The Story of New Netherland/Chapter 4
In the new domain, the favorite seat of administration seems at first to have been on the Delaware, rather than on the Hudson.
Captain May, after one year, was succeeded by William Verhulst, whose name happily no English map-maker has rubbed out, for it is recalled in "Verhulsten Island," and perhaps in "Hollanders' Creek" near Philadelphia. This colony seemed so promising that it was determined to have a director-general for New Netherland. He was to be advised by a council of five members. Besides these, who were not Walloons but Hollanders, there were to be a secretary and a treasurer.
In other words, here was a civil government, which was a miniature of the Dutch municipal system, and a manifestation of the Netherlands genius for city organization. It came to pass that all the cities in the American colonies up to the time of the Revolution were Dutch; and, except Albany, all these cities lay along a line stretching from New York to Philadelphia. All the other settlements in the thirteen colonies, from Georgia to New Hampshire, were towns or villages.
Let us see who it was that the Company selected as the first Civil Governor or Director-General of New Netherland. Every time we pass down Fifth Avenue, at Twenty-ninth and at Forty-seventh Street, we may read his name on the bronze tablets set in the Reformed Dutch Church edifices standing on these corners. Of this church he was a deacon. A grand gentleman and a cosmopolitan character was Peter Minuit, who may be called the founder of the greatest and the smallest states, New York and Delaware, in the American Union. We may pronounce his name Minawee, as he sometimes wrote it, to ease some tongues. His ancestors were Huguenots, but this cultivated gentleman spoke French, Dutch, and probably German and English, being thus a prototype of the composite American, superbly fitted to be a pioneer and ruler.
Receiving his commission six days before Christmas, 1625, he began at once to equip himself for his great work of transforming trading-stations into agricultural communities. He found out all he could about the soil and climate of New Netherland. Then he selected carefully seeds, live stock, farmers' tools, food plants, and other useful vegetables. With his council, except the secretary, he sailed in the ship Sea Mew from Amsterdam, December 19, 1625. After many delays, from contrary winds and other causes, he sighted Sandy Hook, May 4, 1626.
Minuit's first official act, eighteen years before William Penn was born, set for Puritan and Cavalier, as well as for proprietors of colonies in America, a noble precedent. He carried out, according to the letter and wholly in the spirit, his directions as set down in the Charter of the Company. He called together the Indian chiefs and purchased of them the island named Manhattan, for what was for them the very generous sum of sixty guilders, or twenty-four dollars. In modern values, this would be about three hundred dollars. As expressed in trinkets, mirrors, hatchets, tools, and clothing stuffs, it must have seemed like a mountain of wealth to the Indians. The place of sale may have been the Bowling Green, then the heart of the hamlet of New Amsterdam.
Governor Minuit's secretary, who had arrived in the ship Arms of Amsterdam, July 26, 1625, was. Isaac de Rasieres. As was very proper for one who was to have a good deal to do with Walloons or French-speaking Belgian colonists, he could talk and write French. He had the pen of a ready writer, and to him we owe a unique and picturesque account of the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth.
Doctor Wassenaer of Amsterdam, who printed the news of the world in his day, is our chief authority as to how things looked on Manhattan before 1630. East of the fort, where now towers the Merchants' Building, were four or live shops or warehouses of "stone," or hard burned brick. "Winkle" means a shop, or storehouse, and Rip van Winkle is Rip from the shop, or Rip the storekeeper. The name of Winkle Street, now built over, long kept these first shops in memory. Pearl Street, laid out in 1633, may have been called so first by the children who picked up and played with the pearly shells then lining the beach facing the bay.
The Netherlanders being an intensely religious people, the desire of the colonists was to have worship at once, and the two Comforters of the sick, Sebastian Jansen Krol and Jan Huyck, who came over with Minuit, were active in their ministrations.
Thus the very beginnings of the foundations of New York State were laid in praise and prayer to God, and with provision made for human need and suffering and for spiritual aspirations. The creed most often recited was that traditionally named the "Apostles'," which the Dutch call "The Twelve Articles of the Christian Faith."
At this time there were still living at Leyden many English colonists who later went to America and joined the company of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the Walloons in New Netherland knew them.
As fellow Christians, it was meet that the Manhattaners and Plymouth folk, neighbors, on both sides of the Atlantic, should be friends, especially since both professed to have crossed the ocean and come to America to convert the savages to the doctrines of the Prince of Peace. Nevertheless, it was not yet time for the united Continental America of 1776, and the jealous quarrels and wars of the countries and kingdoms of Europe had already, in 1623, been transferred to America. They were to last until after the Spanish War of 1900, and until the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine put an end to the long strifes and bloodsheddings inherited from Europe.
Although the Dutch asserted ownership to New Netherland by the triple rights of discovery, prompt occupation, and colonization, the British Government wanted the whole of North America, under the flimsy pretext of John Cabot's discovery in 1497, when he peeped at portions of the coast. Hence in 1623, since England claimed as part of Virginia the territory on which the Dutch had settled while the West India Company called the land its own, there was danger of a collision. The governors of Manhattan and Plymouth had exchanged letters in Dutch, for Bradford, like most of the young people of Plymouth, especially those born in Holland, could read and write that language. In his letter of 1629, Bradford put on record the kind treatment which the Pilgrims had received, and which some were still enjoying in Leyden, "for which we are bound to be thankful and our children after us." Thus Bradford, possibly the greatest of the Pilgrims, himself furnished, in spirit and letter, the inscription in bronze placed by the Boston Congregational Club in 1906 on the walls of the Dutch Church at Delfshaven, now part of Rotterdam.
Nevertheless correspondence did not fully answer the case, and the Manhattan and Plymouth men must see one another face to face. Since Bradford had requested it, Governor Minuit sent his secretary, Isaac de Rasieres, with a squad of soldiers and one of the trumpeters of the Republic, on a mission to the Pilgrim settlement. Perhaps this sounder of parleys may have been Anthony van Curler, who, like his fellow music-making patriots, was proud of his fringed pendant of red, white, and blue silk hung on his trumpet. De Rasieres embarked on the good ship Nassau. One may picture the ceremonious reception on the shore, not far front the famous Plymouth Rock that lives colossal in poetry and after-dinner rhetoric.
The presents from Manhattan, consisting of three kinds of cloth, a chest of white sugar, and some small wares, were offered and received. The Plymouth people gave in exchange some of their own home-grown tobacco, for the new Yankees were ahead of the "Knickerbockers" in the tobacco business. But far greater than any gifts of food, or wear, or ammunition for pipe-smoke, was the enriching lesson in practical economics which the skilled traders from the foremost commercial country in Europe taught the Pilgrims. De Rasieres introduced into Plymouth the Indian shell money, or wampum, made by stringing the perforated shells into belts, or bands.
Had Governor Minuit been allowed to continue the development of New Netherland according to his own ideas, its story might have been one of nearly continuous peace and prosperity. His zeal and energy in promoting agriculture have left their marks on the Empire State even to this day. He wisely distributed among white men the seeds and grafts which caused garden to grow and orchards to spring up, and which among the Indians began their march to the Cayuga Lake region and the Niagara plateau. The Long House of the Iroquois became famous for the variety and richness of its fruits and vegetables.
Determined to prove to the Company what could be done in the New World, and to reveal the wealth of naval stores of all kinds in the colony, Minuit inaugurated the enterprise of ship-building. He laid the keel of the second vessel to receive the name of New Netherland, which when afloat was as big as a ship of the line in the Dutch navy. To get the timber of proper length and quality he sent his axemen into the region of the Mohawk Valley. This magnificent ship, pierced for thirty cannon and registered at eight hundred tons burthen, was launched, loaded, and sent to Holland. There it made a sensation. It was seen that the colony could be made the basis of offensive naval war against the Spaniards.
Yet the fur trade was the main source of immediate wealth, and next to securing the comfort and safety of the colonists, this was Minuit's chief concern. Many were the ships loaded with peltries which he dispatched to Amsterdam. In 1630 the imports amounted to 113,000 guilders, while the exports, chiefly furs, were 130,000, making a handsome profit to the Company.
In return more emigrant vessels from Patria, with hopeful planters and fresh cargoes of necessities for field, house, and garden, crossed the Atlantic. The frames of not a few buildings and frequent loads of brick taken as ballast were sent to take the places of the temporary bark structures or log cabins. The thousand little contrivances so common in Holland, calculated to make home comfortable, were shipped in quantities. Interesting are the frequent references in "the Amsterdam Correspondence" to the invoices of books, Bibles, catechisms, and hymn-books, sent to supply the various needs of school, pulpit, study, and worship. The Dutch were a reading people, and in no country were the printed page, the bound book, and the engraving cheaper than in Holland.
Nevertheless, in spite of all the efforts made to attract Dutch colonists to the new lands beyond sea, emigration was slow. Why should any native want to leave the triumphant Republic? So something must be done to increase Dutch population in America.
Minuit's excellent plans were upset. In their greed for more money, certain shrewd members of the West India Company took the step which introduced feudalism on American soil. Instead of progress, their seeming enterprise was reversion towards the mediævalism from which the Dutch had long before delivered themselves. They recalled Minuit, at whose story and fortunes we shall glance again.