 Chapter 1 of Dutch and English on the Hudson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Dutch and English on the Hudson by Maude Wilder Goodwin. Chapter 1, 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 150 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's state wind on that memorable September day in 1609. A small Dutch yacht named the Halve Maina, or Half Moon, under the command of Captain Henry Hudson, slipped in past the low hook of sand in front of the Nava Sink Heights and sounded her way to an anchorage in what is now the outer harbor of New York. Robert Jewett of Limehouse, one of the adventurers sailing with Hudson rights in his journal. At three o'clock in the afternoon, we came to three great rivers, so we stood along to the northernmost thinking to have gone into it. But we found it to have a very shoal bar before it, for we had about ten foot water. Then we cast about to the southward and found two fathoms, three fathoms, and three and a quarter, till we came to the south side of them. Then we had five or six fathoms and anchored, so we sent in our boat to sound and they found no less water than four, five, six, and seven fathoms. And returned in an hour and a half, so we wade and went in and rode in five fathoms, oozy ground, and saw many salmon, mullets and rays, very great. So quietly is chronicled one of the epic-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 80 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 line with a golden mane. The ship's bow is green with ornaments of sailors' heads painted red and yellow. Both for castle and poop are high, the latter painted a blue modeled 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, their re-nidge, oest, inditja, 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 mast head at the fore top flutters the tricolor of red, white and black with the arms of Amsterdam in a field of white. At the main top 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 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 green tobacco 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 amid ships 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 models 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 main mast. 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 night head. 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, 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 cafe. 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 Coleman and his 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. Coleman was mortally wounded in the throat by an arrow and two of his companions were seriously they're 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 fought 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 10 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 Coleman 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 reach 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 saving 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 19th 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 Manito himself. A strange craft stopped in 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 hack hack Indian for gored or bottle is brought forward by the supposed Manito's servants and from this a substances poured out into a small cup or glass and handed to the Manito. The expected Manito drinks has the glass filled again and hands it to the chief next him to drink. The chief receives the glass but only smell it that 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 Manito 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 bemoaned him. He falls into a sleep and they saw him as expiring. He wakes again jumps up and declares that he never felt himself before so happy as after he had drunk the cup. Wishes for more. His wish is granted and the whole assembly soon join him and become intoxicated. The den of wares as the missionary points out further call New York Island Manahattanick the place where we were all drunk with this picturesque account. Let us contrast the current statement of Robert Jewett this morning at our first road in the river there came 8 and 20 canoes full of men women and children to betray us. But we saw their intent and suffered none of them to come aboard of us at 12 o'clock they departed. They brought with them oysters and beans wherever we bought some if there had been any such striking scene as the missionaries chronicle reports Jewett 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 Coleman 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 have been so ill-requited on his previous landing. Let us therefore pass by the Reverend John Heckwelders account as well found but not well founded and continue to follow the crews 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 troddened by the foot of man. He left Manhattan Island behind past 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 cat skills the Dutch bound the natives friendly and having apparently recovered from their first suspicious attitude the explorers began to open barter and exchange with such as wish to come aboard. On at least one occasion Hudson himself went ashore the early Dutch writer the light at who used Hudson's last journal quotes at link 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 and 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 suppose 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 it linked 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 have 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 Dietrich Nickerbacher who was always ready to help out back with fiction and both with humor. He pictures Henry Hudson as a short brawny old gentleman with a double chin, a mastic 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 leather 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 rattling of a tin trumpet owing to the number of hard north westers which he had swallowed in the course of his seafaring. This account accords with our idea of this dowdy navigator far better than the popular picture of the forlorn white bearded old gentleman amid the arctic ice flows. 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 this ship and so successfully plied them with brandy that they were completely intoxicated. One fellow sleep and was deserted by his comrades who however returned next day and were rejoice to find the victim professing great satisfaction over his experience. The ship had now reached the northern most 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 line with the golden main 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 Haver Straw 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 17th century Dutch saving vessels in which the forecast 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 sundial, a cross staff, a brass tinder box, a heater plate, spoons, a mortar and pestle, and a half hour glass which marked the different watches on deck. Doubtless this 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 Indians 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 gun whale, 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 once 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. Big habits possibly, and Berezzano 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 penance. 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. You 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. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Dutch and English on the Hudson by Maud Wilder Goodwin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 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 lay claim to the new country. Tua 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 overseas 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 7,246 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 Netherlands. This monopoly was limited to four voyages commencing on the 1st 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 Netherlands 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 big 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 12 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 16 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. The units of running and standing rigging, sails, cables, anchors, and other things there too belonging, such as are proper to be used in all great expeditions. These ships were to be manned, viddled, and maintained at the expense of the company, which in its turn was to contribute and maintain 16, like ships of war and four yachts. The object of forming this great company with almost unlimited power was to fold 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 Niyu, Netherland, sailed for the colony whose name it bore under the command of Court Nelis, Jakobsen, May of Horn, the first director general. With him embarked some 30 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 Netherland. After a two-month voyage the ship Niyu, Netherland reached the mouth of the Hudson, then called the Mauritius in honor of the stod holder 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 Adrianne 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 Wiltwick 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. The costume of the wife of a typical settler usually consisted of a single garment reaching from neck to ankles. In the summertime she went bare-headed and bare-footed. 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 103 heads of livestock, stallions, mares, bulls, and cows. Besides hogs and sheep all distributed into ships with a third vessel as convoy. The chronicler Nicolaus Jan Zoon van Waasenair 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 300 tons of fresh water which was pumped up for the livestock. 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 house of Jan Jors Rappelje the first born Christian daughter in New Netherlands. 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. Adriana smoothies. We learn with regret that Dominic Micaelius 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 four Negroes as set down in the log books of the slavers the Saint 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 peas 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 wrongdoing 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 casuous however found difficulty in explaining why it was just that one born a free and Christian parent should remain enslaved. By 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 boar connect 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. Great 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 84 thrushes or maizebirds at one shot. He adds that he had noticed crabs of excellent flavor on the flat shores of the bay. Their claws, he says naively, 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 of 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 the sea, and smaller fly-bootin anglers sized into flyboats which plied between New Amsterdam and Fort Orange loaded with supplies and household goods. Mining the prow of his boat to a tree at the water's edge, the enterprising skipper turned peddler 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 30, 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 threat of narrative in America, abandon the sequence of dates and turn back to the Holland of some years earlier, remembering that those who crossed the sea changed 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, Kirk, 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 is 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 columnists 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. End of Chapter 2, Chapter 3 of Dutch and English on the Hudson by Maude Wilder Goodwin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Patrons 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, are charter conveying powers nearly equally 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 Patrons. Manorial rights frequently in conflict with the authority of the company. And for a time it seemed as though the Patronship would be the prevailing form of grant in New Netherlands. The system of Patronships seems to have been suggested by Kilian van Rensselaer, one of the directors of the West India Company, and a lapidary of Amsterdam, who later became the most successful of the Patrons. 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 Netherlands 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 Kilian 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 Patronship was developed. The list of privileges and exemptions published by the West India Company in 1629 declared that all should be acknowledged Patrons of New Netherlands who should within the space of four years plant there a colony of 50 souls upwards of 15 years old. The island of the Manhattan was reserved for the company. The Patrons, it was stimulated, 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 16 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 Patrons were entitled to dispose of their grants by will, and they were free to traffic along the coast of New Netherlands 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, looms in Holland being hungry for raw material. The company agreed that it would not take any one from the service of the Patron during the years for which the servant was bound. And any columnist who should without written permission entered the service of another Patron or but take 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 Patron to administer high, middle and low justice. That is to appoint magistrates and direct courts which should deal with all grades of crimes committed within the limits of the manner and also with breaches of the civil law. In civil cases disputes over contracts, titles and such matters where the amount in litigation exceeded $20 as well as in criminal cases affecting life and limb it was possible to appeal to the director and counsel 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 manner. The sure prector or hangman was included with the superintendent, the shout fiscal or sheriff and the magistrates as part of the menorial court system. One such sure prector named Jan de Negre, perhaps a freed Negro is named among the dwellers at Rensellers, Wick, and we find him presenting a claim for 38 Florence $15 for executing Wolf Niesen. No man in the menorial 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 and all the records of disputes, reproaches and recriminations which mark the records of those old manners, 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. John and Blomart in association with Captain David de Vries and others took up a large territory on Delaware Bay and here they established a colony called Swannendale, which was destroyed by the Indians in 1632. Captain Menderson established his settlement on the mainland behind Staten Island and his manner extended from actor Kool or Newark Bay to the Tappan Z. One of the first patents recorded was granted to Michael Paw in 1630. In the documentary record, the director and counsel of New Netherlands under the authority of their high mightinesses, the Lord's States General and the West India Company Department of Amsterdam testified 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 counsel and declared that in consideration of certain merchandise, they agreed to transfer, cede, convey and deliver for the benefit of the honorable Mr. Michael Paw as true and lawful freehold the land at Hoboken Hacking 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 apathetic and yet a diverting spectacle when the simple red men thus were array their title to the broad acres of their fathers for our consideration of beads, shells, blankets and trinkets, but when they listened to the subtleties of Dutch law as expounded by the dog berries 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 Fisk 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 root 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 a 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 26,000 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, Paul bought under the same elaborate legal forms the whole of Staten Island, so called in honor of the Staten 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 Paul by the company and transferred with the exception of the bowries of Captain de Vries to Cornelius Mellon who was thus added to the list of patroons. Other regions also were erected into patroon ships but almost all were either unsuccessful from the beginning or short lived. The patroon ship most successful most prominent and most typical was Rensselerswijk which offers the best opportunity for a study of the Dutch colonial system. Then Rensseler though he did not apparently intend to make a home for himself in New Netherlands was one of the first to ask for a grant of land. He received subject to payment to the Indians attractive 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 Rensseler acquired a track comprising what are now the counties of Albany and Rensseler with part of Columbia. Of this track called Rensselerswijk Van Rensseler was named patroon and five other men, Godin, Blomart, Delayet, Bissle and Massart whom he had been forced to conciliate by taking into partnership were named co-directors. Later the claims of these five associates were bought out by the Van Rensseler family. In 1630 the first group of immigrants for this new colony sailed on the ship Eindracht and reached Fort Orange at the end 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 Rensselerswijk in 1643. He speaks of a miserable little fort built of logs and having four or five pieces of bacteria cannon. He describes also the colony as composed of about a hundred persons who reside in some 25 or 30 houses built along the river as each found most convenient. The patroons agent was established in the principal house while in another which served also as a church was Domesal the Domini the Reverend Johannes mega polensis junior. The houses he describes as built of boards and roofed with thatch having no mason work except in the chimneys. The settlers have 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 have 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. Of course as the prudent men rentseller everyone 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 Manhattan. Our sympathy goes out to those early settlers who lived almost as serfs under their patroon the women forbidden to spit or weave the men prohibited from trading in the furs which they saw building up fortunes around them. They sat by their lonely hearths and 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 steeps of Rotterdam. Nor can we feel that these tenants were likely to be greatly cheered by the library established at rentseller's wick unless they were hidden away a list of more interesting books than those described in the patroon's invoice as sent in an Ooster's or Oriental box. These volumes include a scripture concordance, the works of Calvin of Livy and of Ur Sinus, the friend of Lanthan, a treatise on arithmetic by Adrian Medius, 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 rentseller's wick were spent in anxious keeping of accounts with a wholesome fear of the patroon before the eyes of the accountants. Life on the bowries 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 floor and two forty cents it is easy to calculate the cost of living in the decade between sixteen hundred and thirty and sixteen hundred and forty as set down in the accounts of rentseller's wick, a blanket cost eight florins, a hat ten florins, an iron and the one hundred florins, a basket and cartouche box, nineteen florins, a copper sheeps bell, one florin and six divers. 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 learned with envy that butter was only eight stivers or sixteen cents per pound, a pair of foul two florins, a beaver twenty five florins. How hard were the terms on which the tenants held their leases as apparent from a report written by the guardians and tutors of Jan van Rensselaer, a later patroon of Rensselaer's wick, the patroon reserved to himself the tenth of all grains, fruits and other products raised on the bowring. 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 water side two fathoms of fir wood 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 fouls. It was the difficult task of the agent of the colony to harmonize the constant hostilities between the patroon and his people. Then Curler's letter to Gillian van Rensselaer begins Laos deo at the Manhattan's this 16th June, 1643, most honorable, wise, powerful and right discreet Lord by 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. Then 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 Lord Patroon they well know how to specify for what was expended for 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 then 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 interned by Stuyvesant, the horizon at Rensselaer's Rick grew stormy. In 1643 the patroon ordered Nicholas Courd 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 of the steep little island was named. Govert Luke Ehrmans 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 that we may be assured carried on in low or amicable tones. Courd, lower your colors. Luke Ehrmans, for whom should I? Courd, for the staple right of Rensselaer's Wink. Luke Ehrmans, I lower my colors for no one except the Prince of Orange and the Lord's 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 Courd to behave with more civility. The patroon system was from the beginning doom to failure as we studied the old documents we find a sullen tenetry, an upsequious and care-worn agent that has satisfied patroon and impatient company of a wielded 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 age of the theme of civilization. The reason for the discontent which prevailed is not far to see that all classes were responsible for it, for they combined implanting 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 columnists to return without protest to a mediaeval system of government. When the English took possession of New Netherland in 1664, the old patroon ships were confirmed as minority grants from England. As time went on, many new manners were erected until when the province was finally added to England in 1674, the lords of the manner along the Hudson had taken on the proportions of a landed aristocracy. On the lower reaches of the river lay the Van Cortlandt and Philips Manors, the first containing 85,000 acres and a house so firmly built that it is still standing with its walls a free stone three feet thick. The Philips 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 through fortune and eminence. By dint of business acumen and by marrying two heiresses in succession he achieved wealth and built castle Philips and the picturesque little church at Sleepy Hollow still in use. Further up the river lay the Livingston Manor in 1685. Robert Livingston was granted by Governor Dongan, a patent of a tract halfway between New York and Red Slur's wick across the river from the Catskills, then covering many thousand acres. But the estate of which we know most thanks to the records left by Mrs. Grant of Ligon in her memoirs of an American lady written in the middle of the 18th century is that belonging to the scholars at the flats near Albany which runs along the western bank of the Hudson for two miles and is bordered with sleeping 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 stoop 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 and 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 carpets and winter rooms as hall covered with tiled oil cloth and hung with family portraits. Its vine covered stoops 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 manners and patroon ships is likely to forget that New Netherland was people for the most part by colonists who were neither patroons nor lords of manners. 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. It was made in the Chapter 3, Chapter 4 of Dutch and English on the Hudson by Maude Wilder Goodwin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 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 Tien Pong, 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 to 1625 and was followed in office by Verhulst, 1625 to 1626. Who bequeathed his name to Verhulst and 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 May Wacken 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 a weasel, 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 counsel, the Coopman who was commercial agent and secretary and a scout who performed the duties of sheriff and public prosecutor. Then Wassener, the son of a Dominant 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 30 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 Puerto Rico in 1625 by the Dutch fleet. According to this chronicler, everyone in New Netherland who fills no public offices busy with his own affairs. One trays, one builds houses and other plants, farms, each farmer pastures the cows under his charge on the bowery of the company, which also owns the cattle. But the milk is the property of the farmer who sells it to the settlers. The house 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 22,000 acres for merchandise valued at 60 yielders or $24. He thus secured the land at the rate of approximately 10 acres for one cent, a good bargain Peter Minuit. The transaction was doubly effective in placating the savages for the willed in 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 good will manifested by the native, the settlers were constantly anxious that some conspiracy might suddenly break out. Then Wessner reporting the news from the colony as it reached him in Amsterdam wrote in 1626 that Peter Berenson was to be sent to command Fort Orange in 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 25 or 26 traders remained and Crow 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 Quinn Frederick or Frederickson 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. Frederickson 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 fought with serious consequences. A friendly Indian of the Wecquaskeek 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 out of 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 glided by a great victory of the Dutch over the Spanish when in a battle of San Salvador Peter Hain demolished 26 Spanish warships. On the 5th of September the same boat sailor captured the whole of the Spanish silver fleet with spoils amounting to 12 million guilders. In the following year the gallant commander then a lieutenant Admiral died in battle on the deck of his ship. The stage general sent to his old peasant mother a message of condolence to which he replied 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. To Belgium 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 Netherlands ship of 800 tons carrying 30 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 stage 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 Netherlands 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 Ben Twiller the reigns of authority were held by Sebastian Kroll whose name is memorable chiefly for the fact that he had been influential in purchasing the domain of Rens Leerswick for its patroons 1630 and the tradition that the Kroyler or Kroyer was so called in his honor. The company's selection of a permanent successor to Minuit was not happy. Wuder Ben Twiller nephew of Kylian Ben Rens Leer must have owed his appointment as director to family influence since neither his career nor his reputation justified the choice. David DeVries writing on April 16 1633 notes that on arriving about noon before Fort Amsterdam he found there a ship called the South Bird which had fought over the new governor Wuder Ben Twiller a former clerk in the West India House at Amsterdam. DeVries gives his opinion of Ben 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 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. For the personal appearance of this Walter the doubter we must turn again to the testimony of Nicarbacher whose mocking descriptions have obtained a quasi historical authority. This renowned old gentleman arrived at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June. It was exactly five feet six inches in height and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere and of such stupendous dimensions that dame nature with all her sexes ingenuity would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it. Therefore she wisely declined the attempt and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone just between the shoulders. His legs were short but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a bare barrel on skids. His face that infallible index of the mind presented a vast expanse unfurred by any of those lines which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. His habits were regular he daily took his four stated meals appropriating exactly an hour to each. He smoked and doubted eight hours and he slept the remaining 12 of the four and 20. A later historian taking up the cudgels in behalf of the director resents Nicarbacca's impeachment and protest that so far from being the age of fat and overgrown person represented in character. Ben Twillett was youthful and inexperienced and his faults were those of a young man unused to authority and hampered by his instructions. In his new office Ben Twillett was confronted with questions dealing with the encroachment of the patrolments from within and of the English from without. The unwelcome visits of Elkens of whom we shall hear later and massacres by the Indians on the South River. Such problems might well have puzzled a wiser hit and a more determined character than Ben Twillett. We cannot hold him holy blame worthy if he dealt with them in a spirit of doubt and hesitation. What we find harder to excuse is his true advancement of his own interests and his lavish expenditure of the company's money. The cost of building the fort was more than justifiable to have neglected the defenses would have been culpable. And the barracks built for the 104 soldiers whom he had brought over from the Babylon may also be set down as necessary. But when the company was groaning under the expenses of the colony, it was to say the least lacking intact to bill for himself. The most elaborate house in New Netherland besides erecting on one of the company's bowries, a house, a barn, a boat house and a brewery. To say nothing of planting another farm with tobacco, working it with slave labor at the company's expense and appropriating the profits. In the year 1688, after he had been five years in office, the outcry against Ben Twillett for misfeasance, malfeasance and especially non-feasance grew too loud to be ignored and he was recalled. But before he left New Netherland, he bought Newton or Nut Island since called Governor's Island and also two other islands in the East River. At the time of his marriage in 1643, Ben Twillett was in command of a competence attained at the expense of the West India Company and there is much excuse for the feeling of his employers that he had been more active in his own affairs than in theirs. The principal service which he had rendered to the company in his term of office was the establishment of staple right as at New Amsterdam compelling all ships trading on the coast of the North River to pay tolls or unload their cargoes on the company's property. But on the reverse side of the account we must remember that he allowed the fort to fall into such decay that when Kieft arrived in 1638 he found the defenses which had been finished only three years before already in a shamefully neglected condition. The guns dismounted, the public buildings inside the walls and ruins and the walls of the fort itself so beaten down that anyone might enter it will save at the stone point. The hopes of the colonists rose again with the coming of a new governor but the appointment of Kieft reflect as a little credit as that of Ben Twillett upon the sagacity of the West India Company. The man now chosen to rule New Netherland was a narrow minded busy body eager to interfere in small matters and without the statesmanship required to conduct large affairs. Some of his activities it is true had practical value. He fixed the hours at which the colonists should go to bed and ordered the curfew to be rung at nine o'clock. He established two annual fairs to be held on the present Bowling Green one in October for cattle and one in November for hogs. And he built a new stone church within the fort, operated a brewery, founded a house three and planted orchards and gardens. But on the other side of the account he was responsible for a bloody war with the Indians which came near to wrecking the colony. His previous record held scant promise for his success as a governor. He had failed as a merchant in Rochelle for which offense his portrait had been affixed to a gallows. Such a man was a poor person to be put in control of the complicated finances of New Netherland and of the delicate relations between the colonists and the Indians, relations calling for infinite tact, wisdom, firmness and forbearance. The natives in the region of New Amsterdam were increasingly irritated by the encroachments of the whites. They complained that stray cows spoiled their unfenced cornfields and that various other depredations endangered their crops. To add to this irritation, Keef proposed to tax the natives for the protection afforded them by the fort, which was now being repaired at large expense. The situation already bad enough was further complicated by Keef's clumsy handling of an altercation on Staten Island. Some pigs were stolen by servants of the company as appeared later. But the offense was charged to the rare 10 Indians without waiting to make investigations. Keef sent out a punitive expedition of 70 men who attacked the innocent natives, killed a number of them and laid waste their crops. This stupid and wicked attack still further exasperated the Indians who in the high tide of Midsummer saw their lands laid bare and their homes desolated by the wanton hand of the intruders. Some months later the trouble between the whites and the red men was brought to a head by an unforeseen tragedy. The savage came to Class Smith's Raidenmaker, a wheelwright, to trade beaver for duffel cloth. As Clase stooped down to take out the duffel from a chest, the Indians seized an axe which chance to stand by and struck the wheelwright on the neck, killing him instantly. The murderer then stole the goods from the chest and fled to the forest. When Keef sent to the tribe of the Wreck Quays Geeks to inquire the cause of this murder and to demand the slayer, the Indian told the chief that he had seen his uncle Robin killed at the fort while it was being built, that he himself had escaped and had vowed revenge and that the unlucky class was the first white man upon whom he had a chance to wreak vengeance. The chief then replied to the director that he was sorry that 20 Christians had not been killed and that the Indian had done only up Pious duty and avenging his uncle. In this emergency, Keef called a meeting at which the prominent burgers chose a committee of 12 to advise the director. This took place in 1641. The council was headed by Captain David DeVries, whose portrait is pointed, Jim, high forehead and keen eyes, justifies his reputation as the ablest man in New Netherland. He insisted that it was inadvisable to attack the Indians, not to say hazardous. Besides, the company had warned them to keep peace. It is interesting to speculate on what would have been the effect on the colony if the company's choice had fallen upon DeVries instead of on Keef as director. Although restrained for the time, Keef never relinquished his purpose. On February 24, 1643, he again announced his intention of making a raid upon the Indians and in spite of further remonstrance from DeVries, he sent out his soldiers who returned after a massacre, which disgraced the director, enraged the natives and in danger of the colony. Keef was at first proud of his treachery, but as soon as it was known, every Algonquin tribe around New Amsterdam started on the warpath. From New Jersey to the Connecticut, every farm was in peril. The famous and much persecuted Anne Hutchison perished with her family. Towns were burnt, and men, women and children fled in panic. On the approach of spring, the Indians had to plant their corner, face famine. Satchons of the Long Island Indians sought a parlay with the Dutch. DeVries and Alfredson volunteered to meet the savages. In the woods near Rockaway, they found nearly 300 Indians assembled. The chiefs placed the envoys in the center of the circle and one among them who had a bundle of sticks laid down one stick at a time as he recounted the wrongs of his tribe. His orator told how the Redmen had given food to the settlers and were rewarded by the murder of their people, how they had protected and cherished the traitors and how they had been abused in return. A link to Vries, like the practical man that he was, suggested that they all adjourn to the fort, promising them presence from the director. The chiefs consented to meet the director and eventually were persuaded to make a treaty of peace. The cave's gifts were so niggardly that the savages went away with rancour still in their hearts and the war of the races continued his bloody course. It is no wonder that when DeVries left the governor on this occasion, he told Keeft in plain terms of his guilt and predicted that the shedding of so much innocent blood would yet be avenged upon his own head. This prophecy proved a strangely true one when recalled by the state general in 1647, Keeft set out for Holland on the ship, Princess, carrying within the sum of 400,000 guilders. The ship was wrecked in the Bristol Channel and Keeft was drowned. The evil that Keeft did lived after him and the good, if interred with his bones, would not have occupied much space in the tomb. The only positive advance during his rule and that was carried through against his will was the appointment of an advisory committee of the 12 men representing the householders of the colony who were called together in the emergency following the murder of class smiths and in 1643 of a similar board of eight men who protested against his arbitrary measures and later procured his recall. After the departure of Keeft, the most picturesque figure of the period of Dutch rule in America appeared at New Amsterdam. Petrus or Peter Stuyvesant, we have an authentic portrait in which the whole personality of the man is writ large. The dominant nose, the small obstinate eyes, the closed set autocratic mouth tell the character of the man who was come to be the new and the last director general of New Netherland, as director of the West India Company's colony at Caraco. Stuyvesant had undertaken the task of reducing the Portuguese island of St. Martin and had lost a leg in the fight. This loss he repaired with a wooden leg of which he professed himself prouder than of all his other limbs together in which he had decorated with silver bands and nails thus earning for him the sober cut of old silver nails. Still, so the legend runs, Peter Stuyvesant's ghost at night stumps to and fro with a shadowy wooden leg through the aisles of St. Mark's church near the spot where his bones lie buried. And many events were to happen before those bones were laid in the family vault of the chapel on his bowery. When Stuyvesant reached the country over which he was to rule, it was noted by the colonists that his bearing was that of a prince. As shall be as a father over his children, he told the burgers of New Amsterdam and in this patriarchal capacity he kept the people standing with their heads uncovered for more than an hour while he wore his hat. How we bore out this first impression we may gather from the representation of New Netherland, an arraignment of the director drawn up and solemnly attested in 1650 by 11 responsible burgers headed by Adrian van der Donk and supplemented by much detailed evidence. The witnesses expressed the earnest wish that Stuyvesant's administration were at an end for they have suffered from it and know themselves powerless, whoever opposes the director hath as much as the sun and moon against him. In the council he writes an opinion covering several pages and then adds orally, this is my opinion, if anyone have ought to object to it let him express it. If anyone ventures to make any objection, his honor flies into a passion and rails in language better fitted to the fish market than to the council hall. When two burgers, Kiter and Mellon, who had been leaders of the opposition to Kieft, petitioned Stuyvesant to investigate his conduct, Stuyvesant supported his predecessor on the ground that one director should uphold another. At Kieft's instigation he even prosecuted and convicted Kiter and Mellon for seditious attack on the government. When Mellon asked for grace, till this case could be presented in the fatherland, he was threatened according to his own testimony in language like this. If I knew Mellon that you would divulge our sentence, that of fine and banishment, or bring it before their high mightinesses, I would cause you to be hanged at once on the highest tree in New Netherland. In another case, the director said it may during my administration be contemplated to appeal, but if anyone should do it, I will make him a foot shorter and send the pieces to Holland and let him appeal in that way. An answer to this arraignment by the burgers of New Netherland was written by Van Tien Hoeven, who was sent over to the Netherlands to defend Stuyvesant, but its value is impaired by the fact that he was shout physical and interested in the acquittal of Stuyvesant, whose tool he was, and also by the fact that he was the subject of bitter attack in the representation by Adrian Van Der Donk, who accused Van Tien Hoeven of continually shifting from one side to another, and asserted that he was notoriously profligate and untrustworthy. One passage in his reply amounted to a confession, who he asks are they who have complained about the haughtiness of the director, and he answers that they are such as seek to live without law or rule. No one, he goes on to say, can prove that director Stuyvesant has used foul language to or railed at as clowns any respectable persons who have treated him decently, and may be that some profligate person has given the director if he has used any bad words to him caused to do so. It has been the fashion in popular histories to allude to Stuyvesant as a dowdy knight of somewhat caloric temper, a valiant weather-beaten, leather-sided, lion-hearted, generous spirit of the old government, but I do not so read his history. I find him a brutal tyrant, as we have seen in the Affair of Kieft versus Mellon, a narrow-minded bigot, as we shall see later in his dealing with the Quakers at Flushing, a bully when his victims were completely in his power and a loser in any quarrel when he was met with blustering comparable to his own. In support of the last indictment, let us take his conduct in a conflict with the authorities that rent the layers wick. In 1646, Stuyvesant had ordered that no building should be erected within cannon-shot of Fort Orange. The superintendent of the settlement denied Stuyvesant's right to give such an order and pointed to the fact that his trading house had been for a long time on the border of the fort. To the claim that a clear space was necessary to the fort's efficiency, then, slick and hoarse, then, rest-and-layer's agent replied that he had spent more than six months in the colony and had never seen a single person carrying a sword, musket, or pike, nor had he heard a drum beat except on the occasion of a visit from the director and his soldiers in the summit. Stuyvesant rejoined by sending soldiers and sailors to tear down the house, which then, slick and hoarse, was building near Fort Orange, and the commissary was ordered to arrest the builder if he resisted. But the commissary wrote that it would be impossible to carry out the order as the settlers at Rensselaer's wick, reinforced by the Indians, outnumbered his troops. Stuyvesant then recalled his soldiers and ordered Ben slick and hoarse to appear before him, which the agent refused to do. In 1652, Stuyvesant ordered Dykeman, then, in command at Fort Orange, not to allow anyone to build a house near the fort, or to remain in any house already built. In spite of proclamations and other bluster, this order proved fruitless. And on April 1, 1653, Stuyvesant came in person to Fort Orange and sent a sergeant to lower the patroon's flag. The agent refusing to strike the patroon's colors, the soldiers entered, lowered the flag, and discharged their guns. Stuyvesant declared that the region staked out by post should be known as Beaverwick and instituted a court there. Ben slick and hoarse tore down the proclamation whereupon Stuyvesant ordered him to be imprisoned in the fort. Later, the director transported the agent under guard to New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant's arbitrary character also appears in his overriding of the measure of local self-government decreed by the state's general in 1653. Van Der Donk and his fellows had asked three things of their high mightinesses, the state's general, first that they take over the government of New Netherland, second that they establish a better city government in New Amsterdam, and third that they clearly defined the boundaries of New Netherland. The first of these requests owing to the deeply entrenched interest of the West India Company could not be granted to last till last. But the state's general urged that municipal rights should be given to New Amsterdam, and in 1652 the company yielded. The charter limited the number of shoppins or aldermen to five and the number of burglar masters to two, and also ordained that they, as well as the shop, should be elected by the citizens. But Stuyvesant ignored this provision and proceeded to appoint men of his own choosing. Stuyvesant's own tavern built by Keith at the head of Quenties Slip was set apart as Stat Huys or City Hall. And here Stuyvesant's appointees, supposed to represent the popular, will held their meetings. It was something that they did hold meetings, anomaly at least in the interest of the people. Another concession followed in 1658. Stuyvesant yielded so far to the principle of popular government as to concede to the shoppins and burglar masters of New Amsterdam. And the right to nominate double the number of candidates for office from whom the director was to make a choice. In 1655, during the absence of Stuyvesant on the South River, the Indians around Manhattan appeared with a fleet of 64 war canoes attacked and looted New Amsterdam. Then crossed to Hoboken and continued their bloody work in Pavonia and on Staten Island. Today's 100 men, women and children were slain and 152 were taken captive and the damage to property was estimated at 200,000 guilders, approximately $80,000. As usual, the Dutch have been the aggressors for Van Dijk, formerly shot, fiscal, have shot and killed an old Indian woman who was picking peaches in his orchard. It must be set down to Stuyvesant's credit that on his return he acted toward the Indians in a manner that was kind and conciliating and at the same time provided against a repetition of the recent disaster by erecting blockhouses at various points and by concentrating the settlers for mutual defense. By this policy of mingle diplomacy and preparation against attacks, Stuyvesant preserved peace for a period of three years, but trouble with the Indians continued to disturb the colonies on the river and centered at Isopas where slaughters of both white and red men occurred. Eight white men were burned at the stake in revenge for shots fired by Dutch soldiers and an Indian chief was killed with his own tomahawk. In 1660 a treaty of peace was framed, but three years later we find the two races again embroiled, thus Indian wars continued down to the close of Dutch rule. In spite of these troubles in the more outlined districts, New Amsterdam continued to grow and thrive. In Stuyvesant's time the thoroughfares of New Amsterdam were laid out as streets and were named the line of houses facing the fort. On the eastern side was called the mark belt or market field, taking its name from the green opposite which had been the site of the city market. To here Strat, the principal street, ran north from the fort through the gate at the city wall. The Hoog Strat ran parallel with the east river from the city bridge to the water gate and on its line stood the Stot Wies. To water ran in a semi-circular line from the point of the island and was boarded by the east river. The Brouwer Strat took its name from the breweries situated on it and was probably the first street in the town to be regulated and paved. The Brouwer Strat as the name implies led to the bridge crossing. The here dropped. The principal canal was a creek running deep into the island from the east river and protected by a siding of boards. An official was appointed for the care of this canal with orders to see that the newly made drop was kept in order that no filth was cast into it and that the boats, canoes and other vessels were laid in order. The new city was by this time thoroughly cosmopolitan. One traveler speaks of the use of 18 different languages and the forms of faith were as varied as the tongue spoken. Seven or eight large ships came every year from Amsterdam. The director occupied a fine house on the point of the island. On the east side of the town stood the Stot Wies protected by a half moon of stone mounted with three small brass cannons. In the forts stood the governor's house, the church, the barracks, the house for munitions and the long armed windmills. Everything was prospering except the foundation on which all depended. There was no adequate defense for all this property. Here we must equip Stuyvesant from responsibility. Since again and again he had warned the company against the weakness of the colony. But they would not heed the warnings and the consequences which might have been averted suddenly overtook the Dutch possessions. The war which broke out in 1652 between England and the Netherlands, once leagued against Catholic Spain but now parted by commercial rivalries, found an immediate echo on the shores of the Hudson. With feverish haste, the inhabitants of New Amsterdam began to fortify. Across the island at the northern limit of the town on the line of what is now Wall Street, they built a wall with stout palisades backed by earthworks. They hastily repaired the fort, organized the citizens as far as possible to resist attack, and also strengthened Fort Orange. The new England colonies likewise began war-like preparations but perhaps owing to the prudence of Stuyvesant in accepting the Treaty of Hartford peace between the Dutch and English in the new world continued for the present. Though unprecarious terms and the immediate threat of danger being removed by the treaty between England and Holland in 1654 the new Netherlands relaxed their vigilance and curtailed the expense of fortifications. Meanwhile Stuyvesant had alienated popular sympathy and lessened United's support by his treatment of a convention of delegates from New Amsterdam, Flushing, Breukelen, Tempestead, Amherst Fort, Middleborough, Flatbush and Gravesend who had gathered to consider the defense and welfare of the colonies. The English of the Long Island towns were the prime movers in this significant gathering. There is an unmistakable English flavor in the contention of the humble remonstrance adopted by the convention and to his contrary to the first intentions and genuine principles of every well-regulated government that one or more men should themselves the exclusive power to dispose at will of the life and property of any individual. As the people not conquered or subjugated but settled here on a mutual covenant and contract entered into with the Lord Patrons with the consent of the natives, they protested against the enactment of laws and the appointment of magistrates without their consent or that of their representatives. Stuyvesant replied with his usual bigotry and in a rage at being contradicted. He asserted that there was little wisdom to be expected from popular election when naturally each would vote for one of his own stamp, the thief for a thief, the rogue, the tipper and the smuggler for his brother in iniquity so that he may enjoy more latitude in vice and fraud. Finally Stuyvesant ordered the delegates to disperse the claim we derive our authority from God and the company not from a few ignorant subjects and we alone can call the inhabitants together. With popular support thus alienated and with appeals for financial and military aid from the state's general and the rest of India company denied or ignored the end of New Netherlands was clearly in sight. In 1663 Stuyvesant wrote to the company begging them to send him reinforcements. Otherwise he said it is wholly out of our power to keep the sinking ship afloat any longer. This year was full of omens. The valley of the Hudson was shaken by an earthquake followed by an overflow of the river which ruined the crops. Smallpox visited the colony and on top of all these calamities came the appalling Indian massacre at East Opus. The following year 1664 brought the arrival of the English fleet, the declaration of war and the surrender of the Dutch province. For many years the English had protested against the Dutch claims to the territory on the north and south rivers. Their navigators had tried to contest the trade in first and their government at home had interfered with vessels sailing to and from New Amsterdam. At length Charles II was ready to appropriate the Dutch possessions. He did not trouble himself with questions of international law, still less with international ethics. But armed with the flimsy pretence that cabots visit established England's claim to the territory, he stealthily made preparations to seize the defenseless colony on the river which had begun to be known as the Hudson. 500 veteran troops were embarked on four ships under command of Colonel Richard Nichols and sailed on their expedition of conquest. Diverson's suspicions aroused by rumors of invasion were so far lulled by dispatches from Holland that he allowed several ships at New Amsterdam to sail for Kuat Co. Leading with provisions while he himself journeyed to Rensselaer's work to quell an Indian outbreak. While he was occupied in this task a messenger arrived to inform him that the English fleet was hourly expected in the harbor of New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant made haste down the river but on the day after he arrived at Manhattan Island he saw ships flying the flag of England in the lower harbor where they anchored below the narrows. Colonel Nichols demanded the surrender of the town situate on the island commonly known by the name of Manhattan's with all the forts there and to belonging. Although the case of New Amsterdam was now hopeless Stuyvesant yet strove for delay he sent a deputation to Nichols to carry on a parlay but Nichols was firm when may we visit you again the deputation asked. Nichols replied with grim humid that he would speak with them at Manhattan. Friends are welcome there answers Stuyvesant's representative diplomatically but Nichols told them bluntly that he was coming with ships and soldiers hoist a white flag at the 40th set and I may consider your proposals. Colonel Nichols was as good as his word and to the consternation of the dwellers in New Amsterdam the fleet of English frigates under full sail and with all guns loaded appeared before the walls of the USSR Fort Amsterdam. Stuyvesant stood out one of the angles of the fort and the gunners with lighted matches awaited his command to fire the people and treated him to yield resistance is not soldiers ships of one of them it is sheer madness. Stuyvesant who with all his faults was a brave soldier felt to be quick the humiliation but he saw also that resistance meant only useless bloodshed at last he submitted and the English vessels sailed on their way and molested while Stuyvesant groaned I would much rather be carried to my grave. Without firing a shot the English plastic possession of the rich country which the state general had not fought worth defending and New Netherlands became New York. End of Chapter 4