Henry Hudson's Discovery--Block Winters on Manhattan Island--The Dutch
Take Possession--The Iroquois Friendly--Immigration of the Walloons--
Charter of Privileges and Exemptions--Patroons--Manufactures Forbidden
--Slave Labor Introduced--New Sweden--New Netherlanders Want a Voice
in the Government.
When Henry Hudson managed, notwithstanding his detention in England by
King James, to send an account of his discoveries to Holland, the Dutch
were swift to avail themselves of the opportunities thus offered to
extend their trade to North America. The traders who first sought
Manhattan Island and Hudson's River, or the "Mauritius" as the Dutch
called the North River, were not settlers. Among them was the daring
navigator, Adrian Block, from whom Block Island is named, who gathered a
cargo of skins and was about to depart, late in the year 1613, when
vessel and cargo were consumed by fire. Block and his crew built
log-cabins on the lower part of Manhattan Island, and spent the winter
constructing a new ship, which they called the "Onrust" or "unrest"--an
incident and a name significant now in view of the commercial
pre-eminence and activity of the metropolis founded where those men built
the first habitations occupied by Europeans. Block sailed in the spring
of 1614 on a voyage of further discovery in his American built ship. He
passed through the East River and Long Island Sound and ascertained that
the long strip of land on the south was an island. He saw and named Block
Island, and entered Narragansett Bay and the harbor of Boston. His report
led the States-General to grant a charter for four years from October 11,
1614, to a company formed to trade in the region which Block had
explored, the territory "lying between Virginia and New France," being
called the New Netherland. When the charter expired, the States-General
refused to grant a renewal, it being designed to place New Netherland
under the jurisdiction of the Dutch West India Company as soon as that
company should have received the charter for which application had been
made. This charter, granted June 3, 1620, conferred on the Dutch West
India Company almost sovereign powers over the Atlantic coast of America,
so far as it was unoccupied by other nations, and the western coast of
Africa. The Company was organized in 1622, and its attention was at once
called to the necessity of founding a permanent colony in the New
Netherland in order to preserve the country from seizure by the English,
now established in New Plymouth to the north, as well as Virginia on the
south. Dutch traders had not been idle during the period between the
lapse of the old charter and organization under the new and the West
India Company found its operations greatly facilitated by the labors of
the pioneers. The storehouse on Manhattan Island had been enlarged, a
fort had been erected on an island near the site of Albany, and the
Iroquois had learned that in the Dutch they had an ally who would assist
them with arms at least against their enemies on the St. Lawrence. The
West India Company began wisely the work of settlement. They invited the
Walloons, Protestant refugees from the Belgic provinces of Spain, to
emigrate to New Netherland. They were most desirable settlers for a new
country, as industrious as they were intelligent and religious, and well
versed in agriculture as well as the mechanical and finer arts. Having
abandoned their homes for conscience' sake they could be trusted to do
their duty loyally to their adopted State, and to advance to the best of
their ability the interests of the Company.
Thirty families, including one hundred and ten men, women and children,
and most of them Walloons, were in the first emigration. Four of the
families, young couples who had been married on shipboard, and who,
perhaps, concluded that they would get along better apart from the older
households, chose to settle on the Delaware, four miles below the site of
Philadelphia, where they built a blockhouse and called it Fort Nassau.
Eight seamen went with them and formed a part of their colony, which grew
and prospered. Others of the emigrants went to Long Island; some founded
Albany; some settled on the Connecticut River, and several families made
their homes in what is at present Ulster County. The Company sent over
Peter Minuit as Governor in 1626, who bought from the natives their title
to Manhattan Island, paying therefor trinkets and liquor to the value of
twenty-four dollars. Governor Minuit built a fortification at the
southern end of the island, and called it New Amsterdam. The
States-General constituted the colony a county of Holland, and bestowed
on it a seal, being a shield enclosed in a chain, with an escutcheon on
which was the figure of a beaver. The crest was the coronet of a count.
In 1629 the Dutch West India Company gave to the settlers a charter of
"privileges and exemptions," and sought to encourage immigration by
offering as much land as the immigrants could cultivate, with free
liberty of hunting and fowling under the direction of the Governor. They
also offered to any person who should "discover any shore, bay or other
fit place for erecting fisheries or the making of salt pounds" an
absolute property in the same. To further promote the settlement of New
Netherland the company proposed to grant lands in any part of the colony
outside the island of Manhattan, to the extent of sixteen miles along any
navigable stream, or four miles if on each shore, and indefinitely in the
interior, to any person who should agree to plant a colony of adults
within four years; or if he should bring more, his domain to be enlarged
in proportion. He was to be the absolute lord of the manor, with the
feudal right to hold manorial courts; and if cities should grow up on his
domain he was to have power to appoint the magistrates and other officers
of such municipalities, and have a deputy to confer with the Governor.
Settlers under these lords, who were known as patroons--a term synonymous
with the Scottish "laird" and the Swedish "patroon"--were to be exempt
for ten years from the payment of taxes and tribute for the support of
the colonial government, and for the same period every man, woman and
child was bound not to leave the service of the patroon without his
written consent. In order to prevent the colonists from building up local
manufactures to the detriment of Holland industries and of the Company's
trade, the settlers were forbidden to manufacture cloth of any kind under
pain of banishment, and the Company agreed to supply settlers with as
many African slaves "as they conveniently could," and to protect them
against enemies. Each settlement was required to support a minister of
the gospel and a schoolmaster. The system thus established contained the
seed of evil as well as of good. African slave labor, already introduced
in Virginia, where the climate was some excuse for its adoption, worked
injury to the New Netherland, where all the conditions were favorable to
white labor, and tended to create a servile class. The negroes, both bond
and free, were for many years a most obnoxious element in the colony,
viewed with apprehension and suspicion even down to the beginning of the
present century by the general body of white citizens, and often
subjected to most cruel and unjust persecution and punishment on charges
that were either baseless or founded only in malice. The restriction on
domestic manufactures was another barb in the side of the colonists, and
that policy continued by the English successors of the Dutch, had much to
do with exciting the War for Independence. The patroons also were an
aristocratic element foreign to the prevalent spirit of North American
settlement, and their feudal rule, although liberal and patriarchal in
some instances, became less tolerable as years rolled on, and the people
comprehended the absurdity and injustice of mediæval institutions on
American soil. It is fortunate that the patroon system, unlike slavery,
was ultimately uprooted without revolution.
* * *
Americans should be proud of the fact that Gustavus Adolphus, the great
king of Sweden who died on the field of Lutzen in the cause of religious
liberty, gave his approval to the project for planting a Swedish colony
in America, and by proclamation, while in the midst of his campaign
against the Catholic League, recommended the enterprise to his people.
Eighteen days later the champion of Protestantism fell in the hour of
victory, and a noble monument erected by the German people marks the spot
where he gave up his life that Germany might be free. The scheme was
carried out by the regency which took charge of the kingdom, and Governor
Minuit, recalled from New Netherland, sailed from Gottenburg in 1637 to
plant a new colony on the west side of Delaware Bay. The colonists
arrived at their destination in the spring of 1638, and Minuit procured
from an Indian sachem a deed for a region which, the Swedes claimed,
extended from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of the Delaware, where Trenton
is now, and an indefinite distance inland. The Dutch protested and
threatened, but Minuit built a fort on the site of Wilmington, and called
it Fort Christina, in honor of the young queen of Sweden, daughter of
Gustavus Adolphus. The colony prospered, and a number of Hollanders
settled there with the Swedes. Minuit died in 1641, and the Swedish
government proceeded to place the colony on a permanent footing, and
called it "New Sweden." The colony was unable to hold its own against the
Dutch, and surrendered in 1655 to an expedition led by Peter Stuyvesant.
While New Netherland remained under Dutch rule the people had no voice in
the choice of those officers whose duties were more than local in
character. The governor was an appointee of the West India Company, and
responsible solely to it; though the latter was subject to a certain
amount of control from the States-General. That the people desired the
privilege of electing their general officers, is shown by a petition sent
in 1649 to the States-General from the Nine Men. A request was made in
this document for a suitable system of government, and it was accompanied
by a sketch of the methods of written proxies used by the New England
colonies in selecting their governors. On the other hand, a letter sent
two years later by the magistrates of Gravesend to the directors at
Amsterdam, stated that it would involve "ruin and destruction" to
frequently change the government by allowing the people to elect the
governor, partly on account of the numerous factions, and partly because
there were no persons in the province capable of filling the office. Nor
did the Dutch colonists possess any voice in the making of laws. There
was no regular representative assembly, although we find that there were
several emergencies when the advice of the people was asked by the
governors.[1]
[1] See "History of Elections in the American Colonies." Columbia
College Series.