Maud Wilder Goodwin

“ We may find it hard to reconcile the reputation of the Dutch as a phlegmatic and unimaginative people with the fact that they and their children endowed the Hudson with more glamour, more of the supernatural and of elfin lore than haunts any other waterway in America. ”

“ The Indians crowded around him and "sang in their fashion"—a motley horde, as strange to the ship's crew as the Half Moon and its company seemed marvelous to the aborigines. Men, women, and children, dressed in fur or tricked out with feathers, stood about or floated in their boats hewn from solid logs, the men carrying pipes of red copper in which they smoked that precious product, tobacco—the consolation prize offered by the New World to the Old in lieu of the hoped-for passage to Cathay. ”

“ How must a man speak or write, or what must he hear, read, or sing? Or when must he laugh, so as to be secure from being taken up as a libeller? I sincerely believe that were some persons to go through the streets of New York nowadays and read a part of the Bible, if it were not known to be such, Mr. Attorney, with the help of his innuendoes, would easily turn it into a libel. ”

“ The members of one class alone looked on all this prosperous life with sullen discontent—the negro slaves whose toil made possible the leisure of their owners. These strange, uncouth Africans seemed {209} out of place in New York, and from early times they had exhibited resentment and hatred toward the governing classes, who in turn looked upon them with distrust. This smoldering discontent of the blacks aroused no little uneasiness and led to the adoption of laws which, especially in the cities, were marked by a brutality quite out of keeping with the usual moderation of the colony. ”

“ But granting that the problems which the settlers were creating in these early days were bound to cause much trouble later both to themselves and to the whole country, there is no doubt that slave labor contributed to the advancement of agriculture and the other enterprises of the colony. Free labor was scarce and expensive, owing both to the cost of importing it from Europe and to the allurements of the fur trade, which drew off the boer-knecht from farming. Slave labor was therefore of the highest value in exploiting the resources of the new country. ”

“ Let us leave it to those who have the heart and the nerves to dwell upon the horrors of the middle passage and the sufferings of the poor negroes as set down in the log-books of the slavers, the St. John and the Arms of Amsterdam. It is comforting to the more soft-hearted of us to feel that after reaching the shores of New Netherland, the blacks were treated in the main with humanity. ”

“ A shrewd observer has said that luxury implies waste while comfort lives in thrift. We are safe in assuming that comfort rather than luxury prevailed in New Netherland and that the highly colored pictures of elegant life on the shores of the Hudson represent a very late phase, when the Dutch influence still prevailed under English protection. The earlier settlers were a far simpler people, whose floors were scrubbed and sanded instead of carpeted, who used hour-glasses instead of clocks, and who set their four-poster beds in the rooms where visitors were formally received. ”

“ It is the cause of liberty, and I make no doubt but your upright conduct this day will not only entitle you to the love and esteem of your fellow-citizens, but every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless and honour you, as men who have baffled the attempt of tyranny, and by an impartial and uncorrupt verdict have laid a noble foundation for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbors, that to which nature and the laws of our country have given us a right—the liberty both of exposing and opposing arbitrary power ... ”

“ It is easy to understand that a member of the Pope-Swift-Bolingbroke circle in England should have found the social atmosphere of early New York far from exhilarating; and it is equally easy to comprehend that the pioneers of the New World resented his mismanagement of the campaign of 1711 against Canada and his assertion of the English Government's right to tax the colonists without the consent of the colonial Governments. ”

“ Because the Netherlander were not, like the New Englanders, fugitives from persecution at the hands of their fellow-countrymen, the Dutch colonization in America is often spoken of as a purely commercial venture; but in reality the founding of New Netherland marked a momentous epoch in the struggle for the freedom of conscience. ”

“ As we study the old documents we find a sullen tenantry, an obsequious and careworn agent, a dissatisfied patroon, an impatient company, a bewildered government—and all this in a new and promising country where the natives were friendly, the transportation easy, the land fertile, the conditions favorable to that conservation of human happiness which is and should be the aim of civilization. ”

“ A pioneer life means hard work for children as well as for their elders, and in the early years there was little time for play on the part of the youthful New Netherlander. As prosperity advanced and as negro servants were introduced, the privileges of childhood were extended and we find accounts of their sliding on their slees or sleds down the hills of Fort Orange and skating at New Amsterdam on the Collect Pond, which took its name from the Dutch kalk, or lime, and was so called from the heaps of oyster-shells accumulated by the Indians. ”

“ There is an unmistakable English flavor in the contention of The Humble Remonstrance adopted by the Convention, that "'tis contrary to the first intentions and genuine principles of every well regulated government, that one or more men should arrogate to themselves the exclusive power to dispose, at will, of the life and property of any individual." ”

“ Never does the esteemed Diedrich Knickerbocker come nearer the truth than when he says: "Happy would it have been for New Amsterdam could it always {122} have existed in this state of blissful ignorance and lowly simplicity; but alas! the days of childhood are too sweet to last. Cities, like men, grow out of them in time and are doomed alike to grow into the bustle, the cares and the miseries of the world."
[1] In 1657 the burgomasters and schepens were authorized to create a great burger-recht the members of which should be in a sense a privileged class. ”

“ A crowd of citizens appeared at the house of Leisler, who was an officer in the train-band, a citizen well known for honesty, a stanch, even bigoted Protestant, and withal a man of firm purpose, and they begged him to act as their leader in a determined effort to preserve their liberties and hold New York for William and Mary. It is easy to see on looking back over two centuries that the dangers of conspiracy were greatly exaggerated ”

“ The Dutch in Europe were a highly cultivated people, devoted to learning and reverencing the printed book. Why then were their countrymen in the New World willing to leave the education of their children in the hands of inferior teachers and to delay so long the building of suitable schoolhouses?
We must remember that the colonists in the early days were drawn from a very simple class. Their church was important to them as a social center as well as a spiritual guide. ”

“ The settlers at Fort Orange conciliated the Indians and by this means not only lived in peace with the native tribes but established a bulwark between themselves and the French. Under Stuyvesant the settlers at Fort Amsterdam took a determined stand against the Swedes and crushed their power in America. Toward the English, however, the Dutch adopted a course of feeble aggression unbacked by force. Because they met English encroachments with that most fatal of all policies, protest without action, the Empire of the United Netherlands in America was blotted from the map. ”

“ But as thou art come between our forts to erect a fort to our damage and injury, which we {128} will never permit, as we also believe Her Swedish Majesty hath not empowered thee to erect fortifications on our coasts and rivers, or to settle people on the lands adjoining or to undertake any other thing to our prejudice; now therefore we protest against all such encroachments and all the evil consequences from the same, as bloodshed, sedition and whatever injury our trading company may suffer, and declare that we shall protect our rights in every manner that may be advisable. ”

“ All flaming convictions have a tendency to cool into cant, and "the Freedom of the Press" has so long been a vote-catching phrase that it is hard nowadays to realize that it was once an expression of an ideal for which men were willing to die but which they scarcely hoped to achieve.
When Colonel Cosby, former Governor of Minorca, came over the seas in 1732, to become Governor of New York, he brought with him a none too savory reputation. ”

“ In his new office Van Twiller was confronted with questions dealing with the encroachment of the patroons from within and of the English from without, the unwelcome visit of Eelkens, of whom we shall hear later, and massacres by the Indians on the South River. Such problems might well have puzzled a wiser head and a more determined character than Van Twiller's. We cannot hold him wholly blameworthy if he dealt with them in a spirit of doubt and hesitation. What we find harder to excuse is his shrewd advancement of his own interests and his lavish expenditure of the Company's money. ”

“ The student who has the courage to delve in the Documents relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, the Documentary History of the State of New York, the ecclesiastical records, the pioneer journals, and the minutes of early city councils, will not only reach the fundamental authorities on the history of the settlers on the Hudson, but will find many interesting incidents of which the dull titles give no promise. ”

“ The leaders of the people cause them to err, and they that are led by them are destroyed. But should Mr. Attorney go about to make this a libel, he would treat it thus: "The leaders of the people (innuendo, the governor and council of New York) cause them (innuendo, the people of this province) to err, and they (meaning the people of the province) are destroyed (innuendo, are deceived into the loss of their liberty) ," which is the worst kind of destruction. ”

“ In the earliest days of New Netherland there were no burgers because, as the name implies, burghers are town-dwellers, and for a number of years after the coming of the Dutch nothing worthy to be called a town existed in the colony. In the middle of the seventeenth century a traveler wrote from New Netherland that there were only three towns on the Hudson—Fort Orange, Rondout, and New Amsterdam—and that the rest were mere villages or settlements. ”

“ The penurious policy pursued by the Dutch and continued by the English left the colony without defenses on either the northern or southern boundaries. For a long time the settlers found themselves bulwarked against the French on the north by the steadfast friendship of the "Six Nations," comprising the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, the Senecas, and the Tuscaroras; but at last these trusty allies began to feel that the English were not doing their share in the war. The lack of military preparation in New York was inexcusable. ”

“ Indians called in council confirmed the Dutch title to all lands except the site of the Swedish fort planted by Minuit, and a peace which lasted for three years was declared between the Dutch and the Swedes.
In endeavoring to understand the relations between the settlements of the different nations in America in the seventeenth century we must realize that the colonies were only pawns in the great game being played in Europe between Spain and the Papacy on the one hand and the Protestant countries, England, Sweden, and the United Netherlands on the other. ”

“ Sturdy and industrious artisans of vigorous Protestant stock, the Walloons were a valuable element in the colonization of New Nether land. After a two months' voyage the ship Nieu Nederlandt reached the mouth of the Hudson, then called the Mauritius in honor of the Stadholder, Prince Maurice, and the leaders began at once to distribute settlers with a view to covering as much country as was defensible. Some were left in Manhattan, several families were sent to the South River, now the Delaware, others to Fresh River, later called the Connecticut, and others to the western shore of Long Island. ”

“ As early as the eighteenth century New York had become a cosmopolitan town. Its population contained not only Dutch and English in nearly equal numbers, but also French, Swedes, Jews, Negroes, and sailors, travelers from every land. The settled portion of the city, according to a map of 1729, extended as far north as Beekman Street on the East Side and as far as Trinity Church on the West Side. ”

“ A shrewd, keen, far-seeing man, he was one of the first of the West India Company to perceive that the building up of {33} New Netherland could not be carried on without labor, and that labor could not be procured without permanent settlers. "Open up the country with agriculture: that must be our first step," was his urgent advice; but the dwellers in the Netherlands, finding themselves prosperous in their old homes, saw no reason for emigrating, and few offered themselves for the overseas settlements. ”

“ Kieft was at first proud of his treachery; but as soon as it was known every Algonquin tribe around New Amsterdam started on the warpath. From New Jersey to the Connecticut every farm was in peril. The famous and much-persecuted Anne Hutchinson perished with her family; towns were burned; and men, women, and children fled in panic.
On the approach of spring, when the Indians had to plant their corn or face famine, sachems of the Long Island Indians sought a parley with the Dutch. De Vries and Olfertsen volunteered to meet the savages. ”