The Epic of New York City (4 page)

Such was the region toward which the Dutch turned in great expectation. The first half of the seventeenth century was the golden age of the Netherlands, even though at first the Dutch provinces struggled to free themselves from Spain. Holland's commerce expanded as never before. The Dutch were the Yankees of their day, shrewd, hardheaded, industrious, and ingenious. Forced to find their own way to the Orient, in a surprisingly short time they disputed command of the Indies with the Portuguese and then displaced them.

So many Dutch companies traded with the Far East that at last the Dutch government, called the States General of the United Netherlands, found it necessary to merge all of them into one vast corporation. This was the Universal East India Company, chartered in 1602. It was a fabulous success. Four years after its organization it declared a dividend of 75 percent. By 1620 its original shareholders
had realized a 425 percent profit on their investment. Under the terms of its charter, for 21 years the East India Company was to be the only Dutch firm with the right to trade to the east of the Cape of Good Hope and sail its ships through the Strait of Magellan. The corporation became one of the chief organs of Dutch imperialism. It was this company that had sent Henry Hudson to America in 1609, hoping he would discover a shorter route to India.

In that same year of 1609 a twelve-year truce was concluded between the confederated states of the Netherlands and Spain. “At this moment,” said the French historian Taine, “Holland on the sea and in the world was what England was in the time of Napoleon.” This is to say, it was a great maritime and imperialistic power.

With trade to and from the Orient running smoothly under the direction of one colossal company, the Dutch now organized another group to guide commerce between Holland and America—or New Netherland. This was the United New Netherland Company, formed by thirteen merchants of Amsterdam and Hoorn and chartered in 1614. (In the same year, when the name New Netherland formally was applied to a portion of the New World, the name New England was given to the territory lying north of it.) For three years directors of the new corporation were to enjoy exclusive rights to make trading voyages to the region between Virginia and Canada. At the end of this period, however, the States General refused to renew the charter, and the American trade was thrown open to all Dutchmen.

The result was competition and confusion. This endangered the national interest, for the English chafed at the growing traffic of Dutch ships on the Hudson River. At last the English instructed their minister at The Hague, Holland's capital, to remind the Dutch government of England's claims in the New World. Under these pressures the Dutch government granted a charter on June 3, 1621, to a group of merchants, who had organized the Dutch West India Company.

These businessmen hoped to regulate and protect the trade carried on by the Dutch in both America and Africa. They intended to set up colonies on each of the two continents and their nearby islands. Frankly patterned after the Dutch East India Company, the new firm was divided into five branches, or chambers—one for each of the five Dutch cities. Of these, the Amsterdam chamber won the most power because it contributed the most money—four-ninths of the total investment. So it was this chamber that controlled New Netherland.
However, the company's nineteen directors, who governed the far-flung affairs of the entire firm, regarded New Netherland as something of a stepchild. They were intent on trying to capture Brazil from the Portuguese and colonizing Guiana and the West Indies.

The West India Company got the exclusive right to trade on American and African shores, just as the East India Company alone could send ships to Asia. Never before in history, perhaps, had any private corporation been invested with such enormous powers. In fact, it became so influential that it almost constituted a government within the government. This was to have tremendous bearing on the affairs of the city soon to be planted in the New World.

And most of the first colonists sent here by the Dutch were French-speaking people.

Chapter 2

T
HEY
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.