THEY came in a great ship. There were 110 men, women, and children, representing thirty families, and they arrived in the New Netherland’s a vessel of unusual size for that age. The Mayflower, which had brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth three years earlier, was a ship of only 180 tons. The New Netherland displaced 260 tons. It took the Dutch emigrants almost two months to make the trip, for they sailed a roundabout course from Amsterdam past the Canary Islands and the West Indies to Manhattan. And although the passengers didn’t know it, they escaped an English man-of-war that had been ordered to sink them.
These first Dutch colonists reached here about the middle of May, 1623. The Dutch West India Company had been incorporated in 1621, but the directors needed time to perfect their organization, find and outfit a ship, and round up people willing to head into the wilderness. Not many Dutchmen cared to leave home. However, a group of aliens living in Holland agreed to move to the New World.
They were French-speaking refugees from the Spanish Netherlands, known today as southern Belgium. As Protestants, they had fled to Holland to escape persecution from Spanish Catholics. In 1623 these Walloons had asked the English for permission to emigrate to Virginia but disliked the terms offered them. Already uprooted from their homeland and not yet having sunk new roots in Holland, they decided to make a third start in life.
The man who brought them to America was the same Cornelis Jacobsen May who had explored Long Island. He had been named the first director of New Netherland after it had been declared a Dutch province in 1623.
The Walloons sailed under orders known as Provisional Regulations for Colonists. For two years they were to be furnished with clothing and other supplies from company storehouses at reasonable prices, and they could pay on the installment plan. They were permitted to indulge in trade only if they sold their wares to company agents. They were forbidden to engage in any handicraft. Holland didn’t want its emigrants to become independent of the homeland. The Walloons promised to stay six years wherever the company put them.
Captain May distributed them widely in order to occupy as much territory as possible. He sent two families and six men to the Hartford River, thus occupying a part of what is now Connecticut; dispatched two other families and eight men to the Delaware River, to settle in New Jersey and Delaware; left eight men on the site of New York City; and sent the rest of the colonists up the Hudson River to Albany. There they found that Christiaensen’s stockade had been ruined by a spring freshet. The newcomers built another stronghold, named Fort Orange in honor of the ruling house of Holland. This was the first permanent Dutch settlement in the New World.
The Walloons left on the site of New York City decided that they could best protect themselves by clustering on Governors Island, 500 yards off the southern tip of Manhattan. This isle was covered with walnut, chestnut, and shellbark trees. The Indians called it Pagganack, or Pecanuc, meaning a place where nut trees grew. The Dutch colonists called it Nut Island. Three months later these first settlers were joined by forty-five more Walloons, who had traveled here in three ships.
These vessels were the Orange Tree, the Eagle, and the Love. They were escorted by an armed yacht provided by the Dutch government, which had learned of the abortive attempt by the English to sink the New Netherland. The latest colonists brought household furniture and farming tools. Two of the ships carried 103 head of livestock—cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep. Only 2 or 3 of the animals died during the voyage. The survivors disembarked on Nut Island; they might have got lost in the forests of Manhattan if they had landed there. Soon it became difficult to water the livestock on Nut Island, so they had to be transferred to Manhattan. Now the first permanent buildings rose on the site of New York City.
Conceived mainly as a trading post to which Indians and other trappers and traders could bring their furs, the colony flourished at first. In 1624 it exported to Holland 4,000 beaverskins and the pelts of 700 otters. These were worth 27,125 guilders, or a little more than the value of merchandise sent to the colony by the company. Although 20 head of cattle died from feeding on poisonous weeds, the rest multiplied.
After the expiration of Director May’s one-year term he was replaced by Willem Verhulst. Before long Verhulst’s colonial council found him guilty of mismanagement, and the company summoned him back to Holland. His successor was Peter Minuit, a middle-aged man whose hair was flecked with gray. Black-eyed and husky Minuit arrived on May 4, 1626. Coarse and self-willed, he had the brawn, brains, and drive needed to rule the rude outpost. The company elevated Minuit from director to director general and vested all legislative, executive, and judicial powers in him.
Minuit’s first official act was to buy Manhattan from the Indians. On May 6, 1626, he convened the principal chiefs of nearby tribes on the site of Bowling Green, broke open sea chests, and gave them 60 guilders’ worth of cloth, beads, hatchets, and other trinkets. The redskins had no conception of individual or tribal ownership of land. As has been noted, none lived on Manhattan; they merely hunted and fished there. The Indians understood that they would yield from time to time such portions of the island as the palefaces might need. They never expected to be driven completely off it. So for 60 guilders (equal to about 40 modern dollars) the Dutch got the use of 14,000 acres of rich and timbered land.
This southernmost niche of New Netherland was given the name of New Amsterdam for the chamber of the Dutch West India Company which mainly controlled its affairs. At first the colonists settled principally along the East River because its shore was better protected from the prevailing southwesterly winds than the banks of the Hudson were. Besides, much of the west side of Manhattan was occupied by a cemetery, a company farm and orchard, and a couple of country estates owned by two rich Dutchmen. In the summer of 1626, Minuit ordered the erection of thirty houses, mostly one-story cabins with straw roofs and wooden chimneys. Each contained a sleeping bench, or slaap-banck, recessed into one wall.
The company had sent along a military engineer with specific orders about locating farms, erecting public buildings, and constructing a fort. This was supposed to be five-sided and a thousand feet in diameter. The tip of Manhattan was so narrow, though, that a smaller, square stronghold was put up. The shores on both sides of Manhattan, from the Battery to what is now midtown, stood one to four blocks farther inland than at present. For example, Pearl Street on the southeastern tip of the island was then the strand or waterfront. It got its name from the pearly shells left there by tides. The Dutch, masters at landfill work, later extended the shores by making solid ground of tidal areas. Pearl Street today is separated from the East River by Water Street, Front Street, and South Street.
Public buildings arose on designated spots. Private dwellings, however, were situated helter-skelter by colonists who squatted wherever they chose. This explains the irregularity of streets which even today characterizes lower Manhattan. Before streets were laid out, two formed by common consent. One was Pearl Street along the East River. The other, farther west, followed a ridge northward through the company’s farms and fields. Originally it had been an Indian trail. The Dutch named it Heere Straat, or High Street. We know it as Broadway. It was then much wider than it is now.
Minuit’s engineer staked out a north-south road, called the Bowery because 12 farms, or bouweries, had been laid out near it—6 on one side, 6 on the other. The first 2 farms were 80 rods wide; the others, only 55 rods wide. The company created for itself a farm of 120 acres. A dozen smaller farms, along with some cows, were given to the colonists.
The arrival of other passenger-laden ships increased the population to nearly 200 persons. Although Peter Minuit was the ultimate on-the-spot authority, public morality was supervised by Jan Lempou, the schout. His office embraced the functions of sheriff, public prosecutor, and defense counselor. Unfortunately, Lempou wasn’t present when a certain tragedy occurred.
Thus far the Dutch had experienced no trouble with the Indians, except for habitual thievery. But one day in 1626 an Indian brave and his twelve-year-old nephew walked from Westchester County down toward the company warehouse at the tip of Manhattan. They had beaverskins to trade with the Dutch. Their route took them past the Kolk “Whirlpool,” or Collect, a small spring-fed pond just north of what is now Foley Square. Three workmen were plowing and clearing the edge of this pond. The Dutchmen killed the brave and gtole his wares. Seemingly, neither the governor nor the schout heard about this until years later. The Indian lad, who escaped, never forgot his uncle’s murder and swore to avenge himself on the palefaces.
Other Indians became troublesome near Albany at Fort Orange, killing several Dutch. Minuit ordered the surviving upstate colonists down to Fort Amsterdam for safety. He also closed Fort Nassau, which the Dutch had built on the Delaware River, and brought its inhabitants here. The newcomers increased New Amsterdam’s population to about 300.
The spring of 1628 marked the arrival from Holland of Jonas Michaelius, the first regular minister to function here. His church continues today as the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church of New York. The first and only schoolmaster the Dutch colony ever had was Adam Roelandsen. Each student paid him two beaverskins a year. Roelandsen must have been disagreeable, for practically nobody liked him. Failing as a schoolmaster or being forced to supplement his income, he took in washing.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that he bent over a tub with soapy hands. The Dutch let dirty linen accumulate for six months and only then sent it out to be washed. The laundries were big establishments run by men. Perhaps the schoolmaster owned or managed such a place. This custom of semiannual washings explains why the dowry of every well-to-do Dutch girl included vast quantities of linen.
Agriculture prospered. Although the governor was less interested in farming than in the fur trade, he decided to erect mills to grind meal. Besides windmills, the Dutch put up horse mills—that is, powered by horses. Some mills were used to saw logs. The Indians were terrified by the long arms and big teeth of the windmills, which really were dangerous. A common epitaph of millers was “killed in his mill.”
Minuit wrote to Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth colony to the northeast, suggesting that the Dutch and English enter into trade relations. At first Bradford hesitated, warning the Dutch not to encroach on his territory, but Minuit persisted and thus inaugurated regular coastwise traffic between New Amsterdam and Plymouth.
Much farther south, in Brazil, the Dutch West India Company was conquering, colonizing and profiting. By 1629 the company had more than 100 ships warring on pirates and the merchant ships of other nations. On the firm’s payroll were 15,000 seamen and soldiers, who in the single year 1629 used up more than 100,000 pounds of gunpowder.
To establish a supply base for their expanding merchant marine, to promote the colonization of New Netherland, and to help make it self-sufficient, company directors decided to attract more settlers by giving away vast tracts of land. This was the genesis of the patroon system that played such an important role in the history of New York State; Manhattan itself was exempted. The company’s plan was embodied in a Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, confirmed by the Dutch government on June 7,1629.
Each patron, or patroon, had to promise to transport and settle at least fifty adult colonists on a given territory within four years. In return, the government would give the patroon an estate, fronting sixteen miles along navigable rivers and extending inland as far as settlement would permit. He was expected to pay the Indians for the land, but sophisticated Dutchmen knew that this meant nothing more than a few trinkets.
This was indeed a tempting offer. Each estate could be held as a “perpetual fief in inheritance,” with the fruits, plants, minerals, rivers, and springs included. Soon five patroonships were parceled out along the Hudson, Connecticut, and Delaware rivers. Who got them? Directors of the Dutch West India Company. Thus, most of the land, commerce, and government of New Netherland fell into the hands of a few greedy merchants. Little was left for independent colonists.
One of the oldest, richest, and craftiest of the company directors was an Amsterdam diamond and pearl merchant, named Kiliaen Van Rensselaer. In 1630 his agents bought from the Indians a tract of land, 24 miles long and 48 miles wide, on both sides of the Hudson River far north of New Amsterdam. This was an area even greater than his charter had cited, but his purchases were confirmed. Altogether, Van Rennselaer’s feudal estate comprised 700,000 acres, which included the present counties of Albany and Rensselaer, a part of Columbia County, and even a strip in Massachusetts. What did he pay for this domain? Knives, axes, wampum, and duffel (a strong shaggy cloth).
Van Rensselaer never lived on his baronial estate. He didn’t even visit it. Through an able director he managed its affairs from overseas. After he died, some of his sons arrived from Holland, settled on the property, became lords of the manor, and wrangled with their hired help.
Another patroon, also a director of the Dutch West India Company, was Michael Paauw. He was given Staten Island and the part of New Jersey that now includes Hoboken and Jersey City. This estate he named Pavonia by translating into Latin his own name, which is Dutch for peacock. Still another patroon received a large slice of land near the Narrows in New York Harbor.
In 1630 the first Dutch pioneers arrived at Rensselaerswyck up the Hudson, Boston was founded by English settlers, and a map printed in Holland showed for the first time the names of Manhattan, New Amsterdam, and the North (Hudson) River. That was the year the people of New Amsterdam marveled at an enormous ship built under their very noses.
Until then only a few sloops and shallops, all small and shallow, had been constructed here. But now two visiting Belgian shipbuilders were so impressed by the colony’s fine timber and the town’s magnificent harbor that they wanted to make a vessel of unusual proportions. Peter Minuit not only encouraged them but also gave them company funds. Using a horse-powered mill to saw timber into logs and logs into planks, the Belgians built a ship they named the New Netherland. Huge for that age, she displaced either 600 or 800 tons and bristled with 30 cannons.
When the New Netherland reached Holland, most Dutchmen praised her magnitude, workmanship, and beautiful timber. This sentiment was not shared by company directors or government officials. Even before completion, the ship proved more expensive than planned, and because of her size, she was costly to operate. When the construction bill reached company directors, they were outraged. Stockholders also groused because they had to help pay for her. Their complaints were echoed in newspapers, which accused the company of extravagance. The government agreed. Two hundred years passed before another ship of comparable size was built in America.
The case of the New Netherland, together with growing complaints about the patroons, produced a government investigation. The patroons were accused of greater interest in the forbidden Indian trade than in colonizing and cultivating their land. They smuggled furs because this paid a quicker return than farming. Peter Minuit, who had ratified the purchase of Indian land by the patroons, was charged with acting in their interests. The government ordered the company to recall him.
Leaving New Netherland in the hands of a council, Minuit sailed for Holland in 1632. A storm drove his ship into Plymouth, England, where he was detained on a charge of illegal trading in the domains of the king of England, Charles I. His detention resulted in a spirited correspondence between England and Holland. The question was, Who owned the territory Minuit had governed?
Dutch statesmen claimed that the Dutch had discovered the Hudson River in 1609, that some had returned in 1610, that a trading charter had been granted in 1614, that a fort had been maintained there until the formation of the Dutch West India Company in 1621, and that the company had sent colonists, who had occupied the land ever since 1623. The Dutch stressed their purchase of the land from the Indians, the original owners.
The English had to cudgel their brains to answer these arguments, for in 1580 Queen Elizabeth had proclaimed that mere discovery of a wild country did not give title to it. Discovery had to be followed by occupation. The Dutch knew, all Europe knew, that from Cabot’s discovery in 1497 to the settlement of Jamestown in 1607—altogether 110 years—the English had not colonized any part of the New World. Still, the English replied to the Dutch that they held prior claims based on Cabot’s discovery and on subsequent patents issued by King James I. They denied that the Indians were the bona fide owners of the land. Even if they were, the English argued, they still couldn’t issue a legal title unless all tribes entered into a joint bargain with the purchaser. They flatly denied the jurisdiction of the Dutch government or the Dutch West India Company over New Netherland. However, they agreed to let the Dutch stay there if they submitted to English rule. Otherwise, the Dutch would not be permitted “to encroach up a colony of such importance as New England.”
Worried by this legalistic wrangle, the Dutch decided to strengthen their position by instituting certain reforms. For one thing, the government reduced the size of future patroonships. Of the five original patroonships, four had failed, and only Rensselaerswyck flourished. The failures were due to problems of transportation and communication between the patroonships and the homeland, a lack of cooperation from the company, Indian troubles, tenant unrest, and the ban against trading in furs or engaging in manufacture.
Peter Minuit was succeeded as director general of New Netherland by Bastiaen Jansen Kroll. This displeased Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, who began pulling strings backstage. He wangled the appointment of one of his relatives—a nephew or cousin. This was a moonfaced clerk, named Wouter Van Twiller. By replacing Kroll with Van Twiller, the company made a stupid concession to the wily Van Rensselaer. To be sure, Van Twiller had visited New Netherland twice, but merely to supervise the shipment of cattle to Rensselaerswyck. The five years before he became overlord of this Dutch colony, Van Twiller was nothing more than a clerk in the company’s warehouse in Amsterdam. Short and stout, he wore his sandy hair close-cropped and had small blue eyes set deep in his fat face.
In the full panoply of power, the new governor arrived here in March,1633, attended by 104 soldiers, wearing steel corsets and leather jackets and carrying half-pikes and wheel-lock muskets. This was the first military force ever to land on the site of New York City. Also among Van Twiller’s shipmates was a new minister, a dominie named Everardus Bogardus.
By the time Van Twiller got here, five stone warehouses had been completed and were in use by the company. However, Fort Amsterdam wasn’t finished. The new Dutch director general ordered the colonists to work faster, and within two years the fort was ready. Inside it Van Twiller built himself a brick house, certainly the best private dwelling in the province. The soldiers were quartered in a barracks, also built within the fort. Its main gate faced north and opened onto The Parade, now Bowling Green.
Also erected during Van Twiller’s regime were the first church building on the site of 39 Pearl Street; a bakery at the corner of Pearl and State streets; a house for the local midwife; a goat pen; a huge shed for building ships; and a house, barn, boathouse, and brewery on farm No. 1, south of the present Stuyvesant Square and east of the Bowery. One sawmill was constructed on this farm; another, on the fort’s southeastern bastion; and a third, on Governors Island.
Now the Dutch began growing tobacco in soil so rich that it didn’t need fertilizer. The fine New Amsterdam tobacco brought prices as high as the Virginia variety and was much in demand in Holland. The present site of the United Nations headquarters was once a tobacco plantation.
During the early years of Van Twiller’s administration many strides were made in trade. More and more furs were exported to Holland. New Amsterdam reaped the benefit of this commerce, for it was granted a monopoly, known as staple right. This meant that every furladen ship sailing down the Hudson from the hinterland, up the Atlantic seaboard from the south, or down from Newfoundland had to stop to pay a toll here before crossing the ocean. Sea captains unable to pay the fee had to unload their cargo on the shore and sell it then and there. New Amsterdam prospered accordingly.
Van Twiller didn’t neglect his own interests. He became the richest landowner in and around Manhattan, persuading the Indians to sell him Governors Island, Ward’s Island, and Welfare Island. At that time Nut Island was renamed Governors Island. Van Twiller also obtained an interest in 15,000 acres of rich Long Island farmland.
Although his holdings fattened, the company farm didn’t produce much. Moreover, despite the growing traffic in furs, the company directors in Holland weren’t satisfied. The colony’s annual exports more than doubled between 1624 and 1635 but barely paid a profit on the firm’s investment. Even when the fur trade hit a peak of 85,000 pelts a year, this did not compare favorably with the company’s lucrative operations in Brazil, on the high seas, or elsewhere. For example, in just one year Dutch raider ships captured 17 Spanish galleons carrying loot worth 12,000,000 guilders.
Van Twiller’s indifference to the public welfare irritated the intelligent men of the colony. Bogardus, a bold minister, wrote him several letters on the subject. This resulted in a feud between the governor and the pastor. Once the dominie called Van Twiller a “child of the devil” to his face and declared that if he did not behave he would give him “such a shake from the pulpit” the next Sunday as would make him tremble like a bowl of jelly.
After the governor had lost the respect of all the colonists and his weaknesses had been reported to company headquarters in Holland, he was dismissed from office. That was in the fall of 1637. Despite his disgrace, tippling potbellied Van Twiller didn’t flee to the homeland but remained to enjoy the earthly rewards he had piled up for himself.
One spring day in the following year a Dutch man-of-war anchored in the East River roadstead under the guns of Fort Amsterdam and lowered a boat. Into the boat climbed a fussy little man not quite forty years old. He was rowed to a small floating dock at Pearl Street, where he scrambled ashore. Local leaders had gathered to welcome their new director general, Willem Kieft, but they gave him a restrained greeting because of the soiled reputation that had preceded his arrival. Rumor had it that Kieft was venal.
Vain and ferocious, Kieft began riding roughshod over everyone, winning the nickname Willem the Testy. He was appalled at how Van Twiller had let things run down. Kieft wrote to Holland:
The fort is open at every side except the stone point. The guns are dismounted. The houses and public buildings are all out of repair. The magazine for the merchandise has disappeared. Every vessel in the harbor is falling to pieces. Only one windmill is in operation. The farms of the company are without tenants and thrown into commons (being used by anybody and everybody). The cattle are all sold or on the plantations of Van Twiller.
Because of harsh commercial and maritime regulations imposed by various colonies, smuggling was rife. Cargo-laden sloops sneaked from New Amsterdam to Plymouth to Virginia. Negro slaves bootlegged furs for tobacco. Company directors complained that “several persons” kept the best furs for themselves and sold inferior pelts for shipment to Holland. In defiance of the law, guns were sold to Indians, who paid twenty beaverskins for one musket. Every fourth building in town was a liquor store. In 1640 Kieft erected on Staten Island the first private distillery in the history of America.
Kieft decided to make some reforms, which he announced by means of posters tacked onto trees, barns, and fences. The sale of guns or gunpowder to Indians was prohibited on pain of death. Illegal traffic in furs was banned. Tobacco was taxed. No one could leave Manhattan without a passport. When the church bell rang at 9 P.M., everybody had to go to bed. No sailor could stay ashore after sundown. A seaman who pulled a knife on a shipmate was ordered to throw himself three times from the top of his ship into the water.
Although Kieft’s restless gray eyes missed nothing, he was such a dunderhead that he foolishly tried to tax the Indians. He insisted that their presence caused the company to spend too much money on fortifications. The peaceable redskins were astonished at this order to pay the Dutch a tribute of furs, corn, or wampum. Because European coins were scarce here, even the Dutch used wampum as money. Kieft warned the Indians: “If there be any tribe that will not willingly contribute, we shall induce them to do so by most suitable means.”
Kieft next decided to build a stone church inside the walls of the fort. Hoping to get the people to pay part of the cost, he resorted to trickery. A Dutch girl married a surgeon. The governor, of course, was invited to attend the wedding party. After three or four rounds of drinks Kieft took out a piece of paper and announced that he was ready to accept pledges for construction of the new church. Many giddy guests pledged generous sums. When they sobered up the next day, however, they vowed that this just wasn’t the proper way to get donations for a house of worship. The company had to pay the workmen.
Besides internal problems, the governor concerned himself with affairs outside the colony. Potential dangers loomed almost everywhere he looked. To the north, mainly above the St. Lawrence River, lay New France. To the northeast was New England, the numbers of its colonies and population growing. Virginia lay to the south. In addition to watching these rivals, Kieft watched apprehensively what was happening in New Sweden, to the southwest.
Peter Minuit was so angered at being dismissed by the Dutch West India Company that he offered his services to the Swedish government A colonizing agency, called the New Sweden Company, had been organized in 1626, but because of wars and the death of the Swedish king, no expedition had been launched at that time. In 1638, the year that Kieft came to New Netherland, Peter Minuit led fifty Swedish and Dutch colonists to the Delaware River, built a fort near present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and named it Fort Christina in honor of the young Swedish queen.
Sweden’s claim to this territory was based on purchase from the Indians, whereas Holland’s claim was based on Hudson’s discovery. Kieft wrote a letter of protest to Minuit, who did not bother to reply but went on strengthening his fort. Kieft then asked the Dutch West India Company for instructions. Not caring to precipitate a war with Sweden, the directors ignored the matter for the time being.
In addition to the Delaware situation, Kieft faced perils in Connecticut and on Long Island. The English were arriving in America much faster than the Dutch. They began to push down from Massachusetts into Connecticut, spilling over onto the eastern end of Long Island. Soon the English settlers far outnumbered all the New Netherland Dutch. The migration of the English was strong because it was organized under Church auspices. The Dutch migration was weaker because it consisted of unorganized individuals under the thumb of the profit-seeking Dutch West India Company.
In 1623 the Dutch had started building Fort Good Hope on the present site of Hartford, Connecticut, but they hadn’t bothered to complete it. Now, with the English overrunning the area, the Dutch finished the fort. Onto a big tree they nailed the arms of the Dutch government, only to have some Englishmen tear it down and substitute an insulting picture.
Kieft next turned his attention to the problem of smuggling within New Netherland. When he was unable to quash this lawlessness, the Amsterdam chamber finally decided that it might as well waive its shaky monopoly of the fur trade. In 1639 the fur traffic was “thrown free and open to everybody.” All the merchants of Holland and those of friendly nations were invited to send to New Netherland any merchandise they wished and to buy pelts there. However, duties of 10 percent on imports and 15 percent on exports were imposed. In addition, both imports and exports had to be carried in ships belonging to the Dutch West India Company. This measure did encourage immigration.
Colonization was also stimulated by change in the patroonship system. Now anyone willing and able to transport himself and only 5 grown persons to New Netherland was to be given 200 acres of land. Earlier, 50 colonists had been necessary, and much larger estates had been handed out. By this time Michael Paauw had failed to make a go of his Staten Island estate, called Pavonia, so the Amsterdam directors bought back the property. They then changed the name of the isle to Staten Island in honor of the States General, or government, of Holland.
Farmers of modest means sailed from Holland to take advantage of the liberalized land policy. Laborers came from New England, where the theocratic government was growing oppressive. Arriving from Virginia were English-born convicts who had been sent there to work as plantation laborers and were glad to escape when their enforced servitude ended. Slaves were imported from Brazil in greater numbers.
To take care of this increased population, Kieft bought more land from the Indians. By 1640 almost all the area within the present limits of New York City was in Dutch hands. The governor also secured a big tract of land north of the city in what is now Westchester County. Portions of this property soon were deeded away to enterprising settlers. One was a Danish Lutheran, named Jonai Bronck, who received a grant of real estate north of the Harlem River in the present county of the Bronx. In 1642 town lots were distributed along the newly formed streets of Manhattan. The next year eighteen different languages were spoken in New Amsterdam, the city being international in character almost from the start.
As trade increased, Governor Kieft tired of entertaining visitors in his own home. With the approval of the people he erected a five-story tavern on the low ground at 71-73 Pearl Street, then the head of Coenties Slip. Built of stone, oak timber, and lime made from oyster shells, it was for years the most famous structure in town, and in 1653 it became the first City Hall.
Hanover Square in lower Manhattan was now a public common, or park, and early in 1641 people meeting there talked excitedly about the big news. Some Negro slaves owned by the company had killed another slave near the fort. Nine Negroes were captured, but no one knew which had struck the fatal blow. To make the culprit confess, all were threatened with torture; whereupon all nine declared themselves equally guilty. Perhaps they reasoned they wouldn’t be put to death en masse, since laborers were needed in the growing town. The prisoners were then ordered to draw lots. The one who lost was to be hanged so that just one able-bodied man would be taken from the community. In this deadly lottery the loser was Manuel Gerrit, an enormous fellow called the Giant.
On the day set for the execution the entire populace turned out to watch, together with some blank-faced black-eyed Indians, curious about the ways of the white men. A ladder was angled against one wall of the fort. The Giant was forced to climb to the top. He was so heavy that two ropes were used to hang him. After they were placed around his neck, the ladder was jerked away. Both ropes broke. Gerrit fell to the ground, bellowing in pain, writhing, and clutching at his throat. At this piteous sight women shrieked. Men turned to the governor and begged him to let the prisoner go. But Willem the Testy told the hangman to prepare stronger ropes. At last so many voices were raised in behalf of the wretched slave that Kieft yielded to public pressure. Gerrit was freed after he bad promised to behave himself in the future and not to go around helping people murder other people.
About this time the Indians posed a problem that couldn’t be disposed of so easily as Gerrit. They were angry because Kieft was trying to tax them. Then too, the white men’s cattle strayed onto their unfenced land and trampled their corn. The redskins sometimes protected their crops by killing the cattle, and this led to reprisals. One incident followed another. A band of Raritan Indians attacked a Staten Island plantation and slew four white men. Kieft promptly offered a reward for the head of any Raritan brought to the fort.
One summer day in 1641 a wheelwright, named Claes Smit, was busy in his lonely house on the East River far above New Amsterdam at what is now West Forty-fifth Street. An Indian appeared and asked to buy a piece of coarse cloth. When the unsuspecting Dutchman turned to get it, the redskin seized an ax and killed him. The murderer was the same Indian who, as a lad of twelve, had seen his uncle killed by Dutchmen near the Collect. Sixteen years later, a grown man, he got his revenge.
This Indian belonged to a Westchester tribe living at the site of Yonkers. Kieft sent word to the tribal chief demanding that the killer be delivered into the hands of the white men. The sachem refused. Kieft then threatened to wipe out the entire tribe, but the colonists were reluctant to launch a bloody war. Compromising, Kieft suggested that the townspeople elect twelve of their best men to confer with him on this issue. Thus, for the first time the colonists won a measure of self-government. The Twelve Men, as they were called, agreed that the murderer must be surrendered, but they wouldn’t consent to a war just then because necessary preparations hadn’t been made.
The following winter, however, the Twelve Men told the governor that they would approve an expedition against the Westchester tribe if the settlers were granted certain reforms. Enraged, Kieft dissolved the group. Then, acting on his own, he sent eighty soldiers toward Yonkers, carefully refraining from leading them himself. The expedition was a fiasco. The guide lost his way, the commanding officer lost his temper, and the soldiers marched back to the fort without even sighting the Indian village. Redskins saw the soldiers, though, and were so frightened by the show of force that they offered to give up the murderer. Somehow this was never done, but a peace treaty between the Dutch and the Westchester Indians was signed in the home of Jonas Bronck.
There were other Indian problems. Although Kieft had been successful in preventing the sale of guns to Algonquins in and around Manhattan, Dutch traders upriver freely bartered muskets to the Iroquois. The Algonquins and the Iroquois were deadly enemies. Armed with superior weapons, the Iroquois of the upper Hudson Valley descended on the Westchester and River tribes near New Amsterdam and demanded tribute. A thousand terrified Algonquins fled in midwinter to Manhattan and the vicinity of Jersey City. They begged the Dutch for protection, but the shortsighted Kieft snorted that he would make the Indians “wipe their chops!”
By his orders two detachments of soldiers filed out of the fort. One group marched to nearby Corlaer’s Hook in Manhattan on the East River, where the Vladeck Houses now stand, and slaughtered forty Indian refugees. The second and larger detachment crossed the Hudson, proceeded to the site of Jersey City, and attacked in the dark. The engagement that night of February 25-26, 1643, is known as the Pavonia Massacre. Dutch soldiers fell on the unsuspecting Indians, murdering and mutilating about eighty men, women, and children. Then the uniformed butchers marched back to Fort Amsterdam in triumph, carrying the severed heads of some of their victims. Kieft was so delighted that he congratulated and decorated the men.
Eleven Algonquin tribes rose in wrath and war paint, took up hatchets, and did their ferocious best to wipe the white man off the face of the earth. The Dutch were unprepared for war. There was only about half a pound of gunpowder per colonist, and Kieft hadn’t even bothered to warn outlying settlers that he planned to massacre the Indians. Peaceful Dutch farmers were surprised in their fields by the attacking redskins. Their cattle were killed; their homes, destroyed; their women and children, cut down or carried into captivity. The sturdy Dutch put up a good fight, but scores were felled with tomahawks buried in their skulls. Those lucky enough to escape the first onslaught fled from their farms to the fort. Many abandoned the colony itself and sailed for Holland on the first available ships.
The fate of the entire Dutch province hung in the balance. From the Raritan River, in New Jersey, to the Connecticut River, in Connecticut, the Indians ravaged the countryside, burning, killing, and scalping. Long Island, Westchester, and Manhattan were laid waste. Soon only three farms on Manhattan and two on Staten Island remained untouched. Settlers could find safety nowhere except near Fort Amsterdam, and even there conditions were desperate.
The Indians had a combined force of about 1,500 warriors. All Manhattan male colonists were enrolled as soldiers, but no more than 200 were capable of bearing arms. About 50 or 60 Englishmen were pressed into service to prevent them from leaving the colony. Dutchmen denounced Kieft for provoking this pointless war, and he almost collapsed in terror. He tried unsuccessfully to pin the blame on his advisers. In desperation he begged the people to elect another representative body. They chose the Eight Men.
Because the fort was utterly defenseless, the Dutch erected a palisade along the present Wall Street—although this was not the one that gave the street its name. Food was so scarce that the colonists faced starvation. They appealed for help to the English at the colony of New Haven, only to be told, “We are not satisfied that your war with the Indians is just.” The Amsterdam chamber of the Dutch West India Company was angry because Kieft had been ordered to avoid an open break with the natives; it too was slow in sending aid.
Fortunately for the Dutch, the Indians seemed unable to mount an unremitting siege on the fort but limited themselves to hit-and-run raids. The Dutch also were lucky enough to find an able leader. An Englishman, named Captain John Underhill, arrived here at the critical moment. Underhill was an expert Indian fighter, who had taken part in the war against the Pequot tribe in Connecticut. He brought fifty English soldiers and settlers to New Amsterdam, was guaranteed payment for his services, and then decided to strike the enemy an annihilating blow.
The biggest Indian stronghold was a village in the rugged country north of Stamford, Connecticut. Captain Underhill embarked from Manhattan in 3 yachts, which carried his own small force and the 130 to 150 Dutch soldiers finally sent here from Holland. The combined body landed at Greenwich, marched a full day, and then fell on the Indian settlement one winter’s night. Before daybreak the battle was over. That ghastly night of the full moon 8 Indians escaped; the snow was reddened by the bloody corpses of 700 tribesmen. Underhill’s small army lost only 15 men.
After this overwhelming victory, Dutch forces sallied forth from Fort Amsterdam, invaded Westchester County, and killed 500 more redskins. The Indians sued for peace, and a treaty was signed on August 29,1645.
During this Indian war the Dutch colonists had lost much and suffered greatly. They blamed everything on Governor Kieft; both private individuals and the Eight Men complained about him to Holland. Kieft was summoned home to defend himself against charges of blundering and cowardice. On the return voyage the ship was sunk, and Kieft drowned. Then a grizzled warrior with a wooden leg stumped onto the scene.