The Story of New Netherland

Title Page

THE STORY OF

NEW NETHERLAND.

THE DUTCH IN AMERICA

Preface

Let us understand the difference between Germany and Holland, the Dutch and the Germans, separate history from fairy tales, and distinguish jokes from facts.

Despite official documents, book-titles, and memorial tablets, there was never any such place or state as New Netherlands, nor any admiral named "van" Tromp, nor any Dutch clergyman with the title of "Dominie." The word "schnapps" was not in the Dutchman's vocabulary, nor did Hollanders ever talk Pennsylvania German, — as is represented in the stage dialect of Rip van Winkle. The earliest settlers of New Netherland did not smoke tobacco. The Dutch folks of New Amsterdam did not associate Santa Claus with Christmas, but on the 6th of December they celebrated St. Nicholas’s Day, and on the 25th of the same month the birthday of the Christ. The hardy, active men who made New Netherland were not fat, or old, or stupid fellows. They were young men, lithe, alert, and venturesome. The first comers knew little or nothing about tobacco, though they quickly learned its use from the Indians, and even smoked the homegrown article, presented to them by the Pilgrims of Massachusetts. Not one of them pronounced the syllable "dam" in "Amsterdam" or "Rotterdam," as if he were swearing in English.

Most of the grotesque stories about the Hollanders in New Amsterdam grew up in late times, long after Dutch ceased to be spoken in America. Then their geographical names were corrupted and a luxuriant crop of mythology, like fungus, gave the funny fellows their chance. Then the vulgarity and dregs of Dutch speech, with much of its snap and vitality, also, entered into American English. Then "schnapps," a German word, "Dominie," a Scotch spelling of the Latin "Domine," and "van" Tromp with his legendary broom, — prefix and besom being both purely British inventions, — came into our speech to corrupt English. Then young Washington Irving, without having seen any but the southern portion of decadent Holland, took the world-wide myth of Rip from the Shop, which has nothing in it peculiarly Dutch, out of its setting in Germany, located it in the Catskills, and made a funny picture of New Netherland men and ways. What if he had got hold of Pilgrims or Puritans first?

In hundreds of volumes purporting to be serious history, Irving's comic supplement to the early history of New York is quoted as both fact and truth. Its coloring has been accepted as exact by so-called American historians. Darley's caricatures and Boughton's delicious jokes on canvas have kept up the illusion. With such material historiographers, taking themselves seriously, pieced out their narratives when original research and documents were both lacking.

After the English conquest of 1664, the Dutch language, gradually falling out of law and business, was heard in the church and home, but written only by the ministers. Even after it was bowed out of the pulpit, it was lovingly kept in use by the aged. It lingered longest in the country and in the city kitchens among the black slaves and the servants. Yet its snap (the very word, in this sense, is Dutch), vigor, and picturesqueness have enriched American English. Often grotesquely altered in form, as in "boss," "boom," "hunker," "boodle," etc., or in familiar terms like "forlorn hope," — "taps," etc., it has furnished many of our expressions in military, political, and social life and much of our slang. "Americanisms," borrowed from Low Country speech, have puzzled European students of English as spoken on this side of the Atlantic, who do not recognize old friends and the ghosts of history. Even the colors in "Old Glory" are criticised harshly, because the historically Dutch origin of our flag, especially of the stripes, which stand for federal government, is not known or considered. Many British jibes and falsehoods about the Dutch, to our shame, mar our speech and writing. Of this we should repent, because four of our original thirteen states were settled from the Netherlands.

Yet the pendulum may swing too far either way. After the caricaturist follows the flatterer, though neither may ever have read or written a Dutch sentence. Diedrich Knickerbocker's "History of New York" and some recent books show the extremes of jovial detraction and uncritical laudation. While our British friends tell about "van" Tromp and some decry even their best king, William III ("Dutch Billy") as a "sour Calvinist," the speeches of those who glorify Dutch ancestors often soar as far beyond fact as do balloons above the earth, and an after-dinner "wind-trade" flourishes as in the days of speculation in tulip bulbs.

To understand the Dutch people, we must not inquire of aliens in speech or temper, or of belated tradition. To get the truth one must see the Dutch homeland, go into the archives for the past, and let those long dead speak in their own defense. He must live among the Hollanders, and with their descendants, to know the real character of the people who laid the foundations of our four Middle States. Then the student, who, like the author, is not of Dutch blood or inheritance, can emancipate himself from old wives' fables, distorted views, and damaging traditions.

While, therefore, reckoning as assets some knowledge of the language of the Netherlands and study in their archives during seven visits beyond sea, perusal of the books and papers in the deacons' chest in Schenectady and in the State Library at Albany, and familiarity with the local records of church and village in the valleys of the Hudson, the Mohawk, and the Raritan, I count as even more valuable my fourteen years of life with descendants of people from Patria in two Dutch-American towns. I studied five years at New Brunswick, New Jersey, the Dutch-American educational capital. For nine years, as Domine of the Dutch church of Schenectady, I served a congregation uniquely rich in heirlooms and documents, the people being for the most part descendants of the pioneers of 1661. In both places I learned fact and truth in human lives as well as in parchments. Many current notions about New Netherland were seen to be vulgar errors, of which Americans should be ashamed. From the age of fourteen, until going to Boston to live, I was during twenty-five years a member of the Reformed Church in America, drinking in her noble traditions, while critically challenging all statements passing as history; for between the truth of history and the truth of religion there is no vital difference. Happily my predecessors or neighbors, in Schenectady (Pearson, Vermilye, Yates, MacMurray), in New Brunswick (Brodhead, Van Pelt, Corwin, Utterwick, and Hansen), in Albany (Berthold Fernow), and in Ithaca (T. W. Strong and G. W. Schuyler) were prominent among those who have recovered the true story of the Dutch in America and given us genuine American history. To these, to my fellow alumni of Rutgers College, to Mr. Irving Elting, Mr. Dingman Versteeg, Professor P. J. Blok of Leyden, Mr. G. Beernink of Nijkerk, the scholarly translator and editor of the Van Rensselaer-Bowier Manuscripts, Mr. E. van Laer, at Albany, and to many archivists in Holland, I am greatly indebted. I invite the student to scan also the list of authorities at the end of this volume.

I shall attempt to tell who the settlers of the Middle States and the founder, of the Empire State were, what ideas and customs they brought here, how they struggled, first against a selfish corporation and next against English dukes and kings, for the rights of the Fatherland, and won; how, happily for us Americans, they resisted all English attempts to fasten a state church upon the people: how and why their descendants were so loyal to the Continental cause and Congress, and how large are our inheritances from Dutch law, order, freedom, culture, and from those achievements for civilization and humanity in which the Netherlands so long led the world. Avoiding in the text, as far as possible, any ostentation of learning or research, I have tried to show my fellow Americans how worthy of serious study are our national origins other than English, and how rich is our inheritance from the Netherlands.

Chapter I: Hudson Seeks the Sea Path to China

When, in 1567, the Spanish Duke of Alva marched with his terrible "Black Beards" towards the Netherlands to subdue the Dutch people to the ideas of Philip II, the boy that grew up to found the Dutch West India Company was born. One hundred thousand Walloons, or French-speaking inhabitants of the Low Countries, fled at once to foreign lands. Within fifty years, half a million refugees from the Belgic Netherlands were dwelling in England, Holland, Germany, or in Switzerland, and enriching those countries by their talents, character, and industry. Instead of fewer than a million people living in 1567 on four thousand square miles of poor soil, the Dutch Republic had in 1609 a population of three and a half millions, or one as large as that of England.

The Dutch end of the sea-route to Manhattan had been prepared before Columbus made landfall. William Usselinx, born in Antwerp, founder of the Dutch and Swedish East India Companies that began the settlements of New York and Delaware, became interested in American enterprises by living in the Azores. These islands had been rediscovered by Dutch sailors in 1431 and colonized, becoming a new Netherland. From this point the ships bound for the New World began their westward voyages. Lying eight hundred miles west of Portugal, these nine islands emerge from the ocean on nearly the parallels' of our Middle States. England lies in high latitudes. Cabot, Davis, and Frobisher, steering directly west, entered sub-polar regions. From the Azores to Sandy Hook is almost a straight line. In our day the German submarine cable connects Continental Europe with America, by way of the Azores and Embden.

When both Orient and Occident were opened to trade the islands rose directly in the path of commerce. Here, as to a school, one must come to learn about colonial business. For a long time the Azores were associated with America, but after the Spaniards occupied them, the Canaries became the base of supplies and point of departure across the Atlantic.

In 1591, when the triumphant Dutch Republic was twelve years old, Usselinx returned and began to agitate in favor of trade with America. He kept up the work of arousing public opinion until his death at eighty, leaving fifty printed works behind him. In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was formed, but the Great Truce of 1609 compelled postponement of his schemes for a West India Company, which was not organized until 1621. Meanwhile, however, the offer of the States-General of twenty-five thousand guilders to any one who should discover the northeastern route to China and Japan was a lure. So some Amsterdam merchants fitted out the flyboat Half Moon, with a crew of sixteen men, half English and half Dutch. It was named the Half Moon, after the victorious flagship, in which, in 1602, Vice-Admiral Kant had beaten the Spaniards in a great naval battle. Five days before the signing of the truce, April 4, 1609, Hudson weighed anchor and sailed for Nova Zembla.

In Arctic seas, amid icebergs and blizzards, he had to face a mutiny. The sailors, not relishing the idea of being frozen fast among polar bears, demanded that he go back. Hudson flanked the mutineers by steering westward across the Atlantic.

Other pathfinders were then on the inland waters of America, all looking for the Chinese gate and "the needle’s eye." Champlain at the northern lake side was meddling with firearms in Indian quarrels. John Smith on the lower Susquehanna kept hunting for that open sea in which he believed. Hudson, and later La Salle, was soon to join them, searching for the same mythical water. The "China rapid" in the St. Lawrence River, called in jest La Chine, tell how La Salle also sought but found not. This idea of an inland ocean, called Verrazano's Sea, then filled men's minds. Even to the end of the nineteenth century it dominated English fiction.

Before leaving the homeland, Smith had written to Hudson telling him of this water somewhere near the fortieth parallel, and extending perhaps to the Pacific. Hudson, besides having his head full of the notion, carried Smith's letter in his pocket. Notwithstanding that entrance into America meant a virtual breaking of Holland’s truce with Spain, Hudson hoped to find the route to China.

Over the indigo blue of the Gulf Stream Hudson reached in mid-July the Maine coast, stopped to remast his ship, and then moved southward. In August he passed "the King's river in Virginia," where, he wrote, "our Englishmen" were. On the 28th, he put into Delaware Bay, but a strong current and much sand forbade the idea of an immediate route to China. On the 3d of September he doubled Sandy Hook. Here, near the fortieth parallel, so often talked about with Smith, was a great opening. What might it not lead to? Anchor was cast for the night, and the orange, white, and blue flag, with the initials O. I. C., was mirrored on the receding tide.

We must put away twentieth-century ideas and think with Hudson and his sailors. Neither he nor they were wise in modern science. "Nature-faking" of the most exaggerated kind was then in vogue. Mythical zoology was represented on maps and in books. In the Leyden Museum, among the curiosities catalogued was "the hand of a Mermaide," and Hudson's sailors had seen "mermaids" near the Russian icebergs, where we should find seals. Near the Catskills, they ate "dog," which would be "coon" to our taste and eye, for all Indian dogs were then very small. Neither the big hounds of Europe nor the white daisies, now so common in the Hudson valley and brought from beyond sea, were then known in America. The sailors enjoyed "Turkish wheat," where we relish corn in ear. Happy the release, if they, like some British tourists eating to-day, bit too far into the cob and got their teeth out safely. If they found "gold," or discovered what seemed valuable minerals, because of the colors of the rocks, they were only like other explorers. The beautiful New World was full of awe, wonder, and mystery. Nothing is more evident than the Dutchmen's delight in nature.

The Half Moon lay at anchor for a week in the lower bay. "Three great rivers" were noticed, two of them being the Passaic and the Hackensack. Though the strangers were welcomed by the red men, yet before long arrows and bullets were shot in hostile exchange. John Colman filled the first white man's grave. Then the ship moved up past Manhattan, to which it is sheer tautology to link the word "island," for the name includes the idea of a place inclosed by two rivers. Although the wild men were treated to liquor, the word Manhattan has no meaning of drink or intoxication in it. For thirteen miles they sailed along the majestic Palisade Rocks, from which the mythical "Norumbega" probably got its name. Through the broadened stream forming Haverstraw and Tappan bays, and in view of the landmarks later named Tedious, Stony, and Verplanck's points, past islands now the bases of lighthouses, and around Dunderberg, they reached the narrower and deeper river flanked by lordly mountains. They cast anchor under the splendid plateau of West Point.

Anchorages were made at night and strict watch was kept, for what could fifteen men do, if thousands of red warriors should attack? In one case, twenty-eight canoes filled with people came out to trade pumpkins and corn for kitchen ware, axes, beads, and copper kettles. More than once, native thieves climbed into or escaped from the stern windows with loot, and some of these were shot dead. There were other disturbances, and the fault was not all on one side. Gunpowder, firearms, alcohol, and iron came thus at one time into the Indian world.

The gorgeous hues of the maples and of the "American calico plant," and the splendor of the scenery, especially after their late sub-polar experiences, made this seem to the Dutchmen the fairest hand their eyes had ever feasted upon. As they emerged into a tamer foreground of flat stretches, there rose towards the western horizon the Catskills, out of which flow the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers.

Invited to dinner, Hudson was paddled ashore in an Indian canoe. He landed and partook of American refreshments with a chief who was head of a village of forty males and seventeen females. Their roundhouse was of oak bark with an arched roof. Great stores of corn and beans, provision for the winter's succotash, piled up and amounting to three shiploads, lay near the house, besides what was growing in the fields. These showed the provident habits of these agricultural Indians, who as yet knew nothing of horses and cows. Cooked food was served in "well-made red wooden bowls." With shell knives the red women skinned "a fat dog" for a further feast, for they supposed their guests would stay over night; but life in the Stone Age is a bore to a civilized man. A short visit was enough, and Hudson returned to his floating home.

The little ship beat her way northward, but the water shoaled. No open sea, or China, or any Pacific Ocean, was in sight. Juet, the mate, penetrated in a boat beyond what are now Watervliet, Waterford, and Troy. They saw not a tide-water river in lordly flood, but many rapids and shallows. Even had they reached the river's source, in the Tear-of-the-Clouds Lake at the top of Mount Marcy, they would have been no nearer, but farther off from Japan.

Back and down the Half Moon moved to the ocean, her crew killing not a few natives, and staining land and water with needless blood. The "falconet," or little cannon of two inches bore, throwing a two-pound shot, was more than once fired to sink the canoes. Evidently this was what the sailors dub "an unhappy ship," nor can the intruders be acquitted of the charges of murder and of making drunkards.

On the 4th of October the Half Moon was at sea again. Yet where should the crew go? To return to Holland might mean the gallows, for they had mutinied. The ship was pointed towards Ireland for the winter; but how or why we know not, the Half Moon cast anchor at Dartmouth on the 7th of November, 1609, and the English sailors forced Hudson to land. King James sent orders to hold the vessel. He actually forbade Hudson to leave England, hoping to get the full benefit of his discovery. The captain, however, had sent on his report to Amsterdam, asking for good sailors in place of bad ones.

The problem was solved by the Muscovy Company again impressing Hudson into its service, and the Half Moon was released. Hudson, intent on solving the world's mystery, recrossed the Atlantic. After discovering America's greatest inland sea, though not the way to China, he met lonely death in 1610 by starvation. Under the veil of apparent failure, Hudson's life was a success that shines with splendor as the ages roll on. For Holland he opened a great door of opportunity.

As Captain John Smith's name is linked with four of the United States, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York, so Hudson’s personality is preserved in American history and in legend. His name is written imperishably on a bay, a river, and a strait. His career illustrates the truth that a man often achieves his best for the race after he is dead. Hudson rests from his labors and his works do follow.

Endnotes

Some of the greatest of the makers of New Netherland, Hudson, de Forest, Minuit, van Curler, sleep in graves unknown.

Chapter II: The Manhattan Pioneers

The quick-witted Netherlanders lost no time. Before the Half Moon was free from King James's clutches, merchants in Amsterdam had formed a syndicate to send a trading-ship across the Atlantic with Juet, mate of the Half Moon, as master of the new vessel. She was the pioneer of a great fleet with homely names, such as the Fortune, Tiger, Spotted Cow, Wood-Yard, Orange Tree, Arms of Amsterdam, Black Eagle, Blue Cock, Flower of Gelderland, Unity, The Pear Tree, New Netherland’s Fortune, White Horse, Herring, Salt Mountain, Prince Maurice, which crossed the Atlantic and came back laden with American furs.

In 1612 two famous skippers, Adrian Block in the Tiger and Hendrick Christiansen in the Fortune, crossed over and brought back to Holland not only a cargo of skins, but two sons of Indian chiefs, named Orson and Valentine. Between 1612 and 1621, Christiansen made ten voyages into the great river. On Castle Island, now part of the city of Albany, he built a fort and trading-station. At Esopus a ronduit, or circular fort, was erected in 1614.

By what name was "the Rhine of America" then known? The Indians called it the Shatemuc; Juet spoke of it as "the Great Stream," but soon it was known among the patriotic Dutchmen as the Mauritius, after the Union General Maurice. To others it was the North River, or the River Flowing out of the Mountains. Not until after 1664 did Englishmen give it the name Hudson.

The Dutchmen took a hint from native architecture, and with the aid of the Indians built huts of timber and bark. These were about at No. 39 Broadway, where are the offices of the Holland-America Line, and then much nearer the water; for Manhattan has been artificially lengthened. Christiansen and his men spent the winter among the virgin forests which covered the spaces now occupied by the tunnel-like streets, on which rise skyscrapers made of Pittsburg steel, higher than Babel's Tower. This original Holland Society ate dinners with keen appetites and splendid digestion.

They noted the landmarks. Probably the first place to get a name was the Kaap, or cape, the rocky southern end of the island, called also the Hook, and later "Capsey" Hook. This became in time the official landing-place, being furnished with an iron rail for the safety of passengers, land lubbers, and boatmen embarking and disembarking. The water space covering the Kaap has long since been "gedempte," as the Dutch say, that is, dumped full of earth, and people in crossing the "Battery" walk over the historic place now under water.

Between Capsey Hook and Spuyten Duyvil, the Dutchmen in exploring the island found a wonderfully varied landscape, — high and low hills, lakes, swamps, forests, stretches of bald rock, grassy meadows, Indian trails, "castles," and villages, with fields of corn and patches of melons and beans. These, with amazing abundance of four-footed, winged, finny, and shell game, furnished juicy and delicious food, and filled the Dutchmen with enthusiastic admiration. At home in Patria they had had to get their "staff of life" out of a spongy soil, which their ancestors after ages of toil drew up from the ocean, or fertilized into life from the dead sand of the sea bottom. Even after winning their land from the waves, it must be continually guarded lest it slip away into marsh or water. The boundless fertility of the New World filled them with perpetual surprise. The vast number of springs, brooks, and rills and the variety and grandeur of the trees were especially impressive. It recalled the Land of Promise about which they had read and their domines had often preached.

Where is now the City Hall Park, stretched grassy meadows. Imposing hills, long since leveled, suggested dreams of future windmills. "The Swamp," still the centre of New York's leather trade, at that time required a boat to cross it. Canal Street was then a river, enlarging into a lake, rich in islands, coves, and inlets fringed with trees, whose leaves made shade and whose roots were the hiding-places of trout. Where lay heaps of clam and oyster shell fragments, left over from Indian feasts and wampum-making, visions of limekilns at once rose in the Dutchmen’s minds; so they called it Kalk Hoek, or Lime Point. As an ordinary Dutchman pronounces Delft "Delleft," so "Kalk" in a sailor's mouth became "Kallek." In time the English called it the Collect, and in the days of its use as a rubbish receiver, it was well worthy of its name.

The Indian village, where lived the Manhattans, or Island Indians, the Mana-hattas, was situated between high land and water, and was favorable for defense and food. Crowning the hill was the "castle" or palisaded village. Below were the maize lands and the endless supplies of furs, game, material for shell money, fresh- and salt-water fish, and the clams, oysters, and eels that thrive in tidal waters. At the river's mouth was Canoe Place.

The American scenery was very different from that of the flat Veluwe, the shore dunes, or the sunken polders of dear Patria. From the varied shores of Manhattan, high and rocky, low and sandy, shell-strewn or stony, gravel or beach, or from coign of vantage on hills, whether bare or bosky, or out of forest vistas, these pioneers feasted on the scenery. Across the narrow East River rose the sand banks, or "Brooklyn Heights," a striking feature in the general flatness of that island of Seawanaka, or wampum-land of the Indians, but not called "Long" until nearly a century later. Across, on the sunset side, "the great rocks of Weehawken" towered above the meadows of the very low Hackensack valley. The columnar lines of the Palisades, frowning on the upper river's front and casting early and long afternoon shadows, mightily impressed men from a flat and sunken land. Their own writings show how handsomely the Netherlanders appraised their new possessions. The pages of Wassenaer fairly glow with enthusiastic description. Though ready to utilize their full resources, they looked for quick returns. So long as the wild animals, easily trapped or shot, carried a fortune on their backs, and the Indian demand was for metal goods and trinkets, nothing else paid like peltry. Besides, to fight the Spaniards and set Patria permanently free, ready cash was the first requirement.

Yet there were those who heeded the beckoning of the shining waters and listened to the call of the woods. Block left off "trucking," to win the prize promised to discoverers of new lands. We shall soon find him afloat. A new map meant credentials to fame.

Three other Dutchmen from Fort Orange had some lively adventures inland during the year 1614, and increased unwillingly Europe's knowledge of American geography. Starting out with some Mohican Indians, they were made prisoners by the Iroquois and taken probably into the Susquehanna region. It is quite possible that, supposed to be Spaniards or Frenchmen, they were kept a while at the stronghold on "Spanish Hill" near Waverly, New York, and then, by way of the Delaware River, released or ransomed. Whatever may have been their full itinerary, these men gave information that was incorporated into a map, dated 1604-16, and discovered by Mr. Brodhead in the archives at the Hague. It is "the oldest muniment" for the history of the Empire State.

When Skipper Block's vessel caught fire and became ashes and scrap iron, the doughty Dutchman built a new yacht, the pioneer craft of the Empire State, the Onrust, or Restless, of sixteen tons. The map-makers had not yet known of the long sound stretching from Manhattan to Montauk. They had pictured New England as coming down to the ocean. From a hilltop on Manhattan, Block may have seen the agitated waters glistening in the morning sun, and named their place "Helder-Gat," or Shining Gate; or he may have remembered the Hellegat, between Axel and Hulst in Zeeland. Passing eastward over the rapids and shallows of Hell Gate (the sunken fan-shaped rocks, which were blown up by General Gilmore in 1877), Block was surprised to find what seemed to be an inland sea. Judging from the many sentimental names, such as Lapwing's Point, Vale of Swans, Clover Nook, Children's Corner, given by the Dutch in America, it is just as likely that the name "Hell" Gate (as in Helderberg, the Shining Hills) suggests heaven and its light, as their opposites. Yet it may be only the rough sailors' dubbing of a place difficult of navigation. He found the water, like the Hudson, salt, but he also learned by tasting that the big stream flowing in a rush from the north was sweet.

Spending several weeks in exploration, Block put down on his map the Fresh (Connecticut) River; Rood (red), or Rhode Island; and many other names long since translated or corrupted into good, possible, or "Connecticut" English. In Dutch, Rood, like Roos in Roosevelt, is pronounced as Rhode, though thousands of Americans still say Russ-velt instead of Rōs-a-velt. Block Island, reckoned in Newport County, and Block Island Sound perpetuate the skipper’s name.

Meanwhile interest in their possessions was increasing among the Dutch. Other merchants hazarded their yachts in trans-Atlantic trade. So long at war with Spain, with all their energies engaged, they could not, even in time of truce, restrain themselves.

Excitement, being in the air, did not need stimulus, but the Dutch Congress, in March, 1614, fed fuel to the flame by fresh offers. Whosoever should discover a new country and give information within a fortnight after his return, and then make four voyages to the new land, should have a monopoly of its trade. Quick to close with the offer, in July, 1614, a company of merchants, in, six cities, in virtue of Henry Hudson's discovery, petitioned the States-General for a charter.

This paper was as yet unacted upon, when, on October 1, Block, with his map, arrived in Holland. On the 11th he had the floor, and told of the lands and peoples he had seen. His chart, or "figurative map," revealed a new inland sea, a great island, numerous waterways, and a new entrance to Manhattan, besides locating rivers and Indian tribes.