The Story of New Netherland/Chapter 20

T HE settlement near the head of Hudson River navigation was named successively Fort Orange, Rensselaerwijk, Beverwijk, Willemstadt, and Albany. The business of the Company centred in the fort, that of the patroon in office and warehouse. While in the Church was the focus of the higher life of the community, the manor house was the seat of a generous hospitality. After the English conquest, several of the royal governors were entertained here, receiving impressions of a refinement of manners and home life, for which their prejudices, engendered by national rivalry and the wars between England and Holland, had not prepared them.

Concerning Albany there is a rich literature of description, and the works of Kalm, and Mrs. Grant, and Cooper’s “Satanstoe,” may be mentioned as examples, but these and the documents and writings after 1664 hardly concern us. We can but glance at life here subsequent to the fall of New Netherland.

After the learned Domine Megapolensis removed to Manhattan, the community enjoyed the services first of Domine Schaats, and then of a long line of learned ministers, who were university graduates. When the weaknesses of ago were creeping on, these showed the graces and virtues and the faults and infirmities of men who in the sacred office have the usual experiences in dealing with saints and sinners, — the former sometimes giving as much trouble to the shepherd of the flock as did the straying sheep. One of these lovely characters wanting to get rid of his Domino, after making his life a burden gave him a strong hint that, he had better go to a new field. The reverend pastor, on opening his door one morning, found a walking staff and a loaf of bread, and on the doorstep a pair of shoes with the toes pointing outward. In each shoe lay a silver coin for the journey.

Such things were not done in frontier days. Only when men had become purse-proud was the roughness of frontier life exchanged for subtle malice. After a few generations most of the industrious Albany folks were well off, and then Jeshurun often “waxed fat and kicked.” In the main, however, the relations between the Domine and his household and with all his parishioners were mutually pleasant. The threefold influences emanating from the Stadt-Huys, the manorial mansion, and the parsonage, with the abundant wealth of the burghers, the frequent visits of the Indians in both groups and crowds, the numerous negro slaves and servants in gay livery, and the almost constant coming and going of royal regiments and commanders gave Albany the air of a metropolitan city. Its situation at the head of river navigation, having easy connection with Canada, and being withal the gateway into the Mohawk Valley and the beginning of the pathway to the great West, showed that it was, with the fur and lumbering industry, destined to wealth, and when New York became a state, to be its capital.

With the demand for luxury, finer clothes, and a natural desire to have prosperity display itself in elegant and sometimes ostentatious living, shops were early opened to supply the needs of the Dutch folks. Clothing, many things of adornment, and almost every sort of smallclothes were made at home, but shoes were imported ready made. Both at Albany and on Manhattan some of these shops became famous throughout the province. In the ladies’ wardrobe, the kimono, imported from Japan, or made something after the style of Japanese garments, was quite common. This was the time of abundant commerce between Holland and the Empire of the Rising Sun, which was closed to all nationalities in Europe except the Dutch. Articles of Japanese lacquer (lacwark) and Japanese swords are heard of and noted in the colonial inventories. The Japanese rok, chamber-gown or dressing-sack exclusively for women (curiously called kimono, which is the general term for a garment), was almost as well known in Europe and America then as it is now.

This was the time of fads and fashions in Patria, which were reproduced in Dutch America. Originating in a little country already gorged with the wealth of the Orient, we see them in the changing scene reflected on the canvas and often told in a story within a picture frame. The imported Dutch fashions showed themselves in America especially when Delft ware appeared, in the hanging of crockery on the walls, and in rows of dishes on dressers. The lining of fireplaces with tiles rich in Scripture scenes and incidents, represented the Bible scenes as children could understand them. The liking for silver, as well as the abundance of it, was shown in making and presenting souvenir spoons, with special gifts at weddings, funerals, christenings, birthdays, and church festivals. In the rich social life of the Netherlanders, these things of art were commonplaces rather than luxuries.

None of the colonists of the many nationalities in the thirteen colonies excelled the Dutch in household necessities and luxuries. Indeed, as was often said, there were people who could get along without the former, but must have the latter. Even the first question of their catechism had the word “comfort” in it. In the eighteenth century the first stages of colonial life had passed and wealth had accumulated. The English governors sent to rule New Netherland were surprised not only at the fine manners of the Dutch, which were no new thing, but at the luxury so generally enjoyed.

On the frontier it was necessary to have in the shops supplies of what the Indians wanted. The new materials and appliances of Europe had almost annihilated native crafts and industries. The red man could not make for himself or repair the guns, tools, and textiles which he bought for furs and wampum. He scorned the white man’s civilization, which virtually meant in his eyes the degradation of a man, as warrior and hunter, to the level of a squaw. He was equally opposed to the elevation of woman, who was his toy and slave. The white man’s powers of destruction and his vices were learned much more easily than were his virtues or his constructive ability. The savage could shoot and kill, drink brandy or swill beer to drunkenness, but he could neither mend, nor distill, nor brew.

Because of contact with the palefaces, the Indian in his degradation exhibited the harmony and the discords of what we term civilization. The forces of destruction and advance must be in equilibrium, with a general tendency toward the prevalence of the good, or the race reverts to brutishness. It was not the Indian only who illustrated this law. The European colonists who left the Church and social restraints, and, it may be, adopted Indian ways, sank lower and lower, and furnished the social waste, of which, all things considered, there was in New Netherland surprisingly little.

The settlements on the site of Albany, Dutch and English, for a hundred years remained the centre of the Indian trade. Then the city became the base of military operations. Although furs, fish, river traffic, and the lumber industry had in succession brought wealth, each or all of these were but slight means of enrichment as compared with war contracts. When large armies moved up and down the great water-troughs, or the land paths, between Manhattan and Canada and from the Hudson to the Niagara, certain trades proved to be especially profitable. Interior ammunition in those days was deemed as indispensable as powder and ball, and no soldiers marched without plenty of rum barrels. The molasses brought from the West Indies was turned into a liquid which, after pouring rivulets of bliss down the throat, set the brain on fire. Besides the military demand for “courage,” — ascribed to the Dutch, but usually made in New England, and quite English, also, — the Indian traders carried tens of thousands of kegs into the wilderness to make beasts of the savages, and to cause fighting and murder. The Indians when returning home from Albany must also have a good supply. Indeed, the town was long like a fountain, ever sending forth streams sweet in the tasting, but in effects bitter. The Iroquois found that no bite of copperhead or rattlesnake was worse than that of the invisible serpent in the bottle. No Indian eloquence reached a higher point of pathos than when the victims of the distillery themselves begged for prohibition. Piteous were the appeals of the chiefs to have the firewater kept out of their villages, but the white man’s greed prevailed over his ethics. On the whole, the Dutch legislation regulating the sale of liquor among the Indians was far in advance of the English, who made steady importation of negroes, notions, molasses, and New England rum.

The first house of worship in Albany was near the present steamboat landing. It was small and cheaply built. By 1656, when the second edifice was reared, there were not a few men of substance in the community. With the Patroon’s contribution of a thousand guilders and the people’s subscription of fifteen hundred more, there was the wherewithal for rearing a noble structure. When finished it was the delight of the inhabitants and the wonder of the Indians. Like Solomon’s litter, it was paved with love. The corner stone was laid by the oldest magistrate, Rutger Jacobsen, with the usual ceremonies, according to the beautiful liturgy of the Reformed Church. This, though then verbally different from the present form, always included the idea of the Hebrew poet, — “Except the Lord build the city, they labor in vain who build it.” Profoundly religious, “Nisi Dominus frustra” was ever in the Netherlander’s thoughts, as it was also on the seal of his Church; and this, because the thought — without God, all is vain — was the vary marrow of his theology.

A pulpit in those days was the symbol of authoritative utterances. The congregation subscribing twenty-five beavers amid the Company adding seventy-five guilders, it wineglass-shaped structure was sent over from Holland, in which many godly and eloquent men have stood. As a precious relic it is still preserved. The Company, also, gave a bell, which long rang out with its silvery tongue the invitation to worship. The notable church adornments consisted of wapen, or coats of arms, of the principal families, wrought into the glass of the windows. Besides the most illustrious of these names, the Schuylers, Wendells, van Rensselaers, etc., there were hundreds of others, new listed and accessible in the Year Books of the Holland Society of New York.