Produced by Al Haines
ROOSEVELT EDITION
VOLUME 7
THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES
ALLEN JOHNSON
EDITOR
GERHARD H. LOMER
CHARLES W. JEFFERYS
ASSISTANT EDITORS
* * * * *
[Frontispiece: LOWER BROADWAY IN 1650. From the painting by C. W.
Jefferys]
DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON
A CHRONICLE OF COLONIAL NEW YORK
BY MAUD WILDER GOODWIN
NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & CO.
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1921
_Copyright, 1919, by Yale University Press_
{vii}
CONTENTS
I. UP THE GREAT RIVER Page 1
II. TRADERS AND SETTLERS " 17
III. PATROONS AND LORDS OF THE MANOR " 32
IV. THE DIRECTORS " 51
V. DOMINES AND SCHOOL-TEACHERS " 83
VI. THE BURGHERS " 102
VII. THE NEIGHBORS OF NEW NETHERLAND " 123
VIII. THE EARLY ENGLISH GOVERNORS " 137
IX. LEISLER " 150
X. PRIVATEERS AND PIRATES " 165
XI. COLONIAL GOVERNMENT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY " 180
XII. THE ZENGER TRIAL " 193
XIII. THE NEGRO PLOTS " 206
XIV. SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON " 218
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE " 231
INDEX " 235
{ix}
ILLUSTRATIONS
LOWER BROADWAY IN 1650
From the painting by C. W. Jefferys. _Frontispiece_
THE HUDSON RIVER REGION, 1609-1770
Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American
Geographical Society. _Facing page 12_
{1}
DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON
CHAPTER I
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 a hundred
and fifty 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 State when, on
that memorable September day in 1609, a small Dutch yacht named the
_Halve Maene_ or _Half Moon_, under the command of Captain Henry
Hudson, slipped in past the low hook of sand in front of the Navesink
Heights, and sounded her way to an {2} anchorage in what is now the
outer harbor of New York.
Robert Juet of Limehouse, one of the adventurers sailing with Hudson,
writes in his journal:
At three of the clock in the afternoone we came to three great rivers,
so we stood along to the northermost, thinking to have gone into it;
but we found it to have a very shoald barre before it, for we had but
ten foot water; then wee cast about to the southward and found two
fathoms, three fathoms, and three and a quarter, till we came to the
souther side of them; then we had five and sixe fathoms and anchored.
So wee sent in our boate to sound and they found no lesse water than
foure, five, six, and seven fathoms and returned in an hour and a half.
So wee weighed and went in and rode in five fathoms, oozie ground, and
saw many salmons, mullets and rayes very great.
So quietly is chronicled one of the epoch-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 eighty tons, burden. From her
bow projects a beakhead, a sort of gallery, painted and carved, and
used as a {3} place of rest or of punishment for the sailors. At the
tip of the beakhead is the figurehead, a red lion with a golden mane.
The ship's bow is green, with ornaments of sailors' heads painted red
and yellow. Both forecastle and poop are high, the latter painted a
blue mottled 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--Vereenigde Oost-Indische 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 masthead. At the foretop
flutters the tricolor of red, white, and black, with the arms of
Amsterdam in a field of white. At the maintop 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's {4} 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 "greene Tabacco" 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
amidships 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 mottoes of which, being translated, read: _Honor thy
father and thy mother_! _Do {5} 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 mainmast. 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 knighthead." 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, the 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 Cathay.
{6}
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
Colman and a boat's 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. Colman was mortally wounded in
the throat by an arrow, and two of his companions were seriously,
though 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 thought 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 ten 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.
{7}
After Colman 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 reached 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 sailing
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 nineteenth
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 {8}
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
Mannitto himself."
The strange craft stopped and 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 hock-hack [Indian for gourd or bottle] is brought forward by
the supposed Mannitto's servants and from this a substance is poured
out into a small cup or glass and handed to the Mannitto. The expected
Mannitto drinks, has the glass filled again and hands it to the chief
next him to drink. The chief receives the glass but only smelleth at
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 {9} the contents in it--that the same was
handed them by the Mannitto 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 bemoan him. He
falls into a sleep and they saw him as expiring. He awakes again,
jumps up and declares that he never felt himself before so happy as
after he had drank the cup. Wishes for more. His wish is granted and
the whole assembly soon join him and become intoxicated.
The Delawares, as the missionary points out further, call New York
Island "Mannahattanik," "the place where we were all drunk." With this
picturesque account let us contrast the curt statement of Robert Juet:
"This morning at our first rode in the River there came eight and
twenty canoes full of men, women and children to betray us; but we saw
their intent and suffered none of them to come aboord of us. At twelve
of the clocke they departed. They brought with them oysters and beanes
whereof we bought some." If there had been any such striking scene as
the missionary's chronicle reports, Juet would probably {10} 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 Colman 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 had been so ill requited on his
previous landing. Let us therefore pass by the Reverend John
Heckwelder's account as "well found, but not well founded," and
continue to follow the cruise 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 trodden by the foot of man. He
left Manhattan Island behind, passed 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 Catskills the Dutch
found the natives friendly, and, having apparently recovered from their
first suspicious attitude, the explorers began to open barter and
exchange with such as wished to come aboard. On at least one occasion
Hudson {11} himself went ashore. The early Dutch writer, De Laet, who
used Hudson's last journal, quotes at length 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 in 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 supposed 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 at length the
shoaling water warned Hudson that he could not penetrate much farther.
He knew now that he had failed to {12} find the northwest passage to
Cathay which had 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, Diedrich Knickerbocker, who was always
ready to help out fact with fiction and both with humor. He pictures
Henry Hudson as "a short, brawny old gentleman with a double chin, a
mastiff 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 leathern
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 brattling of a tin trumpet, owing
to the number of hard northwesters which he had swallowed in the course
of his sea-faring."
This account accords with our idea of this doughty navigator far better
than the popular picture of the forlorn white-bearded old gentleman
{13} amid the arctic ice-floes. 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 the ship and so successfully plied them with brandy that they were
completely intoxicated. One fell asleep and was deserted by his
comrades, who, however, returned next day and were rejoiced to find the
victim professing great satisfaction over his experience.
[Illustration: The Hudson River Region, 1609-1770]
The ship had now reached the northernmost 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 lion with the
golden mane 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 Haverstraw Bay at Stony Point
the _Half Moon_ was becalmed and a party of Mountain Indians came off
in canoes to {14} 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 seventeenth century Dutch sailing-vessels in
which the forecastle 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 sun-dial, a cross staff, a brass tinder-box, pewter plates,
spoons, a mortar and pestle, and the half-hour glass which marked the
different watches on deck.
Doubtless the 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, {15}
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 Indian 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 gunwale, 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, whence
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 {16} 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. The Cabots possibly, and
Verrazano 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
pennants. 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. To 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.[1]
[1] For further details of the appearance of the _Half Moon_, see E. H.
Hall's paper on _Henry Hudson and the Discovery of the Hudson River_,
published by the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society
(1910).
{17}