The Story of New Netherland/Preface

us understand the difference between Germany and Holland, the Dutch and the Germans, separate history from fairy tales, and distinguish jokes from facts.

Despite official documents, book-titles, and memorial tablets, there was never any such place or state as New Netherlands, nor any admiral named "van" Tromp, nor any Dutch clergyman with the title of "Dominie." The word "schnapps" was not in the Dutchman's vocabulary, nor did Hollanders ever talk Pennsylvania German, — as is represented in the stage dialect of Rip van Winkle. The earliest settlers of New Netherland did not smoke tobacco. The Dutch folks of New Amsterdam did not associate Santa Claus with Christmas, but on the 6th of December they celebrated St. Nicholas’s Day, and on the 25th of the same month the birthday of the Christ. The hardy, active men who made New Netherland were not fat, or old, or stupid fellows. They were young men, lithe, alert, and venturesome. The first comers knew little or nothing about tobacco, though they quickly learned its use from the Indians, and even smoked the homegrown article, presented to them by the Pilgrims of Massachusetts. Not one of them pronounced the syllable "dam" in "Amsterdam" or "Rotterdam," as if he were swearing in English.

Most of the grotesque stories about the Hollanders in New Amsterdam grew up in late times, long after Dutch ceased to be spoken in America. Then their geographical names were corrupted and a luxuriant crop of mythology, like fungus, gave the funny fellows their chance. Then the vulgarity and dregs of Dutch speech, with much of its snap and vitality, also, entered into American English. Then "schnapps," a German word, "Dominie," a Scotch spelling of the Latin "Domine," and "van" Tromp with his legendary broom, — prefix and besom being both purely British inventions, — came into our speech to corrupt English. Then young Washington Irving, without having seen any but the southern portion of decadent Holland, took the world-wide myth of Rip from the Shop, which has nothing in it peculiarly Dutch, out of its setting in Germany, located it in the Catskills, and made a funny picture of New Netherland men and ways. What if he had got hold of Pilgrims or Puritans first?

In hundreds of volumes purporting to be serious history, Irving's comic supplement to the early history of New York is quoted as both fact and truth. Its coloring has been accepted as exact by so-called American historians. Darley's caricatures and Boughton's delicious jokes on canvas have kept up the illusion. With such material historiographers, taking themselves seriously, pieced out their narratives when original research and documents were both lacking.

After the English conquest of 1664, the Dutch language, gradually falling out of law and business, was heard in the church and home, but written only by the ministers. Even after it was bowed out of the pulpit, it was lovingly kept in use by the aged. It lingered longest in the country and in the city kitchens among the black slaves and the servants. Yet its snap (the very word, in this sense, is Dutch), vigor, and picturesqueness have enriched American English. Often grotesquely altered in form, as in "boss," "boom," "hunker," "boodle," etc., or in familiar terms like "forlorn hope," — "taps," etc., it has furnished many of our expressions in military, political, and social life and much of our slang. "Americanisms," borrowed from Low Country speech, have puzzled European students of English as spoken on this side of the Atlantic, who do not recognize old friends and the ghosts of history. Even the colors in "Old Glory" are criticised harshly, because the historically Dutch origin of our flag, especially of the stripes, which stand for federal government, is not known or considered. Many British jibes and falsehoods about the Dutch, to our shame, mar our speech and writing. Of this we should repent, because four of our original thirteen states were settled from the Netherlands.

Yet the pendulum may swing too far either way. After the caricaturist follows the flatterer, though neither may ever have read or written a Dutch sentence. Diedrich Knickerbocker's "History of New York" and some recent books show the extremes of jovial detraction and uncritical laudation. While our British friends tell about "van" Tromp and some decry even their best king, William III ("Dutch Billy") as a "sour Calvinist," the speeches of those who glorify Dutch ancestors often soar as far beyond fact as do balloons above the earth, and an after-dinner "wind-trade" flourishes as in the days of speculation in tulip bulbs.

To understand the Dutch people, we must not inquire of aliens in speech or temper, or of belated tradition. To get the truth one must see the Dutch homeland, go into the archives for the past, and let those long dead speak in their own defense. He must live among the Hollanders, and with their descendants, to know the real character of the people who laid the foundations of our four Middle States. Then the student, who, like the author, is not of Dutch blood or inheritance, can emancipate himself from old wives' fables, distorted views, and damaging traditions.

While, therefore, reckoning as assets some knowledge of the language of the Netherlands and study in their archives during seven visits beyond sea, perusal of the books and papers in the deacons' chest in Schenectady and in the State Library at Albany, and familiarity with the local records of church and village in the valleys of the Hudson, the Mohawk, and the Raritan, I count as even more valuable my fourteen years of life with descendants of people from Patria in two Dutch-American towns. I studied five years at New Brunswick, New Jersey, the Dutch-American educational capital. For nine years, as Domine of the Dutch church of Schenectady, I served a congregation uniquely rich in heirlooms and documents, the people being for the most part descendants of the pioneers of 1661. In both places I learned fact and truth in human lives as well as in parchments. Many current notions about New Netherland were seen to be vulgar errors, of which Americans should be ashamed. From the age of fourteen, until going to Boston to live, I was during twenty-five years a member of the Reformed Church in America, drinking in her noble traditions, while critically challenging all statements passing as history; for between the truth of history and the truth of religion there is no vital difference. Happily my predecessors or neighbors, in Schenectady (Pearson, Vermilye, Yates, MacMurray), in New Brunswick (Brodhead, Van Pelt, Corwin, Utterwick, and Hansen), in Albany (Berthold Fernow), and in Ithaca (T. W. Strong and G. W. Schuyler) were prominent among those who have recovered the true story of the Dutch in America and given us genuine American history. To these, to my fellow alumni of Rutgers College, to Mr. Irving Elting, Mr. Dingman Versteeg, Professor P. J. Blok of Leyden, Mr. G. Beernink of Nijkerk, the scholarly translator and editor of the Van Rensselaer-Bowier Manuscripts, Mr. E. van Laer, at Albany, and to many archivists in Holland, I am greatly indebted. I invite the student to scan also the list of authorities at the end of this volume.

I shall attempt to tell who the settlers of the Middle States and the founder, of the Empire State were, what ideas and customs they brought here, how they struggled, first against a selfish corporation and next against English dukes and kings, for the rights of the Fatherland, and won; how, happily for us Americans, they resisted all English attempts to fasten a state church upon the people: how and why their descendants were so loyal to the Continental cause and Congress, and how large are our inheritances from Dutch law, order, freedom, culture, and from those achievements for civilization and humanity in which the Netherlands so long led the world. Avoiding in the text, as far as possible, any ostentation of learning or research, I have tried to show my fellow Americans how worthy of serious study are our national origins other than English, and how rich is our inheritance from the Netherlands.