he claimed to have received from old Indians who held it as part of their tribal traditions. As such it is worth noting and quoting, although as history it is of more than doubtful authenticity. The tradition runs that the chiefs of the different tribes on sighting the Half Moon supposed it to be a supernatural visitor and assembled on "York Island" to deliberate on the manner in which they should receive this Manito on his arrival. Plenty of meat was provided for a sacrifice, a grand dance was arranged, and the medicine-men were set to work to determine the meaning of this phenomenon. The runners sent out to observe and report declared it certain that it was the Great Manito, "but other runners soon after arriving, declare it a large house of various colors, full of people yet of quite a different color than they [the Indians] are of. That they were also dressed in a different manner from them and that one in particular appeared altogether red, which must be the Mannitto himself."

The strange craft stopped and a smaller boat drew near. While some stayed behind to guard the boat, the red-clothed man with two others advanced into a large circle formed by the Indian chiefs and wise men. He saluted them and they returned the salute.

A large hock-hack [Indian for gourd or bottle] is brought forward by the supposed Mannitto's servants and from this a substance is poured out into a small cup or glass and handed to the Mannitto. The expected Mannitto drinks, has the glass filled again and hands it to the chief next him to drink. The chief receives the glass but only smelleth at it and passes it on to the next chief who does the same. The glass then passes through the circle without the contents being tasted by anyone, and is upon the point of being returned again to the red-clothed man when one of their number, a spirited man and a great warrior jumps up and harangues the assembly on the impropriety of returning the glass with the contents in it – that the same was handed them by the Mannitto in order that they should drink it as he himself had done before them – that this would please him; but that to return it might provoke him and be the cause of their being destroyed by him. He then took the glass and bidding the assembly a farewell, drank it up. Every eye was fixed on their resolute companion to see what an effect this would have upon him and he soon beginning to stagger about and at last dropping to the ground they bemoan him. He falls into a sleep and they saw him as expiring. He awakes again, jumps up and declares that he never felt himself before so happy as after he had drank the cup. Wishes for more. His wish is granted and the whole assembly soon join him and become intoxicated.

The Delawares, as the missionary points out further, call New York Island "Mannahattanik," "the place where we were all drunk." With this picturesque account let us contrast the curt statement of Robert Juet: "This morning at our first rode in the River there came eight and twenty canoes full of men, women and children to betray us; but we saw their intent and suffered none of them to come aboord of us. At twelve of the clocke they departed. They brought with them oysters and beanes whereof we bought some." If there had been any such striking scene as the missionary's chronicle reports, Juet would probably have recorded it; but in addition to his silence in the matter we must recall the fact that this love-feast is supposed to have occurred only a few days after the killing of Colman and the return of the terror-stricken crew. This makes it seem extremely improbable that Hudson would have taken the risk of going ashore among hostile natives and proffering the hospitalities which had been so ill requited on his previous landing. Let us therefore pass by the Reverend John Heckwelder's account as "well found, but not well founded," and continue to follow the cruise of the Half Moon up the great river.

The days now were fair and warm, and Hudson, looking around him when the autumn sun had swept away the haze from the face of the water, declared it as fair a land as could be trodden by the foot of man. He left Manhattan Island behind, passed the site of Yonkers, and was carried by a southeasterly wind beyond the Highlands till he reached what is now West Point. In this region of the Catskills the Dutch found the natives friendly, and, having apparently recovered from their first suspicious attitude, the explorers began to open barter and exchange with such as wished to come aboard. On at least one occasion Hudson himself went ashore. The early Dutch writer, De Laet, who used Hudson's last journal, quotes at length Hudson's description of this landing, and the quotation, if genuine, is probably the longest description of his travels that we have from the pen of the great navigator. He says that he sailed to the shore in one of their canoes, with an old man who was chief of a tribe. There he found a house of oak bark, circular in shape, apparently well built, and with an arched roof.

On our coming near the house, two mats were spread to sit upon and immediately some food was served in well-made red wooden bowls; two men were also dispatched at once with bows and arrows in quest of game, who soon after brought a pair of pigeons which they had shot. They likewise killed at once a fat dog and skinned it in great haste, with shells which they get out of the water… The natives are a very good people, for when they saw that I would not remain, they supposed that I was afraid of their bows, and taking the arrows they broke them in pieces and threw them into the fire.

So the Half Moon drifted along "the River of the Steep Hills," through the golden autumnal weather, now under frowning cliffs, now skirting low sloping shores and fertile valleys, till at length the shoaling water warned Hudson that he could not penetrate much farther. He knew now that he had failed to find the northwest passage to Cathay which had been the object of his expedition; but he had explored one of the world's noblest rivers from its mouth to the head of its navigable waters.

It is a matter of regret to all students that so little is known of this great adventurer. Sober history tells us that no authentic portrait of him is extant; but I like to figure him to myself as drawn by that mythical chronicler, Diedrich Knickerbocker, who was always ready to help out fact with fiction and both with humor. He pictures Henry Hudson as "a short, brawny old gentleman with a double chin, a mastiff mouth and a broad copper nose which was supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe. He wore a true Andrea Ferrara, tucked in a leathern belt, and a commodore's cocked hat on one side of his head. He was remarkable for always jerking up his breeches when he gave his orders and his voice sounded not unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet, owing to the number of hard northwesters which he had swallowed in the course of his sea-faring."

This account accords with our idea of this doughty navigator far better than the popular picture of the forlorn white-bearded old gentleman amid the arctic ice-floes. The cause of the fiery nose seems more likely to have been spirits than tobacco, for Hudson was well acquainted with the effects of strong waters. At one stage of his journey he was responsible for an incident which may perhaps have given rise to the Indian legend of the mysterious potations attending the first landing of the white men. Hudson invited certain native chiefs to the ship and so successfully plied them with brandy that they were completely intoxicated. One fell asleep and was deserted by his comrades, who, however, returned next day and were rejoiced to find the victim professing great satisfaction over his experience.

The ship had now reached the northernmost bounds of her exploration and anchored at a point not exactly determined but not far below Albany. Hudson sent an exploring boat a little farther, and on its return he put the helm of the Half Moon about and headed the red lion with the golden mane southward. On this homeward course, the adventurers met with even more exciting experiences than had marked their progress up the river. At a place near the mouth of Haverstraw Bay at Stony Point the Half Moon was becalmed and a party of Mountain Indians came off in canoes to visit the ship. Here they showed the cunning and the thieving propensities of which Hudson accused them, for while some engaged the attention of the crew on deck, one of their number ran his canoe under the stern and contrived to climb by the aid of the rudder-post into the cabin.

To understand how this theft was carried out it is necessary to remember the build of the seventeenth century Dutch sailing-vessels in which the forecastle and poop rose high above the waist of the ship. In the poop were situated the cabins of the captain and the mate. Of Hudson's cabin we have a detailed description. Its height was five feet three inches. It was provided with lockers, a berth, a table, and a bench with four divisions, a most desirable addition when the vessel lurched suddenly. Under the berth were a box of books and a medicine-chest, besides such other equipment as a globe, a compass, a silver sun-dial, a cross staff, a brass tinder-box, pewter plates, spoons, a mortar and pestle, and the half-hour glass which marked the different watches on deck.

Doubtless the savage intruder would have been glad to capture some of this rich booty; but it must have been the mate's cabin into which he stumbled, for he obtained only a pillow and a couple of shirts, for which he sold his life. The window in the stern projecting over the water was evidently standing open in order to admit the soft September air, and the Indian saw his chance. Into this window he crept and from it started to make off with the stolen goods; but the mate saw the thief, shot, and killed him. Then all was a scene of wild confusion. The savages scattered from the ship, some taking to their canoes, some plunging into the river. The small boat was sent in pursuit of the stolen goods, which were soon recovered; but, as the boat returned, a red hand reached up from the water to upset it, whereupon the ship's cook, seizing a sword, cut off the hand as it gripped the gunwale, and the wretched owner sank never to reappear.

On the following day Hudson and his men came into conflict with more than a hundred savages, who let loose a flight of arrows. But one of the ship's cannon was trained upon them, and one shot followed by a discharge of musketry quickly ended the battle. The mariners thereupon made their way without molestation to the mouth of the river, whence they put to sea on a day in early October, only a month after their entrance into the bay.

Hudson was destined never again to see the country from which he set out on this quest, never again to enter the river which he had explored. But he had achieved immortal fame for himself and had secured a new empire for the Netherlands. The Cabots possibly, and Verrazano almost certainly, had visited the locality of "the Great River" before him; but Hudson was in the truest sense its discoverer, and history has accorded him his rights. Today the replica of the Half Moon lies in a quiet backwater of the Hudson River at the foot of Bear Mountain – stripped of her gilding, her sails, and her gay pennants. She still makes a unique appeal to our imagination as we fancy the tiny original buffeting the ocean waves and feeling her way along uncharted waters to the head of navigation. To see even the copy is to feel the thrill of adventure and to realize the boldness of those early mariners whom savages could not affright nor any form of danger daunt.¹

CHAPTER II
TRADERS AND SETTLERS

As he was returning to Holland from his voyage to America, Hudson was held with his ship at the port of Dartmouth, on the ground that, being an Englishman by birth, he owed his services to his country. He did not again reach the Netherlands, but he forwarded to the Dutch East India Company a report of his discoveries. Immediately the enthusiasm of the Dutch was aroused by the prospect of a lucrative fur trade, as Spain had been set aflame by the first rumors of gold in Mexico and Peru; and the United Provinces, whose independence had just been acknowledged, thereupon laid claim to the new country.

To a seafaring people like the Dutch, the ocean which lay between them and their American possessions had no terrors, and the twelve-year truce just concluded with Spain set free a vast energy to be applied to commerce and oversea trading. Within a year after the return of the Half Moon, Dutch merchants sent out a second ship, the crew of which included several sailors who had served under Hudson and of which the command was given, in all probability, to Hudson's former mate. The vessel was soon followed by the Fortune, the Tiger, the Little Fox, and the Nightingale. By this time the procession of vessels plying between the Netherlands Old and New was fairly set in motion. But the aim of all these voyages was commerce rather than colonization. Shiploads of tobacco and furs were demanded by the promoters, and to obtain these traders and not farmers were needed.

The chronicle of these years is melancholy reading for lovers of animals, for never before in the history of the continent was there such a wholesale, organized slaughter of the unoffending creatures of the forest. Beavers were the greatest sufferers. Their skins became a medium of currency, and some of the salaries in the early days of the colony were paid in so many "beavers." The manifest of one cargo mentions 7246 beavers, 675 otters, 48 minks, and 36 wildcats.

In establishing this fur trade with the savages, the newcomers primarily required trading-posts guarded by forts. Late in 1614 or early in 1615, therefore, Fort Nassau was planted on a small island a little below the site of Albany. Here the natives brought their peltries and the traders unpacked their stores of glittering trinkets, knives, and various implements of which the Indians had not yet learned the use. In 1617 Fort Nassau was so badly damaged by a freshet that it was allowed to fall into ruin, and later a new stronghold and trading-post known as Fort Orange was set up where the city of Albany now stands.

Meanwhile in 1614 the States-General of the United Netherlands had granted a charter to a company of merchants of the city of Amsterdam, authorizing their vessels "exclusively to visit and navigate" the newly discovered region lying in America between New France and Virginia, now first called New Netherland. This monopoly was limited to four voyages, commencing on the first of January, 1615, or sooner. If any one else traded in this territory, his ship and cargo were liable to confiscation and the owners were subject to a heavy fine to be paid to the New Netherland Company. The Company was chartered for only three years, and at the expiration of the time a renewal of the charter was refused, although the Company was licensed to trade in the territory from year to year.

In 1621 this haphazard system was changed by the granting of a charter which superseded all private agreements and smaller enterprises by the incorporation of "that great armed commercial association," the Dutch West India Company. By the terms of the charter the States-General engaged to secure to the Company freedom of traffic and navigation within prescribed limits, which included not only the coast and countries of Africa from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope but also the coasts of America. Within these vague and very extended bounds the Company was empowered to make contracts and alliances, to build forts, to establish government, to advance the peopling of fruitful and unsettled parts, and to "do all that the service of those countries and the profit and increase of trade shall require."

For these services the States-General agreed to grant a subsidy of a million guilders, or about half a million dollars, "provided that we with half the aforesaid million of guilders, shall receive and bear profit and risk in the same manner as the other members of this Company." In case of war, which was far from improbable at this time, when the twelve years' truce with Spain was at an end, the Company was to be assisted, if the situation of the country would in any wise admit of it, "with sixteen warships and four yachts, fully armed and equipped, properly mounted, and provided in all respects both with brass and other cannon and a proper quantity of ammunition, together with double suits of running and standing rigging, sails, cables, anchors, and other things thereto belonging, such as are proper to be used in all great expeditions." These ships were to be manned, victualed, and maintained at the expense of the Company, which in its turn was to contribute and maintain sixteen like ships of war and four yachts.

The object of forming this great company with almost unlimited power was twofold, at once political and commercial. Its creators planned the summoning of additional military resources to confront the hostile power of Spain and also the more thorough colonization and development of New Netherland. In these purposes they were giving expression to the motto of the House of Nassau: "I will maintain."

Two years elapsed between the promulgation of the charter and the first active operations of the West India Company; but throughout this period the air was electric with plans for occupying and settling the new land beyond the sea. Finally in March, 1623, the ship Nieu Nederlandt sailed for the colony whose name it bore, under the command of Cornelis Jacobsen May, of Hoorn, the first Director-General. With him embarked some thirty families of Walloons, who were descendants of Protestant refugees from the southern provinces of the Netherlands, which, being in general attached to the Roman Catholic Church, had declined to join the confederation of northern provinces in 1579. Sturdy and industrious artisans of vigorous Protestant stock, the Walloons were a valuable element in the colonization of New Nether land. After a two months' voyage the ship Nieu Nederlandt reached the mouth of the Hudson, then called the Mauritius in honor of the Stadholder, Prince Maurice, and the leaders began at once to distribute settlers with a view to covering as much country as was defensible. Some were left in Manhattan, several families were sent to the South River, now the Delaware, others to Fresh River, later called the Connecticut, and others to the western shore of Long Island. The remaining colonists, led by Adriaen Joris, voyaged up the length of the Mauritius, landed at Fort Orange, and made their home there. Thus the era of settlement as distinguished from trade had begun.

The description of the first settlers at Wiltwyck, on the western shore of the great river, may be applied to all the pioneer Dutch colonists. "Most of them could neither read nor write. They were a wild, uncouth, rough, and most of the time a drunken crowd. They lived in small log huts, thatched with straw. They wore rough clothes, and in the winter were dressed in skins. They subsisted on a little corn, game, and fish. They were afraid of neither man, God, nor the Devil. They were laying deep the foundation of the Empire State."²

The costume of the wife of a typical settler usually consisted of a single garment, reaching from neck to ankles. In the summer time she went bareheaded and barefooted. She was rough, coarse, ignorant, uncultivated. She helped her husband to build their log hut, to plant his grain, and to gather his crops. If Indians appeared in her husband's absence, she grasped the rifle, gathered her children about her, and with a dauntless courage defended them even unto death. This may not be a romantic presentation of the forefathers and foremothers of the State, but it bears the marks of truth and shows us a stalwart race strong to hold their own in the struggle for existence and in the establishment of a permanent community.

From the time of the founding of settlements, outward-bound ships from the Netherlands brought supplies for the colonists and carried back cargoes of furs, tobacco, and maize. In April, 1625, there was shipped to the new settlements a valuable load made up of one hundred and three head of live stock – stallions, mares, bulls, and cows – besides hogs and sheep, all distributed in two ships with a third vessel as convoy. The chronicler, Nicholaes Janszoon Van Wassenaer, gives a detailed account of their disposal which illustrates the traditional Dutch orderliness and cleanliness. He tells us that each animal had its own stall, and that the floor of each stall was covered with three feet of sand, which served as ballast for the ship. Each animal also had its respective servant, who knew what his reward was to be if he delivered his charge alive. Beneath the cattle-deck were stowed three hundred tuns of fresh water, which was pumped up for the live stock. In addition to the load of cattle, the ship carried agricultural implements and "all furniture proper for the dairy," as well as a number of settlers.

The year 1625 marked an important event, the birth of a little daughter in the household of Jan Joris Rapaelje, the "first-born Christian daughter in New Netherland." Her advent was followed by the appearance of a steadily increasing group of native citizens, and Dutch cradles multiplied in the cabins of the various settlements from Fort Orange to New Amsterdam. The latter place was established as a fortified post and the seat of government for the colony in 1626 by Peter Minuit, the third Director-General, who in this year purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians.

The colony was now thriving, with the whole settlement "bravely advanced" and grain growing as high as a man. But across this bright picture fell the dark shadow of negro slavery, which, it is said, the Dutch were the first to introduce upon the mainland of North America in 1625 or 1626. Among the first slaves were Simon Congo, Anthony Portuguese, John Francisco, Paul d'Angola – names evidently drawn from their native countries – and seven others. Two years later came three slave women. In a letter dated August 11, 1628, and addressed to his "Kind Friend and Well Beloved Brother in Christ the Reverend, learned and pious Mr. Adrianus Smoutius," we learn with regret that Domine Michaelius, having two small motherless daughters, finds himself much hindered and distressed because he can find no competent maid servants "and the Angola slave women are thievish, lazy, and useless trash." Let us leave it to those who have the heart and the nerves to dwell upon the horrors of the middle passage and the sufferings of the poor negroes as set down in the log-books of the slavers, the St. John and the Arms of Amsterdam. It is comforting to the more soft-hearted of us to feel that after reaching the shores of New Netherland, the blacks were treated in the main with humanity. The negro slave was of course a chattel, but his fate was not without hope. Several negroes with their wives were manumitted on the ground of long and faithful service. They received a grant of land; but they were obliged to pay for it annually twenty-two and a half bushels of corn, wheat, pease, or beans, and a hog worth eight dollars in modern currency. If they failed in this payment they lost their recently acquired liberty and returned to the status of slaves. Meanwhile, their children, already born or yet to be born, remained under obligation to serve the Company.

Apparently the Dutch were conscious of no sense of wrong-doing in the importation of the blacks. A chief justice of the King's Bench in England expressed the opinion that it was right that pagans should be slaves to Christians, because the former were bondsmen of Satan while the latter were servants of God. Even this casuist, however, found difficulty in explaining why it was just that one born of free and Christian parents should remain enslaved. But granting that the problems which the settlers were creating in these early days were bound to cause much trouble later both to themselves and to the whole country, there is no doubt that slave labor contributed to the advancement of agriculture and the other enterprises of the colony. Free labor was scarce and expensive, owing both to the cost of importing it from Europe and to the allurements of the fur trade, which drew off the boer-knecht from farming. Slave labor was therefore of the highest value in exploiting the resources of the new country.

These resources were indeed abundant. The climate was temperate, with a long season of crops and harvests. Grape-vines produced an abundant supply of wines. The forests contained a vast variety of animals. Innumerable birds made the wilderness vocal. Turkeys and wild fowl offered a variety of food. The rivers produced fish of every kind and oysters which the letters of the colonists describe as a foot long, though this is somewhat staggering to the credulity of a later age. De Vries, one of the patroons, or proprietors, whose imagination was certainly of a lively type, tells us that he had seen a New Netherlander kill eighty-four thrushes or maize-birds at one shot. He adds that he has noticed crabs of excellent flavor on the flat shores of the bay. "Their claws," he says naïvely, "are of the color of our Prince's flag, orange, white and blue, so that the crabs show clearly enough that we ought to people the country and that it belongs to us." When the very crabs thus beckoned to empire, how could the Netherlander fail to respond to their invitation?

The newly discovered river soon began to be alive with sail, high-pooped vessels from over sea, and smaller vlie booten (Anglicized into "flyboats"), which plied between New Amsterdam and Fort Orange, loaded with supplies and household goods. Tying the prow of his boat to a tree at the water's edge, the enterprising skipper turned pedler and opened his packs of beguiling wares for the housewife at the farm beside the river. Together with the goods in his pack, he doubtless also opened his budget of news from the other settlements and told the farmer's wife how the houses about the fort at Manhattan had increased to thirty, how the new Director was strengthening the fort, and how all promised well for the future of New Netherland.

For the understanding of these folk, who, with their descendants, have left an indelible impression on New York as we know it today, we must leave the thread of narrative in America, abandon the sequence of dates, and turn back to the Holland of some years earlier. Remembering that those who cross the sea change their skies but not their hearts, we may be sure that the same qualities which marked the inhabitants of the Netherlands showed themselves in the emigrants to the colony on the banks of the Mauritius.

When the truce with Spain was announced, a few months before Hudson set sail for America, it was celebrated throughout Holland by the ringing of bells, the discharge of artillery, the illumination of the houses, and the singing of hymns of thanksgiving in all the churches. The devout people knelt in every cathedral and village Kerk to thank their God that the period of butchery and persecution was over. But no sooner had the joy-bells ceased ringing and the illuminations faded than the King of Spain began plotting to regain by diplomacy what he had been unable to hold by force. The Dutch, however, showed themselves as keenly alive as the Spanish to the value of treaties and alliances. They met cunning with caution, as they had met tyranny with defiance, and at last, as the end of the truce drew near, they flung into the impending conflict the weight of the Dutch West India Company. They were shrewd and sincere people, ready to try all things by the test of practical experience. One of their great statesmen at this period described his fellow-countrymen as having neither the wish nor the skill to deceive others, but on the other hand as not being easy to be deceived themselves.

Motley says of the Dutch Republic that "it had courage, enterprise, intelligence, faith in itself, the instinct of self-government and self-help, hatred of tyranny, the disposition to domineer, aggressiveness, greediness, inquisitiveness, insolence, the love of science, of liberty, and of money." As the state is only a sum of component parts, its qualities must be those of its citizens, and of these citizens our colonists were undoubtedly typical. We may therefore accept this description as picturing their mental and spiritual qualities in the pioneer days of their venture in the New World.

CHAPTER III
PATROONS AND LORDS OF THE MANOR

Their High Mightinesses, the States-General of the United Netherlands, as we have seen, granted to the Dutch West India Company a charter conveying powers nearly equaling and often overlapping those of the States themselves. The West India Company in turn, with a view to stimulating colonization, granted to certain members known as patroons manorial rights frequently in conflict with the authority of the Company. And for a time it seemed as though the patroonship would be the prevailing form of grant in New Netherland.

The system of patroonships seems to have been suggested by Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, one of the directors of the West India Company and a lapidary of Amsterdam, who later became the most successful of the patroons. A shrewd, keen, far-seeing man, he was one of the first of the West India Company to perceive that the building up of New Netherland could not be carried on without labor, and that labor could not be procured without permanent settlers. "Open up the country with agriculture: that must be our first step," was his urgent advice; but the dwellers in the Netherlands, finding themselves prosperous in their old homes, saw no reason for emigrating, and few offered themselves for the overseas settlements. The West India Company was not inclined to involve itself in further expense for colonization, and matters threatened to come to a halt, when someone, very likely the shrewd Kiliaen himself, evolved the plan of granting large estates to men willing to pay the cost of settling and operating them. From this suggestion the scheme of patroonship was developed.

The list of "Privileges and Exemptions" published by the West India Company in 1629 declared that all should be acknowledged patroons of New Netherland who should, within the space of four years, plant there a colony of fifty souls upwards of fifteen years old. "The island of the Manhattes" was reserved for the Company. The patroons, it was stipulated, must make known the situation of their proposed settlements, but they were allowed to change should their first location prove unsatisfactory. The lands were to extend sixteen miles along the shore on one side of a navigable river, or eight miles on both sides of a river, and so far into the country as the situation of the colonies and their settlers permitted. The patroons were entitled to dispose of their grants by will, and they were free to traffic along the coast of New Netherland for all goods except furs, which were to be the special perquisite of the West India Company. They were forbidden to allow the weaving of linen, woolen, or cotton cloth on their estates, the looms in Holland being hungry for raw material.

The Company agreed that it would not take any one from the service of the patroon during the years for which the servant was bound, and any colonist who should without written permission enter the service of another patroon or "betake himself to freedom" was to be proceeded against with all the available force of the law. The escaped servant would fare ill if his case came before the courts, since it was one of the prerogatives of a patroon to administer high, middle, and low justice – that is, to appoint magistrates and erect courts which should deal with all grades of crimes committed within the limits of the manor and also with breaches of the civil law. In civil cases, disputes over contracts, titles, and such matters, where the amount in litigation exceeded twenty dollars, as well as in criminal cases affecting life and limb, it was possible to appeal to the Director and Council at Fort Amsterdam; but the local authorities craftily evaded this provision by compelling their colonists to promise not to appeal from the tribunal of the manor.

The scherprechter, or hangman, was included with the superintendent, the schout fiscaal, or sheriff, and the magistrates as part of the manorial court system. One such scherprechter named Jan de Neger, perhaps a freed negro, is named among the dwellers at Rensselaerswyck and we find him presenting a claim for thirty-eight florins ($15.00) for executing Wolf Nysen.

No man in the manorial colony was to be deprived of life or property except by sentence of a court composed of five people, and all accused persons were entitled to a speedy and impartial trial. As we find little complaint of the administration of justice in all the records of disputes, reproaches, and recriminations which mark the records of those old manors, we must assume that the processes of law were carried on in harmony with the spirit of fairness prevailing in the home country.

Even before the West India Company had promulgated its charter, a number of rich merchants had availed themselves of the opportunity to secure lands under the offered privileges and exemptions. Godyn and Blommaert, in association with Captain David de Vries and others, took up a large territory on Delaware Bay, and here they established a colony called "Swannendael," which was destroyed by the Indians in 1632. Myndert Myndertsen established his settlement on the mainland behind Staten Island, and his manor extended from Achter Kul, or Newark Bay, to the Tappan Zee.

One of the first patents recorded was granted to Michiel Pauw in 1630. In the documentary record the Director and Council of New Netherland, under the authority of their High Mightinesses, the Lords States-General and the West India Company Department of Amsterdam, testify to the bargain made with the natives, who are treated throughout with legal ceremony as if they were high contracting parties and fully capable of understanding the transaction in which they were engaged. These original owners of the soil appeared before the Council and declared that in consideration of certain merchandise, they agreed to "transfer, cede, convey and deliver for the benefit of the Honorable Mr. Michiel Paauw" as true and lawful freehold, the land at Hobocan Hackingh, opposite Manhattan, so that "he or his heirs may take possession of the aforesaid land, live on it in peace, inhabit, own and use it … without that they, the conveying party shall have or retain the least pretension, right, power or authority either concerning ownership or sovereignty; but herewith they desist, abandon, withdraw and renounce in behalf of aforesaid now and forever totally and finally."

It must have been a pathetic and yet a diverting spectacle when the simple red men thus swore away their title to the broad acres of their fathers for a consideration of beads, shells, blankets, and trinkets; but, when they listened to the subtleties of Dutch law as expounded by the Dogberrys at Fort Amsterdam, they may have been persuaded that their simple minds could never contend with such masters of language and that they were on the whole fortunate to secure something in exchange for their land, which they were bound to lose in any event.

It has been the custom to ascribe to the Dutch and Quakers the system of paying for lands taken from the Indians. But Fiske points out that this conception is a mistake and he goes on to state that it was a general custom among the English and that not a rood of ground in New England was taken from the savages without recompense, except when the Pequots began a war and were exterminated. The "payment" in all cases, however, was a mere farce and of value only in creating good feeling between savages and settlers. As to the ethics of the transaction, much might be said on both sides. The red men would be justified in feeling that they had been kept in ignorance of the relative importance of what they gave and what they received, while the whites might maintain that they created the values which ensued upon their purchase and that, if they had not come, lands along the Great River would have remained of little account. In any case the recorded transaction did not prove a financial triumph for the purchaser, as the enterprise cost much in trouble and outlay and did not meet expenses. The property was resold to the Company seven years later – at a price, however, of twenty-six thousand guilders, which represented a fair margin of profit over the "certain merchandise" paid to the original owners eight years earlier.

Very soon after the purchase of the land on the west shore of the North River, Pauw bought, under the same elaborate legal forms, the whole of Staten Island, so called in honor of the Staaten or States-General. To the estate he gave the title of Pavonia, a Latinized form of his own name. Staten Island was subsequently purchased from Pauw by the Company and transferred (with the exception of the bouwerie of Captain De Vries) to Cornelis Melyn, who was thus added to the list of patroons. Other regions also were erected into patroonships; but almost all were either unsuccessful from the beginning or short-lived.

The patroonship most successful, most permanent, and most typical was Rensselaerswyck, which offers the best opportunity for a study of the Dutch colonial system. Van Rensselaer, though he did not apparently intend to make a home for himself in New Netherland, was one of the first to ask for a grant of land. He received, subject to payment to the Indians, a tract of country to the north and south of Fort Orange, but not including that trading-post, which like the island of Manhattan remained under the control of the West India Company. By virtue of this grant and later purchases Van Rensselaer acquired a tract comprising what are now the counties of Albany and Rensselaer with part of Columbia. Of this tract, called Rensselaerswyck, Van Rensselaer was named patroon, and five other men, Godyn, Blommaert, De Laet, Bissels, and Moussart, whom he had been forced to conciliate by taking into partnership, were named codirectors. Later the claims of these five associates were bought out by the Van Rensselaer family.

In 1630 the first group of emigrants for this new colony sailed on the ship Eendragt and reached Fort Orange at the beginning of June. How crude was the settlement which they established we may judge from the report made some years later by Father Jogues, a Jesuit missionary, who visited Rensselaerswyck in 1643. He speaks of a miserable little fort built of logs and having four or five pieces of Breteuil cannon. He describes also the colony as composed of about a hundred persons, "who reside in some twenty-five or thirty houses built along the river as each found most convenient." The patroon's agent was established in the principal house, while in another, which served also as a church, was domiciled the domine, the Reverend Johannes Megapolensis, Jr. The houses he describes as built of boards and roofed with thatch, having no mason-work except in the chimneys. The settlers had found some ground already cleared by the natives and had planted it with wheat and oats in order to provide beer and horse-fodder; but being hemmed in by somewhat barren hills, they had been obliged to separate in order to obtain arable land. The settlements, therefore, spread over two or three leagues.

The fear of raids from the savages prompted the patroon to advise that, with the exception of the brewers and tobacco planters who were obliged to live on their plantations, no other settlers should establish themselves at any distance from the church, which was the village center; for, says the prudent Van Rensselaer, "every one residing where he thinks fit, separated far from others, would be unfortunately in danger of their lives in the same manner as sorrowful experience has taught around the Manhattans." Our sympathy goes out to those early settlers who lived almost as serfs under their patroon, the women forbidden to spin or weave, the men prohibited from trading in the furs which they saw building up fortunes around them. They sat by their lonely hearths in a little clearing of the forest, listening to the howl of wolves and fearing to see a savage face at the window. This existence was a tragic change indeed from the lively social existence along the canals of Amsterdam or on the stoops of Rotterdam.

Nor can we feel that these tenants were likely to be greatly cheered by the library established at Rensselaerswyck, unless there were hidden away a list of more interesting books than those described in the patroon's invoice as sent in an oosterse, or oriental, box. These volumes include a Scripture concordance, the works of Calvin, of Livy, and of Ursinus, the friend of Melanchthon, A Treatise on Arithmetic by Adrian Metius, The History of the Holy Land, and a work on natural theology. As all the titles are in Latin, it is to be presumed that the body of the text was written in the same language, and we may imagine the light and cheerful mood which they inspired in their readers after a day of manual toil.

I suspect, however, that the evening hours of these tenants at Rensselaerswyck were spent in anxious keeping of accounts with a wholesome fear of the patroon before the eyes of the accountants. Life on the bouweries was by no means inexpensive, even according to modern standards. Bearing in mind that a stiver was equivalent to two cents of our currency and a florin to forty cents, it is easy to calculate the cost of living in the decade between 1630 and 1640 as set down in the accounts of Rensselaerswyck. A blanket cost eight florins, a hat ten florins, an iron anvil one hundred florins, a musket and cartouche box nineteen florins, a copper sheep's bell one florin and six stivers. On the other hand all domestic produce was cheap, because the tenant and patroon preferred to dispose of it in the settlements rather than by transporting it to New Amsterdam. We learn with envy that butter was only eight stivers or sixteen cents per pound, a pair of fowl two florins, a beaver twenty-five florins.

How hard were the terms on which the tenants held their leases is apparent from a report written by the guardians and tutors of Jan Van Rensselaer, a later patroon of Rensselaerswyck. The patroon reserved to himself the tenth of all grains, fruits, and other products raised on the bouwerie. The tenant was bound, in addition to his rent of five hundred guilders or two hundred dollars, to keep up the roads, repair the buildings, cut ten pieces of oak or fir wood, and bring the same to the shore; he must also every year give to the patroon three days' service with his horses and wagon; each year he was to cut, split, and bring to the waterside two fathoms of firewood; and he was further to deliver yearly to the Director as quit-rent two bushels of wheat, twenty-five pounds of butter, and two pairs of fowls.

It was the difficult task of the agent of the colony to harmonize the constant hostilities between the patroon and his "people." Van Curler's letter to Kiliaen Van Rensselaer begins: "Laus Deo! At the Manhattans this 16th June, 1643, Most honorable, wise, powerful, and right discreet Lord, my Lord Patroon – ." After which propitiatory beginning it embarks at once on a reply to the reproaches which the honorable, wise, and powerful Lord has heaped upon his obedient servant. Van Curler admits that the accounts and books have not been forwarded to Holland as they should have been; but he pleads the difficulty of securing returns from the tenants, whom he finds slippery in their accounting. "Everything they have laid out on account of the Lord Patroon they well know how to specify for what was expended. But what has been laid out for their private use, that they know nothing about."

If the patroon's relations with his tenants were thorny, he had no less trouble in his dealings with the Director-General at New Amsterdam. It is true, Peter Minuit, the first important Director, was removed in 1632 by the Company for unduly favoring the patroons, and Van Twiller, another Director and a nephew of Van Rensselaer by marriage, was not disposed to antagonize his relative; but when Van Twiller was replaced by Kieft, and he in turn by Stuyvesant, the horizon at Rensselaerswyck grew stormy. In 1643 the patroon ordered Nicholas Coorn to fortify Beeren or Bears Island, and to demand a toll of each ship, except those of the West India Company, that passed up and down the river. He also required that the colors on every ship be lowered in passing Rensselaer's Stein or Castle Rensselaer, as the fort on the steep little island was named.

Govert Loockermans, sailing down the river one day on the ship Good Hope, failed to salute the flag, whereupon a lively dialogue ensued to the following effect, and not, we may be assured, carried on in low or amicable tones:

Coorn: "Lower your colors!"

Loockermans: "For whom should I?"

Coorn: "For the staple-right of Rensselaerswyck."

Loockermans: "I lower my colors for no one except the Prince of Orange and the Lords my masters."

The practical result of this interchange of amenities was a shot which tore the mainsail of the Good Hope, "perforated the princely flag," and so enraged the skipper that on his arrival at New Amsterdam he hastened to lay his grievance before the Council, who thereupon ordered Coorn to behave with more civility.

The patroon system was from the beginning doomed to failure. As we study the old documents we find a sullen tenantry, an obsequious and careworn agent, a dissatisfied patroon, an impatient company, a bewildered government – and all this in a new and promising country where the natives were friendly, the transportation easy, the land fertile, the conditions favorable to that conservation of human happiness which is and should be the aim of civilization. The reason for the discontent which prevailed is not far to seek, and all classes were responsible for it, for they combined in planting an anachronistic feudalism in a new country, which was dedicated by its very physical conditions to liberty and democracy. The settlers came from a nation which had battled through long years in the cause of freedom. They found themselves in a colony adjoining those of Englishmen who had braved the perils of the wilderness to establish the same principles of liberty and democracy. No sane mind could have expected the Dutch colonists to return without protest to a medieval system of government.

When the English took possession of New Netherland in 1664, the old patroonships were confirmed as manorial grants from England. As time went on, many new manors were erected until, when the province was finally added to England in 1674, "The Lords of the Manor" along the Hudson had taken on the proportions of a landed aristocracy. On the lower reaches of the river lay the Van Cortlandt and Philipse Manors, the first containing 85,000 acres and a house so firmly built that it is still standing with its walls of freestone, three feet thick. The Philipse Manor, at Tarrytown, represented the remarkable achievement of a self-made man, born in the Old World and a carpenter by trade, who rose in the New World to fortune and eminence. By dint of business acumen and by marrying two heiresses in succession he achieved wealth, and built "Castle Philipse" and the picturesque little church at Sleepy Hollow, still in use. Farther up the river lay the Livingston Manor. In 1685 Robert Livingston was granted by Governor Dongan a patent of a tract half way between New York and Rensselaerswyck, across the river from the Catskills and covering many thousand acres.

But the estate of which we know most, thanks to the records left by Mrs. Grant of Laggan in her Memoirs of an American Lady, written in the middle of the eighteenth century, is that belonging to the Schuylers at "the Flats" near Albany, which runs along the western bank of the Hudson for two miles and is bordered with sweeping elm trees. The mansion consisted of two stories and an attic. Through the middle of the house ran a wide passage from the front to the back door. At the front door was a large stoep, open at the sides and with seats around it. One room was open for company. The other apartments were bedrooms, a drawing-room being an unheard-of luxury. "The house fronted the river, on the brink of which, under shades of elm and sycamore, ran the great road toward Saratoga, Stillwater, and the northern lakes." Adjoining the orchard was a huge barn raised from the ground by beams which rested on stone and held up a massive oak floor. On one side ran a manger. Cattle and horses stood in rows with their heads toward the threshing-floor. "There was a prodigious large box or open chest in one side built up, for holding the corn after it was threshed, and the roof which was very lofty and spacious was supported by large cross beams. From one to the other of these was stretched a great number of long poles so as to form a sort of open loft, on which the whole rich crop was laid up."

Altogether it is an attractive picture of peace and plenty, of hospitality and simple luxury, that is drawn by this visitor to the Schuyler homestead. We see through her eyes its carpeted winter rooms, its hall covered with tiled oilcloth and hung with family portraits, its vine-covered stoeps, provided with ledges for the birds, and affording "pleasant views of the winding river and the distant hills." Such a picture relieves pleasantly the arid waste of historical statistics.

But the reader who dwells too long on the picturesque aspects of manors and patroonships is likely to forget that New Netherland was peopled for the most part by colonists who were neither patroons nor lords of manors. It was the small proprietors who eventually predominated on western Long Island, on Staten Island, and along the Hudson. "In the end," it has been well said, "this form of grant played a more important part in the development of the province than did the larger fiefs for which such detailed provision was made."

CHAPTER IV
THE DIRECTORS

The first Director-General of the colony, Captain Cornelis May, was removed by only a generation from those "Beggars of the Sea" whom the Spaniard held in such contempt; but this mendicant had begged to such advantage that the sea granted him a noble river to explore and a cape at its mouth to preserve his name to posterity. It is upon his discoveries along the South River, later called the Delaware, and not upon his record as Director of New Netherland, that his title to fame must rest. Associated with him was Tienpont, who appears to have been assigned to the North River while May assumed personal supervision of the South. May acted as the agent of the West India Company for one year only (1624-1625), and was followed in office by Verhulst (1625-1626), who bequeathed his name to Verhulsten Island, in the Delaware River, and then quietly passed out of history.

Neither of these officials left any permanent impress on the history of the colony. It was therefore a day of vast importance to the dwellers on the North River, and especially to the little group of settlers on Manhattan Island, when the Meeuwken dropped her anchor in the harbor in May, 1626, and her small boat landed Peter Minuit, Director-General of New Netherland, a Governor who had come to govern. Minuit, though registered as "of Wesel," Germany, was of Huguenot ancestry, and is reported to have spoken French, Dutch, German, and English. He proved a tactful and efficient ruler, and the new system of government took form under the Director and Council, the koopman, who was commercial agent and secretary, and a schout who performed the duties of sheriff and public prosecutor.

Van Wassenaer, the son of a domine in Amsterdam, gives us a report of the colony as it existed under Minuit. He writes of a counting-house built of stone and thatched with reeds, of thirty ordinary houses on the east side of the river, and a horse-mill yet unfinished over which is to be constructed a spacious room to serve as a temporary church and to be decorated with bells captured at the sack of San Juan de Porto Rico in 1625 by the Dutch fleet. According to this chronicler, every one in New Netherland who fills no public office is busy with his own affairs. One trades, one builds houses, another plants farms. Each farmer pastures the cows under his charge on the bouwerie of the Company, which also owns the cattle; but the milk is the property of the farmer, who sells it to the settlers. "The houses of settlers," he says, "are now outside the fort; but when that is finished they will all remove within, in order to garrison it and be safe from sudden attack."

One of Minuit's first acts as Director was the purchase of Manhattan Island, covering some twenty-two thousand acres, for merchandise valued at sixty guilders or twenty-four dollars. He thus secured the land at the rate of approximately ten acres for one cent. A good bargain, Peter Minuit! The transaction was doubly effective in placating the savages, or the wilden, as the settlers called them, and in establishing the Dutch claim as against the English by urging rights both of discovery and of purchase.

In spite of the goodwill manifested by the natives, the settlers were constantly anxious lest some conspiracy might suddenly break out. Van Wassenaer, reporting the news from the colony as it reached him in Amsterdam, wrote in 1626 that Pieter Barentsen was to be sent to command Fort Orange, and that the families were to be brought down the river, sixteen men without women being left to garrison the fort. Two years later he wrote that there were no families at Fort Orange, all having been brought down the river. Only twenty-five or twenty-six traders remained and Krol, who had been vice-director there since 1626.

Minuit showed true statesmanship by following conciliation with a show of strength against hostile powers on every hand. He had brought with him a competent engineer, Kryn Frederycke, or Fredericksen, who had been an officer in the army of Prince Maurice. With his help Minuit laid out Fort Amsterdam on what was then the tip of Manhattan Island, the green park which forms the end of the island today being then under water. Fredericksen found material and labor so scarce that he could plan at first only a blockhouse surrounded by palisades of red cedar strengthened with earthworks. The fort was completed in 1626, and at the close of the year a settlement called New Amsterdam had grown up around it and had been made the capital of New Netherland.

During the building of the fort there occurred an episode fraught with serious consequences. A friendly Indian of the Weckquaesgeeck tribe came with his nephew to traffic at Fort Amsterdam. Three servants of Minuit fell upon the Indian, robbed him, and murdered him. The nephew, then but a boy, escaped to his tribe and vowed a vengeance which he wreaked in blood nearly a score of years later.

Minuit's preparations for war were not confined to land fortification. In 1627 the hearts of the colonists were gladdened by a great victory of the Dutch over the Spanish, when, in a battle off San Salvador, Peter Heyn demolished twenty-six Spanish warships. On the 5th of September the same bold sailor captured the whole of the Spanish silver-fleet with spoils amounting to twelve million guilders. In the following year the gallant commander, then a lieutenant-admiral, died in battle on the deck of his ship. The States-General sent to his old peasant mother a message of condolence, to which she replied: "Ay, I thought that would be the end of him. He was always a vagabond; but I did my best to correct him. He got no more than he deserved."

It was perhaps the echo of naval victories like these which prompted Minuit to embark upon a shipbuilding project of great magnitude for that time. Two Belgian shipbuilders arrived in New Amsterdam and asked the help of the Director in constructing a large vessel. Minuit, seeing the opportunity to advertise the resources of the colony, agreed to give his assistance and the result was that the New Netherland, a ship of eight hundred tons carrying thirty guns, was built and launched.

This enterprise cost more than had been expected and the bills were severely criticized by the West India Company, already dissatisfied with Minuit on the ground that he had favored the interests of the patroons, who claimed the right of unrestricted trade within their estates, as against the interests of the Company. Urged by many complaints, the States-General set on foot an investigation of the Director, the patroons, and the West India Company itself, with the result that in 1632 Minuit was recalled and the power of the patroons was limited. New Netherland had not yet seen the last of Peter Minuit, however. Angry and embittered, he entered the service of Sweden and returned later to vex the Dutch colony.

In the interval between Minuit's departure and the arrival of Van Twiller, the reins of authority were held by Sebastian Krol, whose name is memorable chiefly for the fact that he had been influential in purchasing the domain of Rensselaerswyck for its patroon (1630) and the tradition that the cruller, crolyer or krolyer, was so called in his honor. The Company's selection of a permanent successor to Minuit was not happy. Wouter Van Twiller, nephew of Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, must have owed his appointment as Director to family influence, since neither his career nor his reputation justified the choice.

David de Vries, writing on April 16, 1633, notes that on arriving about noon before Fort Amsterdam he found there a ship called the Soutbergh which had brought over the new Governor, Wouter Van Twiller, a former clerk in the West India House at Amsterdam. De Vries gives his opinion of Van Twiller in no uncertain terms. He expressed his own surprise that the West India Company should send fools into this country who knew nothing except how to drink, and quotes an Englishman as saying that he could not understand the unruliness among the officers of the Company and that a governor should have no more control over them.

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1

For further details of the appearance of the Half Moon, see E. H. Hall's paper on Henry Hudson and the Discovery of the Hudson River, published by the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society (1910).

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2

See the monograph by Augustus H. Van Buren in the Proceedings of the New York Historical Society, vol. xi, p. 133.

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