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Historical Background

The Dutch and the Swedes: Patroons and Plowmen (continued)

ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW NETHERLAND

Although the Dutch East India Company was disappointed that Hudson had not found a passage to the East, other Dutchmen grasped the opportunities presented by the discovery of the Hudson River. The Dutch Republic now had a New World claim. The year after Hudson's voyage, in 1610, Dutch traders began flocking to the Hudson Valley. They did not come to stay, but to trade with the Indians, who usually welcomed them and exchanged furs for trinkets, kettles, knives, hatchets, and guns. In repeated visits between 1610 and 1613 the traders familiarized them selves with the Hudson Valley from its mouth to the juncture of the Mohawk River. A few then apparently pushed westward to the Delaware River.

In 1613, Adriaen Block discovered Hell Gate, explored Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River, gave his name to Block Island, rounded Cape Cod, and traveled along the Massachusetts coast past the site of Boston. The same year, Cornelius May circled the southern shore of Long Island and explored Delaware Bay and the Delaware River as far as the mouth of the Schuylkill River. The next year, 1614, the merchants who had financed these explorations organized the New Netherland Company and obtained from the States General a monopoly on the fur trade in the region between the 40th and 45th parallels. Having determined that the heart of the fur trade was at the head of navigation on the Hudson, the company immediately erected Fort Nassau on Castle Island, just below the site of Albany. It never garrisoned the fort, however, which served simply as a trading post. Relations with the Iroquois bands who came to the post to trade were quite friendly. In 1614, a Dutchman erected a small trading post on the island at the mouth of the Hudson River that was inhabited by the Manhattan Indians. In 1617, a spring flood destroyed Fort Nassau.

In 1618, the States General did not renew the charter of the New Netherland Company. The last significant act of the company, that same year, was the cementing of friendship with the Iroquois by a formal treaty, which insured their continued hostility toward the French and provided a buffer for the Dutch colonists. In all likelihood, the friend ship between the Dutch and Iroquois prevented the French from occupying the Mohawk and Hudson Valleys and confined them to the lake region to the west. For several years after the expiration of the New Netherland Company charter, the area was open to free traders, who apparently took advantage of the opportunity.

Adriaen Block's map of New Netherland, 1614. From a facsimile of the original, in the national archives of the Netherlands. (Courtesy, Museum of the City of New York.)

The success of these independent traders alone did not provoke the organization of the company that was to guide the future destinies of New Netherland. The lucrative possibility of harrying the commerce of Spain—a nation that all Dutchmen hated—was the basic reason for the charter issued by the States General in 1621 that authorized formation of the Dutch West India Company, a vast and wealthy corporation which was given a monopolistic control over New Netherland. The company's fleet consisted of more than 30 warships, 20 armed sloops, and a large fleet of merchant ships.

Although not at first intending to colonize, in the spring of 1624 the company sent out 30 families, mostly Protestant Walloons fleeing persecution in Belgium, under the leadership of Cornelius May. He located most of the settlers around Fort Orange, which was erected on the site of old Fort Nassau, and some on the Delaware River across from the mouth of the Schuylkill, where they built a new Fort Nassau. Still others he distributed around the post on Manhattan Island and on Staten Is land. The handful of religious refugees was at first thinly scattered in the new land; not more than a few families were settled at any one location. When May returned to Holland in 1625, he left William Verhulst in charge.

The company organized the New Netherland government on the basis of the authority contained in its charter. It vested control in the board of directors in Holland, who represented the shareholders. The board chose a Director General to govern the colony. Given full executive and judicial authority, he was assisted by a local council that was also selected by the board of directors in Holland. At critical times, he called quasi-representative assemblies into being, but they were in no sense legislative bodies. The government was, therefore, virtually an autocracy under the Director General.

Peter Minuit was the first of these. He actually landed on Manhattan Island in May 1625, prior to his official appointment, bringing more settlers. His instructions from the company included this important in junction: "In case there should be any Indians living on the aforesaid island . . . or claiming any title to it . . . they must not be expelled with violence or threats but be persuaded with kind words . . . or should be given something . . . and a contract should be made . . . to be signed by them." For 60 guilders worth of trinkets—the traditional $24—Minuit concluded a bargain with the principal sachem of the Manhattans that permitted the Dutch to settle among them. Therewith, at the lower end of the island, in 1626, he established the village of Nieuw (New) Amsterdam, which consisted of a small fort and a cluster of homes. The company transferred the settlers at Fort Nassau and most of those from Fort Orange back to reinforce the new village, and shipped in a boatful of Negro slaves to meet the growing demand for labor.

New Amsterdam, in the 1650's. From a watercolor by an unknown artist, in the national archives of the Netherlands. (Courtesy, Museum of the City of New York.)

In the colonization plan of 1624, the company created two classes of colonists: freemen, whose transportation and upkeep for 2 years the company financed, and who were eventually permitted to own homes and farms; and indentured servants, who worked on the company's farms. Colonists were not authorized to engage in the fur trade, which was reserved for licensed traders. The farms were called bouweries. Those owned and operated by the company were adjacent to Nieuw Amsterdam in lower Manhattan—the origin of today's "Bowery." But few Dutchmen came to live or work on the company bouweries, conditions at home being too peaceful and prosperous.

Most of the immigrants so far had been Walloon families. To induce further settlement, in 1629 the company devised a new scheme. In the "Charter of Privileges to Patroons," it authorized princely grants of land—16 miles along one bank or 8 miles along opposite banks of any navigable river—to "patroons," who would bear the costs of settling 50 adults on these manors within 4 years. The patroons were to enjoy the rights of feudal lords; the occupants of their land would be tenants-at-will, pay crop rents, and look to the patroon for the administration of justice.

The company directors rushed to avail themselves of this opportunity. Would-be patroons—most of whom stayed at home and managed affairs through an agent—shortly claimed some of the best lands in the Hudson Valley. One director held title to all of Staten Island, but most of the patroonships were located up the river. The most successful of these was Rensselaerswyck, near the site of Albany. Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, an Amsterdam pearl merchant, enlarged his grant by purchasing more land from the Indians, and acquired the greater part of two present counties.

Most of the patroonships were failures, primarily because of the restrictions on tenants. A short distance away, the English colonies had begun to thrive, and, as one Englishman wrote: "What man will be such a fool as to become a bare tenant . . . when for crossing Hudson's River that man can for a song purchase a good freehold." In 1640, the company modified the patroon system and 6 years later abandoned it entirely. By the end of the Dutch period, all but two of the patroonships had reverted to company ownership.

Perhaps the most significant failure among the patroonships was that of a company director named De Vries, near Cape Henlopen, at the entrance to Delaware Bay. He settled some 30 families in 1631 at the site of Lewes, Del., under the leadership of Capt. Pieter Heyes, and named the settlement Zwaanendael, or Swaanendael, meaning "Valley of the Swans." The colonists planted crops and built a palisade of upright logs to protect their huts before Heyes returned to Holland for supplies. In his absence, the colonists aroused the antagonism of the Indians in the area; a surprise attack in 1632 wiped out all the Dutchmen but one.

The same year that De Vries planted the settlement at Zwaanendael, the company recalled Minuit and discharged him as Director General. In 1633, it replaced an acting director with Wouter Van Twiller, the second Dutch Governor, an incompetent and indecisive man. Though he was a nephew of Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, the company dismissed him in 1637 and he retired to Rensselaerswyck. Van Twiller's successor was William Kieft, who was even less popular. Kieft served as Director General from 1637 to 1646. His regime is distinguished by a war with the Indians, a quarrel with the English then in Connecticut, and a clash with the citizens of New Netherland that led to his dismissal.

Dutch, Swedish, and English settlements in present United States (mid-17th century). (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

The Dutch only temporarily occupied the British-claimed Connecticut River Valley for trading purposes until 1633, when they bought lands—as was their regular custom—from the Pequot Indians and began a permanent settlement on the site of Hartford. They named it Fort Good Hope (House of Good Hope). Gov. John Winthrop of Massachusetts promptly notified Director General Van Twiller that the Dutch were trespassing. Van Twiller was his indecisive self, and neither Governor took further action. But a small party of Englishmen from Plymouth ignored the Dutch, sailed 10 miles up the Connecticut River, and established the town of Windsor. In 1635, three entire towns moved from Massachusetts to the Connecticut Valley, one group settling around Fort Good Hope. Kieft's querulous attempts to oust the English caused only friction.

Perhaps the Director General would have taken stronger measures in Connecticut if he had not been so involved at home with Indian troubles. Kieft tried to collect a tribute from the Indians living in the vicinity of Manhattan. His inept handling of their refusal provoked the series of attacks from 1641 to 1645 known as the Indian War, during which the natives laid waste to many of the outlying settlements of New Netherland. During the war, in 1642, Kieft called a special council of the heads of families on Manhattan Island. This meeting elected a board, called the Twelve Men, to advise the Governor. A despot errs in bringing a representative assembly into being; the Twelve Men demanded reform and a popularly elected council. Kieft angrily dismissed them, but renewed Indian attacks forced him in 1643 to call another general assembly, and he formed a council of Eight Men. Resenting Kieft's haughty arrogance and taxation measures, this council also demanded reform and appealed to the States General in Holland.

Peter Stuyvesant, last Governor of New Nether land. In spite of his unpopularity, he was a competent and industrious executive. From a painting, probably conjectural, by an unknown artist. (Courtesy, New-York Historical Society.)

The company discharged Kieft, but the people of New Netherland found little comfort in his successor. Peg-legged Peter Stuyvesant, who had lost a leg in defense of the company's interests in the West Indies, was as autocratic as Kieft and even more hot-tempered. Royally announcing on his arrival in 1647 that he would govern the colonists "as a father his children," Stuyvesant banished Kieft's accusers and threat ened to hang them if they appealed to the States General. In answer to a demand for representation, Stuyvesant replied: "We derive our authority from God and the Company, not from a few ignorant subjects. If the nomination and the election of magistrates were to be left to the populace . . . then each would vote for one of his own stamp—the thief for a thief; the rogue, the tippler, the smuggler for a brother in equity."

"King Peter's" reign was not a happy one, but he was an industrious and competent executive. The Indian troubles at an end, in 1650 he turned to settle the problem with the English. With surprising tact he negotiated a treaty with the New England Confederation—never ratified by either national government—to establish a boundary between New Netherland and New England. This line split Long Island in half and extended north about 20 miles east of the Hudson and parallel to it; it is approximately today's eastern boundary of New York State.

The next year, 1651, Stuyvesant turned his attention southward to face a menace to the company's domain. In 1638, Swedish settlers and traders had moved into the Delaware region. The Director General armed a fleet of 11 vessels and swept into the bay with much "drumming and cannonading" to announce the Dutch claim to the feeble Swedish settlements, whose population probably never exceeded 400. Landing near the mouth of the Delaware, he built Fort Casimir. All vessels entering or leaving New Sweden would have to pass under the Dutch guns.