The Story of New Netherland/Chapter 7

W E have seen that Dutch colonists for New Netherland were difficult to secure, and that artificial stimulus to emigration was needed. From England good men were driven out by spiritual tyranny, but in Holland conscience was free and the country well off. The ordinary lures — gold, fish, furs, freedom to worship God — which led Spaniards, Frenchmen, some Dutchmen, and many Englishmen beyond sea, did not suffice for the men of the Republic. So "John Company" bit upon a new device, which was nothing less than a reversion to feudalism.

In the Netherlands, the three classes of society were nobles, burghers or citizens, and the common people. The nobles, who lived mostly in the country, were landowners, and often patroons, that is, patrons, or manor lords of vast estates; but the burghers, who governed the cities, formed the aristocracy, and had great powers. The consuming ambition of the merchants, who were gaining wealth rapidly, was to own land, and thus be like the nobles. This desire could not well be gratified in a small country like Holland. Here the earth had to be rescued by pump, spade, and dyke from under the jealous waters, and held only through sleepless vigilance. In America land was plentiful and cheap. It was this coveted prize that was a lure. By securing and owning great manors in New Netherland, plain burghers might become landed proprietors and rank as nobles.

So, with the threefold idea of enlarging their fortunes, becoming patroons, and developing New Netherland, the directors of the Dutch West India Company, in 1630, enlarged their plans. Reserving Manhattan to the corporation, they issued the charter of "Privileges and Exemptions." This allowed a private person to take up stretches of land sixteen miles long facing a navigable river, or eight miles on either side of one, and extending as far back into the country as might be. Such a promoter, if he planted a colony of at least fifty adults, within four years, was a patroon on a manor, and had feudal rights over colonists. During their decade of bonded service, the tenants could not leave their master, and if they did so, they were to be treated as runaways, and could be arrested. The Patroons, though free to trade, must pay at Manhattan five per cent duty on their cargoes.

Here was a selfish scheme for the enrichment of a few monopolists. It was utterly opposed to the spirit of freedom-loving Holland. The Company’s methods were already bad enough, as the immigrants, on Manhattan, for example, could not own land in fee simple, but were tenants at will. This new scheme simply added another amid a rival sovereignty. It was bound to be the source of unnumbered troubles, causing frequent conflicts of jurisdiction between the agents of the Company and the Patroons, besides anger and irritation among tenants, who were subjected to "the double pressure of feudal exaction and mercantile monopoly." The system, which was a step backwards, was hated from the first by all self-respecting free settlers. Colonists who settled under patroon and manor were free of all taxes for ten years. They were not freemen, but semi-serfs. The patroon system was one of many Old World ideas that would not work in America.

In favor of this semi-feudalism, probably suggested by French methods in Canada, it may be said, however, that in all cases above the value of fifty guilders, the tenants on the manors had the right of appeal. Independent farmers, as well as patroons and manor-tenants after discharging their obligations, were encouraged to seek homesteads. Other benefits in the charter of Exemptions were in favor of the Indians, and of religion and morals, so that, despite objectionable features in the new plan of colonization, there was hope of a large emigration from Patria.

As matter of fact, however, only one of the manors, that of van Rensselaer, over became a success. This result was duo as much to the high character of the people settling it as to that of the van Rensselaers, high as this was.

The men who devised this feudal scheme were among the first to take advantage of it. So far forward were, Messrs. Godyn and Blommaert, that even before the adoption of the charter in Holland they had bought, through their agent, a manor, that is, a Riddergoed, or knight's estate, on Delaware Bay. The Indians, by agreement made with pen and ink, were paid for a tract of land thirty-two miles long from Cape Henlopen to the mouth of the river. This was the first European land title written within the State of Delaware.

Kilian van Rensselaer bought from the Indians, first through Captain Krol and later through Gillis Housett, the land which is now the larger part of the counties of Albany and Rensselaer in New York, making an estate of about a thousand square miles. Hendrik and Alexander van der Capellen, two brothers, and one an ancestor of our nation’s friend during the War for Independence, bought Staten Island and land of the Navesink and Raritan Indians. Michael Pauw (in Latin Pavonius, or peacock) secured Staten Island, Hoboken, and what is now Jersey City, calling his domain Pavonia.

Thus was the land seized, not as in Europe, by the might and sword of the border brawler, but by the craft of the pen held by the man in the counting-house. Already in New France or Canada, the French had set the Dutch the bad example of feudalism; but, at its worst, the Dutch system was much milder in its features than either the British or the Gallic model.

Yet notwithstanding the advantages offered to poor folks, the whole system of patroons and manors was detestable to a free Dutchman. As matter of fact and history, no Dutch village community was ever founded under the charter of 1629. Not until the States-General broke the Company’s monopoly and proclaimed more liberal terms of land settlement in the charter of 1640, did the free villages of Esopus, Schenectady, and those on Long Island spring up. In the end, it was to issue that, whether in French Canada, Dutch New Netherland, English New York or Virginia, or in the Southern Confederacy, where belated feudalism attempted, even by going to war, to root itself, this Old World system of land tenure and reciprocal service was unsuitable and impossible in America.

Feudalism never promotes peace, and without military force is an absurdity. The new system, even on paper, nearly rent the Company in twain. In Amsterdam there were jealousy and criminations, and certain directors of the Company were charged with abusing their position in order to secure land. After a storm of criticism, the Patroons divided the spoil with others, to whom they granted shares in their estates, though keeping control of the stock. Nevertheless, the tendency of the Patroons was ever to exceed rather than to limit their powers. They even went so far as to invade the Company's darling monopoly of the fur trade, by sending agents and setting up trading-stations in new regions. This brought on another storm of bitter complaints. On the Bourse and in the Chambers jealousies were rife. Some one must be made a scapegoat.

In New Netherland Minuit, as a good servant of the corporation which employed him, continued to do his best. He was popular, progressive, and unceasingly active. Yet, since he had, by obeying and carrying out his orders, seemed to aid and abet the great dividers of the land, he was selected as victim and recalled. In reality, it was deemed no longer necessary to conciliate the Walloons, for many of them had returned to Holland, and native Dutchmen were now to come over in large numbers; and, besides, van Rensselaer had a nephew he wanted to advance. Minuit went back on the ship Unity (Eendracht) with some homesick colonists, including some of Jesse de Forest's children. Arriving March, 1632, at Plymouth, England, his ship was attached on the charge of the Dutch trading illegally on English territory. In May she was quietly released, and soon reached Holland.

At home Minuit found himself blamed because so much of the Company's land had got into the hands of the Patroons. Evidently he was the victim of pique, and he did not regain office. To the end of his days ho felt aggrieved at the soulless corporation. Meanwhile something not on land, but in the water, was drawing Dutchmen to New Netherland.

The beaver, the codfish, gold, spices, and the path to China were all magnets to attract practical white men away from their northern European homes to America, but it was the whale that lured the Dutch to settle on the Delaware River. While the Spaniards followed the dreams of their own imagination, seeking the gilded man and the fountain of youth, the northern Europeans came for things marketable.

From the eleventh century, the Basques had hunted the whale in the high latitudes of Europe, and in 1372, as alleged, ventured even into American waters. When Henry Hudson found the bowhead whales off Spitzbergen, Dutchmen became wild over the idea of making fortunes from blubber. To "strike oil" in the sea was their one idea. In 1611 the Greenland and Northern Whaling Company was formed in Holland. Smeerenburg or "Grease Town" was for many years a famous Dutch settlement in Spitzbergen. Before the century closed, nearly three hundred Dutch ships, manned by fifteen thousand sailors, caught a thousand whales annually.

While excitement and promise were still new, David Pietersen de Vries of Hoorn, who had sailed around the world and was familiar with the East Indies, joined in the sport. He had heard of whales on the Atlantic coast and in the South River of New Netherland. Van der Donck later told of two whales that in 1646 swam up the North River, and one grounding on Whale Island, near the great Falls at Cohoes, brought a supply of oil to the colonists' doors, besides causing the Mohawk River to swim with grease for three weeks. Still later Manhattan had her whale hunters, and Poughkeepsie became the headquarters of a whaling-fleet.

De Vries is one of the Dutch authors who wrote about New Netherland, and has left us a good book, in which is a true portrait of himself at the age of sixty, with his coat of arms. Stars, crescent, clover leaf, and fruit are on his shield. The crest of his open-barred helmet is a silver sphere, or the world enwrapped with bands suggestive of voyages and man’s conquest over nature. The motto is well translated: —


 * The while, around the globe's four quarters I did steer, I on the open helmet bore a silver sphere.

The first colony of thirty settlers, with cattle and stores, who were to re-colonize the South River region, once temporarily occupied by May's colony in 1623, was sent out by the five co-Patroons, in December, 1630, in the big ship Walvisch, or Whale. A yacht of eighteen guns accompanied them. The smart Dunkirkers, ever on the alert, seeing the two ships separated, dashed out from behind their sandbanks and captured the smaller vessel, and the big ship went on alone. By way of the West Indies, the Whale entered Delaware Bay in April, 1631, and Peter Heyes, the commander, landed his people a few miles above Cape Henlopen. He built a brick house with palisades, and called the place Swaanendael, or Swan Valley. Probably from this reason the Indians called the Dutch "Swannekens." Gillis Housett, of whom we heard in the north, was commandant. On the other side of the river or Godyn Bay, Heyes bought from the Indian chiefs a tract of land twelve miles square.

It is not at all probable that the Indians ever understood a contract of this sort, as did the white purchasers, or knew that in receiving a few axes, shovels, beads, pans, pots, and some cloth, they were losing all claim to the land. Their ideas of property were of the Stone Age. They thought only of joint occupation, with the right to plant, fish, and hunt. Nor had these Algonquins the same unity of organization which might give the sale of land, as in a case by the Iroquois, the security of a modern business transaction. The forest men, as distinct from the tide-water Indians, transferred their land with the solemn accompaniment of wampum as record. These same lands, in three states, in the Delaware Valley, were bought and sold over and over again by Dutch, Swedes, and English. It is probably true that, in 1682, the noble Christian teachings of the Lutheran Swedes and their exemplary lives among the savages, during forty years or more, had predisposed them to trust and welcome kindly the founder of Pennsylvania. Yet it may be that the most potent reason why the Lenni-Lenape held to Penn's treaty was that they were threatened by the Iroquois with extermination if they violated it.

The redskins and the Dutchmen quickly misunderstood one another. Flags and tokens of sovereignty were not seen in the same light by savages as by Europeans. According to civilized customs, a pole was erected on the purchased land, and a piece of tin, with the arms of the Netherlands painted on it, was nailed to the pole. One day, in innocence and without a twinge of conscience, a chieftain, wanting the shining metal to ornament his tobacco pipes, walked off with it. Housett at once took this as direct insult or treachery. He made such a noise about it that some of the tribe killed the offender and brought one part of his body as a token. Then the horrified Dutchman upbraided the savages for going too far. He had meant only to scold and scorn.

But the mischief was done, and blood revenge was the savage law. Secretly armed, the kinsmen of the murdered man came into the settlement.

All were working in the fields except the commandant and a sick man who was guarded by a chained mastiff. Of this animal the Indians were more afraid than of an armed man. If at this time they had dogs, they certainly were not of the breeds of Europe, or their equals in courage or size. Housett, when off his guard, was tomahawked and fell dead at once, but the faithful dog died game, filled like a pincushion with shafts, before he gave up. It took twenty-five arrows to finish him. This plucky hound was brought from the land in which one of its own species saved the life of the Father of the Fatherland. Both on the statue in the Hague and on the tomb in Delft one sees a little dog represented at the feet of William the Silent.

One by one the men and women in the fields were shot, the horses and cattle killed, and houses and palisades set on fire. The next day the sun rose on blackened ruins and scattered corpses. This was the sight seen on December 6, 1632. Tragic as it was in its end, this settlement was "the cradling of a state."

After five months' delay, de Vries had sailed in the new ship New Netherland, built on Manhattan, by Minuit, of Mohawk River timber. Exulting in hopes of whale oil and crops, ho arrived off Swaanendael only to find desolation and death. He heard the story from a native, but instead of taking revenge and thus probably making the innocent suffer, be opened trade and rebuilt the settlement. He named the pretty creek, or kill, Hoorn Kill, for his native town; but long afterwards Englishmen changed the word in form and spelling, thus giving the stream an offensive name, besides inventing a bad story to fit the vile and false word that long disfigured our maps.

The prospect of making a fortune from whales proved a delusion, and de Vries later abandoned Swaanendael. For nearly twenty years, except in an occasional trading ship, the Dutch were absent from the Delaware River.