The Epic of New York City (5 page)

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.