containing his mate and four men further up the river to explore and
report whether it seemed to be a water-way to the South sea (Pacific
ocean) on the way to India. Becoming convinced that it did not, on the
23d of September he leisurely sailed down the river to its mouth. Hudson
and his crew were greatly pleased with the grandeur and beauty of the
river, the like of which they had never seen, passing through a
fruitful, attractive country, which in their descriptions, they painted
in glowing colors, justly deserved. It was the season of the year when
nature, in that latitude, dons her variegated and most beautiful colors.
Hudson had, along the river in many places where he stopped, many
interesting and pleasant interviews with the Indians, gaining much
information, and exchanging his trinkets for their valuable furs. The
Indians, as a rule, were hospitable, entertaining the strangers with
game and fruits, etc. There were a few regrettable incidents on Hudson's
voyage up the river between the Indians and the crew, and it seems
probable the latter were most blameworthy.
October 4, 1609, Henry Hudson and his crew in the "Half Moon" set sail
from Sandy Hook for Europe. On the homeward voyage some of the crew
wanted to winter in Newfoundland and then in the spring search for a
northwestern passage through Davis strait. Many were sick, but none of
them were willing to go back to Holland as Hudson wished and was under
obligations to do. Bear in mind that the master of a vessel then was not
the autocrat that he now is. The crew had to be consulted and their
decision controlled. A compromise was finally made that they should sail
to Ireland. However, they reached Dartmouth, England, November 7, 1609,
from which place Hudson made his report to the Dutch East India Company
directors, and proposed to them to go out again for a search in the
northwest, and that besides the pay, 1,500 florins should be laid out
for an additional supply of provisions. Hudson also wanted six or seven
of his men exchanged and his crew to number twenty.
It was a long time before the Dutch East India Company directors learned
of the arrival of the "Half Moon" and heard from Hudson. Then they
ordered the ship and crew to return as soon as possible. But when they
were going to do so, Hudson and other Englishmen were commanded by the
government not to leave England, but to serve their own country. These
things took place in January, 1610. After a detention of eight months in
England the "Half Moon" reached Amsterdam in the summer of 1610.
April 17, 1610, Henry Hudson, in the vessel "Discovery," with many of
his crew of former voyages, sailed from England in the service of three
Englishmen, Sir Thomas Smythe, Sir Dudley Digges, and John Wolstenholme,
in quest of an all-water route to India through the Davis strait. After
entering the bay named Hudson, in his honor, he spent much time in
trying to find an outlet from it to the Pacific ocean on the way to
China, but unsuccessfully.
His crew became quarrelsome, and some of them mutinous. Among the worst
were two he had favored most--one his mate, Juet, and another, a Mr.
Green, a worthless, degenerate fellow. Juet was tried for
insubordination--for attempting to incite to mutiny--found guilty and
deposed. The winter of 1610-1611 was a hard one--their provisions were
short, owing to a treatment of a native by some of the crew--they could
obtain no game from the Indians, nor could they catch fish. It was said,
perhaps falsely, that Hudson became very tyrannical, and said something
that his enemies thought he meant to prolong his scanty supplies by
getting rid of several of the crew. June, 1611, a few days after leaving
one of the most southern harbors of James bay (a southern portion of
Hudson bay) where they had wintered, a mutiny broke out among the crew.
Hudson was seized and bound, and he, his son and seven others,
principally sick and infirm, were put in a small boat and set adrift
upon the waves, destined soon to perish.
Thus ended, in tragedy, the career of a remarkable man, whose appearance
upon the theater had not extended a half dozen years.
To commemorate the tercentenary of _Hendrick_ Hudson's _discovery_ of
the Hudson river would be on a false basis--at war with historical
facts. Hudson's name was _Henry_ (as has been clearly established) and
not _Hendrick_, as doubtless the Dutch wanted him to become a Hollander
on his entering the service of the Dutch East India Company.
There is no evidence that Henry Hudson was ever in Holland except late
in the year 1608 and early in the year 1609. It is certain that he did
not see Holland after his expedition on behalf of the Dutch East India
Company, and that born in England, he remained an Englishman, for that
government forbid him, as an Englishman, to leave and enter any other
service.
It seems most remarkable that in Hudson's honor, as a discoverer, should
have been named a _strait_ (Hudson strait discovered by Sebastian Cabot
in 1517), _Hudson bay_, the _Hudson Bay Company territory_, which
originally included all the land which was drained into Hudson
bay--territory ample for an empire--which Hudson did not discover and
probably never put his foot on its soil, and the _Hudson river_, which
has been clearly shown he did not discover. Unless the word _discoverer_
has a different meaning from what the public understand by it and
lexicographers primarily ascribe to it, Hudson, in none of these cases,
was a _discoverer_. He was an _explorer_, and as such was a benefactor,
and deserved credit. We would "render unto Cæsar the things which are
Cæsar's."
Henry Hudson was a bold, skillful navigator, a careful explorer, and had
the ability and spirit to have made important discoveries had the time
and circumstances favored. It often happens that the discoverer, the
inventor, merits less honor than the party coming after, who makes that
discovery or invention serviceable--useful, as it had not been before.
Robert Fulton was not the discoverer of the application of steam as a
motive power in navigation, but he built the "Clermont"--propelled it by
steam from New York to Albany, took the wind out of sails,
revolutionized navigation, and received the honors. Samuel Finley Breese
Morse was not the discoverer, the inventor of the electrical telegraph,
but he made it serviceable--of practical utility--almost ignoring
distance in the transmission of news, and he won the honors.
Henry Hudson did not discover a new and shorter water route to India,
nor did he discover the Hudson river. He, however, did _explore_ the
Hudson river, and his glowing accounts of it, and the country through
which it flows, attracted immigration, settlements, and was an important
element in the founding of the new nation in the western world. The
name, it is to be hoped, the _true_ name of Hudson, _Henry_, and not
_Hendrick_, will be cherished, for whom living, so little was done. His
widow, in extreme poverty, applied to the British government for another
of her sons, and he was received and sent to the Government Naval
School, and an allowance was made for his outfit. Henry Hudson appears
to have had a large family.
The river which Hudson sailed up and down in 1609 has borne many names,
given by different peoples at different times. The red men bestow names
descriptive or characteristic--while there are no known laws or rules
which the white men observe in naming. At the advent of the Europeans to
North America many tribes of Indians inhabited the territory from
Florida to the St. Lawrence, and back to the Mississippi river, and
prominent among them were the Lenapes, to which the Mohicans belonged.
These Indians called the river Mah-i-can-i-tuk, meaning "the flowing
waters." The Iroquois called it Co-hat-a-tea, or "river that flows from
the mountains." It was called the Mauritius, in honor of Prince Maurice
of Nassau. Rio de Montagne was a name given to it. The French usually
called it "Le Grande." The Spanish called it "The River of the
Mountains." It was often called the "North river" in contradistinction
to the "South river"--the Delaware.
That Henry Hudson was greatly pleased in exploring this river is not
surprising. "There is no river in the western world comparable with it
in picturesqueness and beauty, nor has it a superior, if an equal, in
these respects, in Europe. In some stretches of the Clyde and the Rhine
are features resembling the Hudson, and the Elbe has in sections, such
delicately penciled effects, but no European river is so lordly in its
bearing, none flows in such state to the sea." It has been said that no
other river in the world presents so great a variety of views as the
Hudson.
"Throughout its whole length, from the wilderness to the sea, from the
Adirondacks to Staten Island, a distance of 325 miles, there is a
combination of the finest pictures, illustrating some of the best
scenery of the old world," which some quaint writer (to me unknown)
describes as follows: "The tourist with only a slight stretch of the
fancy may find Loch Katrine nestled among the mountains of our own
Highlands; in the Catskills may be seen from Sunset Mountain of Arran;
and in the Palisades, the Giant's Causeway of Ireland." He divides the
Hudson river into five stretches, reaches or divisions, representing
five distinct characteristics, namely: Grandeur, Repose, Sublimity, The
Picturesque, and Beauty.
1. The Palisades, an unbroken wall of rock for fifteen
miles--_Grandeur._
2. The Tappanzee, surrounded by the sloping hills of Nyack, Tarrytown
and Sleepy Hollow--_Repose._
3. The Highlands, where the Hudson for twenty miles plays "hide and
seek" with hills "rock-ribbed and ancient as the
sun"--_Sublimity._
4. The Hillsides, for miles above and below Poughkeepsie--_The
Picturesque._
5. The Catskills, on the west, throned in queenly dignity--_Beauty._
George William Curtis, the great traveler, the close observer, the
perfect gentleman, pronounced the Hudson grander than the Rhine, and
Thackeray, in his "Virginians," has given the Hudson the verdict of
beauty.
To New Yorkers it is a river dear, for there is scarcely a single
settlement along its banks, from its origin to the sea, which has not
some interesting tradition, some notable historic event, to relate.
The beauty and glory of such a river were not, unaided, sufficient to
induce the pioneer to leave his home in civilization and go into a
wilderness thousands of miles away. Such a river as the Hudson could not
have its origin in a low, marshy country, and its flow seaward, in any
but a healthy region, but the inducement to seek that country must be
more than the mere sentiment of beauty. There must seem to be a prospect
of bettering one's condition, so far as physical comforts, or civil and
religious rights are concerned. Hudson, after his exploration of the
Hudson river, on his return to Europe, took back there many very
valuable furs which he obtained from the Indians in exchange for
trinkets of little cost and of still less real value. This fur and
peltry trade was eagerly sought by the Europeans, especially the French,
English and Dutch, and the latter were greatly favored for a time, for
the Indians from the far north and northwest came to or near Albany to
market their goods and buy their supplies. In the years 1610, 1611,
1612, 1613 and 1614 enterprising Amsterdam merchants sent out vessels to
and up the Hudson river to obtain furs and peltry and made large
profits. In 1614 the territory extending from Cape Cod to the Delaware
river, places which Hudson in his third voyage had touched, was claimed
by the Netherlands and called New Netherlands, and in that year the
Holland government granted a special charter to a company of Amsterdam
merchants and others of the United New Netherlands Company giving them
the monopoly until January 1, 1618, of all travel and trade in the New
Netherlands, during which time they were at liberty to make four
voyages. For a period of five years, from 1618 to 1623, there seems to
have been a free trade in the New Netherlands--presumably the fur trade
proving less profitable.
June 3, 1621, the government of Holland, called the "Lords States
General," incorporated the Dutch West India Company, clothing it with
almost kingly powers, to carry on trade and planting settlements from
Cape Horn to Newfoundland for a term of twenty-four years.
Its special object was the jurisdiction and exclusive control in New
Netherlands. Its government was to be composed of nineteen directors
from the five different cities of Holland. The Amsterdam Chamber was to
have control of New Netherlands. The company was not fully organized
until the spring of 1623. The English never recognized the Dutch claim
for the territory called New Netherlands, and as early as 1613 demanded
the surrender of the "Dutch trading house" on Manhattan Island, and ten
years later the English Ambassador at The Hague protested against the
encroachment of the Dutch fur traders--the English claiming the
territory under the discoveries of the Cabots in 1497 and 1498. In
April, 1623, thirty families, mostly Walloons, or French Protestants,
came over and landed at New Amsterdam (New York) and eight of the
families came up to Albany and there built Fort Orange near Steamboat
Square, about two miles above Fort Nassau, built several years before.
Prior to the coming of the company of the Walloons to the New
Netherlands the famous Pilgrim colony had received a patent granted by
the Virginia Company giving them the right to settle "about the Hudson
river," and when the "Mayflower" left Southampton, England, that was her
destination, but mistaking the route and contrary winds drove her to the
Massachusetts coast and there that colony was settled in 1620 at
Plymouth Rock. Had the Pilgrims settled in the New Netherlands in 1620
the result doubtless would have been different, but it is doubtful if it
would have been better or even so good. It is well to bear in mind that
the early settlements in New England were made by persons seeking to
avoid persecution on account of their religious creeds, at variance with
Roman Catholicism and the established Episcopal Church, and that they
might found and establish a home where they could enjoy religious and
civil rights. "The Pilgrims" settled at Plymouth in 1620 and "the
Puritans" in Salem in 1629. Miles Standish was a prominent figure and
character among the Pilgrims, though himself not a Pilgrim. Bradford,
Brewster, Winslow, and Carver were the trusted leaders among the
Pilgrims. Among the Puritans John Endicott and John Winthrop were easily
the chiefs. The "_Puritans_" were members of the established (Episcopal)
church. They sought to have that church purified. They wanted the clergy
to give up wearing the surplice, making the sign of the cross in baptism
and using the ring in the marriage service--Roman Catholic observances.
The Separatists (afterward known in America as the Pilgrims) were a
branch of the Puritans--ultra Puritans who utterly repudiated Roman
Catholic ceremonials and everything in imitation of or like and
therefore separated from the established (Episcopal) church.
The Dutch did not come to the New Netherlands on religious
considerations, for Holland tolerated religious freedom, but they came
for gain--immediate gain from the fur and peltry trade. They did not
early come to settle and for nearly twenty years after Hudson's
exploration and glowing account of it very, very few indeed who came
over to engage in, or employed in the fur trade, became settlers. It is
said that Sarah Rapelje, a daughter of one of the Walloon settlers, born
June 7, 1625, was the first white child born in the New Netherlands. The
first reference to the population at Fort Orange (Albany) published
seems to have been in a work published in Amsterdam in 1628, which says:
"There are no families at Fort Orange. They keep twenty-five or
twenty-six traders there."
The report made by the Nineteen in 1629 to the Lords States General
said: "All who are inclined to do any sort of work here procure enough
to eat without any trouble and therefore are not willing to go far from
home on an uncertainty." It was apparent that if the Dutch West India
Company was to prove a success in the New Netherlands a different course
must be pursued, for Virginia and New England were being settled and
their territory, in many respects better, was not.
The Dutch West India Company, modeled after the Dutch East India
Company, having powerful fleets, sailing along the coasts of South
America and the West Indies, preying on the Spanish commerce, capturing
their vessels and cargoes and amassing wealth thereby, sought to induce
men of wealth, daring, and ambition to relieve them of the undertaking
of settling and developing the New Netherlands, which, instead of a
source of revenue, had become a burden. They hit upon what was called
the Patroon scheme--based upon the Feudal System--a system of land
tenure and service prevalent in Europe during the Middle Ages--a system
inevitably tending to exalt the Patroon into a lordly baron and to
degrade his subject into a serf.
One who sought the distinction of the title of a Patroon (or Patron) of
New Netherlands was entitled to hold as a perpetual inheritance, handing
it down in the line of the oldest son, an estate having sixteen miles
frontage on one side of a navigable river or eight miles on each side,
extending as far into the country as the occupiers would permit. The
Patroon must obtain Indian title, which usually cost but a trifle. He
was empowered to hold civil and criminal courts on his estate and his
decisions were practically final. He appointed the officers and
magistrates in all the cities and towns in his territory. In order to be
invested with this honor, these privileges and powers, he bound himself
to take or send over at least fifty emigrants over fifteen years of age
to settle on his patent within the next four years.
The emigrants taken or sent by the Patroons to New Netherlands were
bound for a specified number of years as apprentices to serve their
masters, agreeing not to hunt or fish without the master's permission,
agreeing to grind their grain in his mill and pay his price for
grinding. They were pledged not to weave any cloth for themselves or
others, but to buy it from the company under the penalty of banishment.
They were bound to pay rent in everything they produced. The Patroon and
his emigrants were to support a schoolmaster, a minister and a comforter
for the sick.
Such in brief was the Patroon system.
The most desirable locations for selections in the New Netherlands were
along the Hudson and Delaware rivers, known, of course, by the directors
of the Dutch West India Company; prominent among them was Kiliaen Van
Rensselaer, a wealthy dealer in diamonds and pearls in Amsterdam.
Van Rensselaer, doubtless, informed of the great advantages of Albany,
as the great rendezvous of the Indians to market their furs and near the
confluence of the two most important rivers of New York, instructed his
agents to obtain title from the Indians and he succeeded in procuring a
princely estate along the Hudson river above and below Albany, a
distance of twenty-four miles and extending east and west forty-eight
miles--a territory ample for a kingdom--greater than the area of North
Holland and very little less than that of South Holland.
Other directors of the Dutch West India Company promptly made what they
thought the most desirable locations along the Hudson river. Manhattan
Island (New York) being reserved by the company, and along the
Delaware--immense tracts, though none so extensive as Van Rensselaer's,
and became Patroons. Such grants and under such circumstances soon
excited jealousy and sharp criticism in Holland and the Patroons felt
compelled to make concessions and yield some of their privileges.
Kiliaen Van Rensselaer was a man of energy and executive ability, and
strove to increase the growth, importance, and prosperity of
Rensselaerwyck in accordance with the Patroon system. It has been said
that he visited his estate in the New Netherlands in 1637, but no proof
has been found and the report is discredited. A distant landlord
frequently is in ignorance, and sometimes designedly kept so, of the
actual state of affairs in his estate, which would be remedied if he
were present. The Patroon was represented in New Netherlands, when
absent, by agents, partners, or directors. Kiliaen admitted into a
limited partnership in his estate three prominent members of the
Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company, namely, Samuel Godyn,
Johannes de Laet, and Samuel Blommaert, in order the sooner and more
effectively to present to the public the attractions of Rensselaerwyck,
and, presumably, also to abate the ill feeling against him in the
Netherlands for his having taken advantage of his position to secure
such an immense estate. Van Rensselaer dominated that partnership and
again became sole proprietor. Kiliaen died in 1646 and his son,
Johannes, then a minor, under the right of primogeniture, became Patroon
and continued to be until 1658, when he died. His interests in
Rensselaerwyck were cared for at first by Van Slechtenhorst, or until
1652, and then by the Patroon's half brother, Jan Baptiste.
In 1658 Jeremias, the second son of Kiliaen, became director and
subsequently proprietor of Rensselaerwyck and was the first of the
Patroons to reside in, or even visit, the estate in New Netherlands.
There were eight of the Van Rensselaers called Patroons, namely and in
the order of primogeniture except in the case of Jeremias:
First.--Kiliaen, from 1629 to 1646.
Second.--Johannes, from 1646 to 1658.
Third.--Jeremias, from 1658 to 1674.
Fourth.--Kiliaen 2d, from 1674 to 1720.
Fifth.--Stephen, from 1720 to 1747.
Sixth.--Stephen 2d, from 1747 to 1769.
Seventh.--Stephen 3d, from 1769 to 1839.
Eighth.--Stephen 4th, from 1839 to 1868.
Under the Constitution and laws of the United States in 1787 the
Rensselaerwyck could no longer be entailed and it was divided by Stephen
3d (the seventh Patroon) between his sons Stephen 4th (called Patroon
merely by courtesy) and William Patterson--the former getting the
mansion, title, and the estate in Albany, and the latter the estate east
of the Hudson.
During the Patroonship of the Van Rensselaers--a period of about 150
years--many important events occurred, changing the relations of
nations, the forms of government, and affecting Patroon interests. The
Patroons were reputable men of affairs and some of them of superior
abilities and generally discharged their duties creditably. To trace
their acts through their rule would now be not only tedious but useless.
There arose a controversy between the Dutch West India Company and the
Patroon concerning the territory surrounding Fort Orange (in Albany)
built by the company, which was finally decided in favor of the Patroon,
as the territory surrounding the fort and the fort itself was within his
patent. The fur trade early was very important and as the English,
claiming the territory under the right of prior discovery, sought this
trade, their vessels sailed up the Hudson and set up trading posts. The
Patroon attempted to prevent traders from coming to his colony to deal
with the colonists and Indians and with that object in view ordered one
Nicolaas Coorn to fortify Beeren Island (about eleven miles below
Albany), a commanding position, and there demand of each skipper of a
vessel passing, except those of the Dutch West India Company, a toll of
five guilders ($2) as a tax and also to lower his colors in honor of the
Patroon. Govert Loockermans, sailing the vessel "Good Hope" up the river
in 1644, was ordered, as he was passing the fort, to lower her colors,
which he refused to do and Coorn gave him three cannon shots. In
pursuing this course the Patroon virtually said, I own not only the
territory on both sides of the river but the river itself for that
distance. The Patroon was compelled to back down and pay damages.
The Netherlands, an ancient kingdom, formerly included Belgium (now a
separate kingdom, Brussels, its capital) and ten provinces besides North
and South Holland, its largest and most important ones, with Amsterdam
and The Hague as the capitals. Frequently the name of Holland is used
when Netherlands should have been.