Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/86

 things come when the restrictive measures of the mother country drove the discontented elements of Pennsylvania to make common cause with the other colonies against all governments deriving their powers from sources beyond the sea.

The religious motives that figured so largely in the founding of the English colonies were not especially emphasized by the Dutch West India Company when it raised its flag in the valleys of the Hudson and the Delaware and announced the creation of New Netherland. There was no mistake about the purposes of that corporation when it was established in 1621: its prime object was to earn dividends for its stockholders by trade. It was to carry on large mercantile operations in the Atlantic basin, prey upon Spanish commerce, conquer Brazil, carry slaves to American plantations, reap profits from traffic in furs, and establish settlements. Two years after its charter was duly drawn, the Company took steps looking toward the occupation of the Hudson Valley. Within a short time it built trading posts at Fort Orange, the present site of Albany, and on the Island of Manhattan, purchased from the Indians for sixty guilders, or about twenty-four dollars.

Having obtained two strategic military centers, the Company undertook to develop its estate into a paying property. Appreciating the importance of a freehold peasantry, it offered land in small lots to freemen who would go with their families to the new settlements. By this process it started a tiny trickle of immigrants into the colony, Walloons, or Protestants from the Spanish Netherlands, mingling with sturdy Dutch farmers in laying out homesteads or boweries at favorable points on Long Island and on both sides of the Hudson.

Finding this a slow operation, the corporation in 1629 offered to grant a huge domain to every patroon who would transport fifty persons at least fifteen years old and