The Epic of New York City

by Edward Robb Ellis

  These first Dutch colonists reached here about the middle of May, 1623. The Dutch West India Company had been incorporated in 1621, but the directors needed time to perfect their organization, find and outfit a ship, and round up people willing to head into the wilderness. Not many Dutchmen cared to leave home. However, a group of aliens living in Holland agreed to move to the New World.

  They were French-speaking refugees from the Spanish Netherlands, known today as southern Belgium. As Protestants, they had fled to Holland to escape persecution from Spanish Catholics. In 1623 these Walloons had asked the English for permission to emigrate to Virginia but disliked the terms offered them. Already uprooted from their homeland and not yet having sunk new roots in Holland, they decided to make a third start in life.

  The man who brought them to America was the same Cornelis Jacobsen May who had explored Long Island. He had been named the first director of New Netherland after it had been declared a Dutch province in 1623.

  The Walloons sailed under orders known as Provisional Regulations for Colonists. For two years they were to be furnished with clothing and other supplies from company storehouses at reasonable prices, and they could pay on the installment plan. They were permitted to indulge in trade only if they sold their wares to company agents. They were forbidden to engage in any handicraft. Holland didn’t want its emigrants to become independent of the homeland. The Walloons promised to stay six years wherever the company put them.

  Captain May distributed them widely in order to occupy as much territory as possible. He sent two families and six men to the Hartford River, thus occupying a part of what is now Connecticut; dispatched two other families and eight men to the Delaware River, to settle in New Jersey and Delaware; left eight men on the site of New York City; and sent the rest of the colonists up the Hudson River to Albany. There they found that Christiaensen’s stockade had been ruined by a spring freshet. The newcomers built another stronghold, named Fort Orange in honor of the ruling house of Holland. This was the first permanent Dutch settlement in the New World.

  The Walloons left on the site of New York City decided that they could best protect themselves by clustering on Governors Island, 500 yards off the southern tip of Manhattan. This isle was covered with walnut, chestnut, and shellbark trees. The Indians called it Pagganack, or Pecanuc, meaning a place where nut trees grew. The Dutch colonists called it Nut Island. Three months later these first settlers were joined by forty-five more Walloons, who had traveled here in three ships.

  These vessels were the Orange Tree, the Eagle, and the Love. They were escorted by an armed yacht provided by the Dutch government, which had learned of the abortive attempt by the English to sink the New Netherland. The latest colonists brought household furniture and farming tools. Two of the ships carried 103 head of livestock—cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep. Only 2 or 3 of the animals died during the voyage. The survivors disembarked on Nut Island; they might have got lost in the forests of Manhattan if they had landed there. Soon it became difficult to water the livestock on Nut Island, so they had to be transferred to Manhattan. Now the first permanent buildings rose on the site of New York City.

  Conceived mainly as a trading post to which Indians and other trappers and traders could bring their furs, the colony flourished at first. In 1624 it exported to Holland 4,000 beaverskins and the pelts of 700 otters. These were worth 27,125 guilders, or a little more than the value of merchandise sent to the colony by the company. Although 20 head of cattle died from feeding on poisonous weeds, the rest multiplied.

  After the expiration of Director May’s one-year term he was replaced by Willem Verhulst. Before long Verhulst’s colonial council found him guilty of mismanagement, and the company summoned him back to Holland. His successor was Peter Minuit, a middle-aged man whose hair was flecked with gray. Black-eyed and husky Minuit arrived on May 4, 1626. Coarse and self-willed, he had the brawn, brains, and drive needed to rule the rude outpost. The company elevated Minuit from director to director general and vested all legislative, executive, and judicial powers in him.

  Minuit’s first official act was to buy Manhattan from the Indians. On May 6, 1626, he convened the principal chiefs of nearby tribes on the site of Bowling Green, broke open sea chests, and gave them 60 guilders’ worth of cloth, beads, hatchets, and other trinkets. The redskins had no conception of individual or tribal ownership of land. As has been noted, none lived on Manhattan; they merely hunted and fished there. The Indians understood that they would yield from time to time such portions of the island as the palefaces might need. They never expected to be driven completely off it. So for 60 guilders (equal to about 40 modern dollars) the Dutch got the use of 14,000 acres of rich and timbered land.

  This southernmost niche of New Netherland was given the name of New Amsterdam for the chamber of the Dutch West India Company which mainly controlled its affairs. At first the colonists settled principally along the East River because its shore was better protected from the prevailing southwesterly winds than the banks of the Hudson were. Besides, much of the west side of Manhattan was occupied by a cemetery, a company farm and orchard, and a couple of country estates owned by two rich Dutchmen. In the summer of 1626, Minuit ordered the erection of thirty houses, mostly one-story cabins with straw roofs and wooden chimneys. Each contained a sleeping bench, or slaap-banck, recessed into one wall.

  The company had sent along a military engineer with specific orders about locating farms, erecting public buildings, and constructing a fort. This was supposed to be five-sided and a thousand feet in diameter. The tip of Manhattan was so narrow, though, that a smaller, square stronghold was put up. The shores on both sides of Manhattan, from the Battery to what is now midtown, stood one to four blocks farther inland than at present. For example, Pearl Street on the southeastern tip of the island was then the strand or waterfront. It got its name from the pearly shells left there by tides. The Dutch, masters at landfill work, later extended the shores by making solid ground of tidal areas. Pearl Street today is separated from the East River by Water Street, Front Street, and South Street.

  Public buildings arose on designated spots. Private dwellings, however, were situated helter-skelter by colonists who squatted wherever they chose. This explains the irregularity of streets which even today characterizes lower Manhattan. Before streets were laid out, two formed by common consent. One was Pearl Street along the East River. The other, farther west, followed a ridge northward through the company’s farms and fields. Originally it had been an Indian trail. The Dutch named it Heere Straat, or High Street. We know it as Broadway. It was then much wider than it is now.

  Minuit’s engineer staked out a north-south road, called the Bowery because 12 farms, or bouweries, had been laid out near it—6 on one side, 6 on the other. The first 2 farms were 80 rods wide; the others, only 55 rods wide. The company created for itself a farm of 120 acres. A dozen smaller farms, along with some cows, were given to the colonists.

  The arrival of other passenger-laden ships increased the population to nearly 200 persons. Although Peter Minuit was the ultimate on-the-spot authority, public morality was supervised by Jan Lempou, the schout. His office embraced the functions of sheriff, public prosecutor, and defense counselor. Unfortunately, Lempou wasn’t present when a certain tragedy occurred.

  Thus far the Dutch had experienced no trouble with the Indians, except for habitual thievery. But one day in 1626 an Indian brave and his twelve-year-old nephew walked from Westchester County down toward the company warehouse at the tip of Manhattan. They had beaverskins to trade with the Dutch. Their route took them past the Kolk “Whirlpool,” or Collect, a small spring-fed pond just north of what is now Foley Square. Three workmen were plowing and clearing the edge of this pond. The Dutchmen killed the brave and gtole his wares. Seemingly, neither the governor nor the schout heard about this until years later. The Indian lad, who escaped, never forgot his uncle’s murder and swore to avenge himself on the palefaces.

  Oth
er Indians became troublesome near Albany at Fort Orange, killing several Dutch. Minuit ordered the surviving upstate colonists down to Fort Amsterdam for safety. He also closed Fort Nassau, which the Dutch had built on the Delaware River, and brought its inhabitants here. The newcomers increased New Amsterdam’s population to about 300.

  The spring of 1628 marked the arrival from Holland of Jonas Michaelius, the first regular minister to function here. His church continues today as the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church of New York. The first and only schoolmaster the Dutch colony ever had was Adam Roelandsen. Each student paid him two beaverskins a year. Roelandsen must have been disagreeable, for practically nobody liked him. Failing as a schoolmaster or being forced to supplement his income, he took in washing.

  This doesn’t necessarily mean that he bent over a tub with soapy hands. The Dutch let dirty linen accumulate for six months and only then sent it out to be washed. The laundries were big establishments run by men. Perhaps the schoolmaster owned or managed such a place. This custom of semiannual washings explains why the dowry of every well-to-do Dutch girl included vast quantities of linen.

  Agriculture prospered. Although the governor was less interested in farming than in the fur trade, he decided to erect mills to grind meal. Besides windmills, the Dutch put up horse mills—that is, powered by horses. Some mills were used to saw logs. The Indians were terrified by the long arms and big teeth of the windmills, which really were dangerous. A common epitaph of millers was “killed in his mill.”

  Minuit wrote to Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth colony to the northeast, suggesting that the Dutch and English enter into trade relations. At first Bradford hesitated, warning the Dutch not to encroach on his territory, but Minuit persisted and thus inaugurated regular coastwise traffic between New Amsterdam and Plymouth.

  Much farther south, in Brazil, the Dutch West India Company was conquering, colonizing and profiting. By 1629 the company had more than 100 ships warring on pirates and the merchant ships of other nations. On the firm’s payroll were 15,000 seamen and soldiers, who in the single year 1629 used up more than 100,000 pounds of gunpowder.

  To establish a supply base for their expanding merchant marine, to promote the colonization of New Netherland, and to help make it self-sufficient, company directors decided to attract more settlers by giving away vast tracts of land. This was the genesis of the patroon system that played such an important role in the history of New York State; Manhattan itself was exempted. The company’s plan was embodied in a Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, confirmed by the Dutch government on June 7,1629.

  Each patron, or patroon, had to promise to transport and settle at least fifty adult colonists on a given territory within four years. In return, the government would give the patroon an estate, fronting sixteen miles along navigable rivers and extending inland as far as settlement would permit. He was expected to pay the Indians for the land, but sophisticated Dutchmen knew that this meant nothing more than a few trinkets.

  This was indeed a tempting offer. Each estate could be held as a “perpetual fief in inheritance,” with the fruits, plants, minerals, rivers, and springs included. Soon five patroonships were parceled out along the Hudson, Connecticut, and Delaware rivers. Who got them? Directors of the Dutch West India Company. Thus, most of the land, commerce, and government of New Netherland fell into the hands of a few greedy merchants. Little was left for independent colonists.

  One of the oldest, richest, and craftiest of the company directors was an Amsterdam diamond and pearl merchant, named Kiliaen Van Rensselaer. In 1630 his agents bought from the Indians a tract of land, 24 miles long and 48 miles wide, on both sides of the Hudson River far north of New Amsterdam. This was an area even greater than his charter had cited, but his purchases were confirmed. Altogether, Van Rennselaer’s feudal estate comprised 700,000 acres, which included the present counties of Albany and Rensselaer, a part of Columbia County, and even a strip in Massachusetts. What did he pay for this domain? Knives, axes, wampum, and duffel (a strong shaggy cloth).

  Van Rensselaer never lived on his baronial estate. He didn’t even visit it. Through an able director he managed its affairs from overseas. After he died, some of his sons arrived from Holland, settled on the property, became lords of the manor, and wrangled with their hired help.

  Another patroon, also a director of the Dutch West India Company, was Michael Paauw. He was given Staten Island and the part of New Jersey that now includes Hoboken and Jersey City. This estate he named Pavonia by translating into Latin his own name, which is Dutch for peacock. Still another patroon received a large slice of land near the Narrows in New York Harbor.

  In 1630 the first Dutch pioneers arrived at Rensselaerswyck up the Hudson, Boston was founded by English settlers, and a map printed in Holland showed for the first time the names of Manhattan, New Amsterdam, and the North (Hudson) River. That was the year the people of New Amsterdam marveled at an enormous ship built under their very noses.

  Until then only a few sloops and shallops, all small and shallow, had been constructed here. But now two visiting Belgian shipbuilders were so impressed by the colony’s fine timber and the town’s magnificent harbor that they wanted to make a vessel of unusual proportions. Peter Minuit not only encouraged them but also gave them company funds. Using a horse-powered mill to saw timber into logs and logs into planks, the Belgians built a ship they named the New Netherland. Huge for that age, she displaced either 600 or 800 tons and bristled with 30 cannons.

  When the New Netherland reached Holland, most Dutchmen praised her magnitude, workmanship, and beautiful timber. This sentiment was not shared by company directors or government officials. Even before completion, the ship proved more expensive than planned, and because of her size, she was costly to operate. When the construction bill reached company directors, they were outraged. Stockholders also groused because they had to help pay for her. Their complaints were echoed in newspapers, which accused the company of extravagance. The government agreed. Two hundred years passed before another ship of comparable size was built in America.

  The case of the New Netherland, together with growing complaints about the patroons, produced a government investigation. The patroons were accused of greater interest in the forbidden Indian trade than in colonizing and cultivating their land. They smuggled furs because this paid a quicker return than farming. Peter Minuit, who had ratified the purchase of Indian land by the patroons, was charged with acting in their interests. The government ordered the company to recall him.

  Leaving New Netherland in the hands of a council, Minuit sailed for Holland in 1632. A storm drove his ship into Plymouth, England, where he was detained on a charge of illegal trading in the domains of the king of England, Charles I. His detention resulted in a spirited correspondence between England and Holland. The question was, Who owned the territory Minuit had governed?

  Dutch statesmen claimed that the Dutch had discovered the Hudson River in 1609, that some had returned in 1610, that a trading charter had been granted in 1614, that a fort had been maintained there until the formation of the Dutch West India Company in 1621, and that the company had sent colonists, who had occupied the land ever since 1623. The Dutch stressed their purchase of the land from the Indians, the original owners.

  The English had to cudgel their brains to answer these arguments, for in 1580 Queen Elizabeth had proclaimed that mere discovery of a wild country did not give title to it. Discovery had to be followed by occupation. The Dutch knew, all Europe knew, that from Cabot’s discovery in 1497 to the settlement of Jamestown in 1607—altogether 110 years—the English had not colonized any part of the New World. Still, the English replied to the Dutch that they held prior claims based on Cabot’s discovery and on subsequent patents issued by King James I. They denied that the Indians were the bona fide owners of the land. Even if they were, the English argued, they still couldn’t issue a legal title unless all tribes entered into a joint bargain with the purchaser. The
y flatly denied the jurisdiction of the Dutch government or the Dutch West India Company over New Netherland. However, they agreed to let the Dutch stay there if they submitted to English rule. Otherwise, the Dutch would not be permitted “to encroach up a colony of such importance as New England.”

  Worried by this legalistic wrangle, the Dutch decided to strengthen their position by instituting certain reforms. For one thing, the government reduced the size of future patroonships. Of the five original patroonships, four had failed, and only Rensselaerswyck flourished. The failures were due to problems of transportation and communication between the patroonships and the homeland, a lack of cooperation from the company, Indian troubles, tenant unrest, and the ban against trading in furs or engaging in manufacture.

  Peter Minuit was succeeded as director general of New Netherland by Bastiaen Jansen Kroll. This displeased Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, who began pulling strings backstage. He wangled the appointment of one of his relatives—a nephew or cousin. This was a moonfaced clerk, named Wouter Van Twiller. By replacing Kroll with Van Twiller, the company made a stupid concession to the wily Van Rensselaer. To be sure, Van Twiller had visited New Netherland twice, but merely to supervise the shipment of cattle to Rensselaerswyck. The five years before he became overlord of this Dutch colony, Van Twiller was nothing more than a clerk in the company’s warehouse in Amsterdam. Short and stout, he wore his sandy hair close-cropped and had small blue eyes set deep in his fat face.

  In the full panoply of power, the new governor arrived here in March,1633, attended by 104 soldiers, wearing steel corsets and leather jackets and carrying half-pikes and wheel-lock muskets. This was the first military force ever to land on the site of New York City. Also among Van Twiller’s shipmates was a new minister, a dominie named Everardus Bogardus.

  By the time Van Twiller got here, five stone warehouses had been completed and were in use by the company. However, Fort Amsterdam wasn’t finished. The new Dutch director general ordered the colonists to work faster, and within two years the fort was ready. Inside it Van Twiller built himself a brick house, certainly the best private dwelling in the province. The soldiers were quartered in a barracks, also built within the fort. Its main gate faced north and opened onto The Parade, now Bowling Green.