New Netherland

“ The trouble and difficulty which do or will affect us, although wanting no addition, do not grieve us so much as the sorrowful condition of New Netherland, now lying at its last gasp; but we hope and trust that our afflictions and the sufferings of the inhabitants and people of the country will awaken in Their High Mightinesses a compassion which will be a cause of rejoicing to New Netherland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ About half a century ago the following precious letter of Michaelius, describing New Netherland as it appeared in its earliest days to the eyes of an educated clergyman of the Dutch Church, was discovered in Amsterdam, and printed by Mr. J.J.Bodel Nijenhuis in the Kerk-historisch Archief, part I. An English translation of it, with an introduction, was then privately printed in a pamphlet by Mr. Henry C. Murphy, an excellent scholar in New Netherland history, who was at that time minister of the United States to the Netherlands. ”

“ In New Netherland the English made bold to come out of New England upon various villages and places belonging under the protection of Their High Mightinesses and the Dutch West India Company even upon Long Island, setting up the banner of Britain and proclaiming that they knew of no New Netherland but that that land belonged solely to the English nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides this, the country of the Company is so taxed, and is burdened and kept down in such a manner, that the inhabitants are not able to appear beside their neighbors of Virginia or New England, or to undertake any enterprise. It seems—and so far as is known by us all the inhabitants of New Netherland declare—that the Managers have scarce any care or regard for New Netherland, except when there is something to receive, for which reason, however, they receive less. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Planting a colony with roots was quieter but nobler work. The contrast between “a river of silver a yard deep” flowing into the Company’s coffers from South America and the West Indies, and the slow returns from the colder climates of North America, in furs, fish, and grain, explains why it was that immigrants were hard to obtain for the new colony, and also why the Company neglected New Netherland, and even allowed official oppression. Yet all the more clearly shines the true story of the Dutch in America, which is not that of official figure-heads, but of the “Commonality.” ”

“ On the first Sunday in September, after sermon and worship, the seven vessels, with seven hundred men, — probably one third of all the able-bodied males in New Netherland, — and possibly the largest host of white men yet gathered for war on American soil, moved down the bay in gala array of flags and streamers. ”

“ The columnar lines of the Palisades, frowning on the upper river's front and casting early and long afternoon shadows, mightily impressed men from a flat and sunken land. Their own writings show how handsomely the Netherlanders appraised their new possessions. ”

“ In no lands were the laws more favorable to women. Such development had its roots far back in the Middle Ages.
To New Netherland the woman brought her inherited habit and her strict training: first, to make of temporary quarters — the straw shack, the bark house, or the hut of boards — a home, and then, to transform it into a dwelling rich in comforts. Unceasing industry, thrift, and hatred of waste, as of dirt and laziness, enabled the settler in a year of good harvests to begin wealth, or in poor times to bear bravely enforced poverty. ”

“ If ever young folks lived happy lives and had especially good times on extra occasions, the Dutch boys and girls in both Old and New Netherland certainly did. Holland is the land of Santa Claus and dyed Easter eggs. ”

“ Owing to Dutch, occupation during half a century of intense agitation, civil war and revolution, New Netherland had escaped being drawn into the maelstrom of English hates and rivalries. Indeed the Dutch settlements, and New Amsterdam in particular, had derived advantage from the troubles of the English colonies, and among the immigrants who sought an asylum from Puritan intolerance within New Netherland jurisdiction were many who proved valuable additions to the population of the province, and who helped to build up its trade and commerce, and to develop agriculture. ”

“ The official name given to the new-found land, discovered by Hudson and exploited by Block, was New Netherland, — not New Netherlands, as so many careless writers, and even book titles, public documents, and bronze tablets have it. The Dutch patriots gave the land of hope in America not a plural form, which might suggest the ten provinces that had left the covenant of freedom and gone back to Spain, but one that had recalled united Patria, — the seven free and independent states forming the Dutch Republic, now one country and one nation. ”

“ In those ancient accumulations one rarely finds a perfect shell. The squaws were surprised to see such refuse burnt to make good white lime.
Michaelius concludes a long inventory of the resources of the New Netherland by saying, "The country is good and pleasant, the climate is healthy, notwithstanding the sudden changes of cold and heat. ”

“ In these aforesaid vessels also go six complete families with some freemen, so that forty five newcomers or inhabitants are taken out, to remain there. The natives of New Netherland are very well disposed so long as no injury is done them. But if any wrong be committed against them they think it long till they be revenged....
They are a wicked, bad people, very fierce in arms. Their dogs are small. ”

“ WE 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. ”

“ At the time of the English occupation New Netherland had a population of about 8000, comprising many nationalities, with the Dutch predominant. Life in the colony had not that deep spiritual tinge which it bore in New England, but it was more gracious and more free. The churches were well supported, and the school system was excellent, but breweries and drinking-shops found their place in the order of things. In religion a broad toleration, in social life a hearty gayety and timely hospitality marked this cosmopolitan colony of well-fed traders and farmers. ”

“ We have also heard the savages frequently say, that they knew nothing of any other part of the world, or any other people than their own, before the arrival of the Netherlanders. For these reasons, therefore, and on account of the similarity of climate, situation and fertility, this place is rightly called New Netherland. It is situated on the northerly coast of America, in the latitude of 38, 39, 40, 41 and 42 degrees, or thereabouts, coast-wise. ”

“ We are also in the highest degree beholden to the Indians, who not only have given up to us this good and fruitful country, and for a trifle yielded us the ownership, but also enrich us with their good and reciprocal trade, so that there is no one in New Netherland or who trades to New Netherland without obligation to them. Great is our disgrace now, and happy should we have been, had we acknowledged these benefits as we ought, and had we striven to impart the Eternal Good to the Indians, as much as was in our power, in return for what they divided with us. ”

“ Determined to prove to the Company what could be done in the New World, and to reveal the wealth of naval stores of all kinds in the colony, Minuit inaugurated the enterprise of ship-building. He laid the keel of the second vessel to receive the name of New Netherland, which when afloat was as big as a ship of the line in the Dutch navy. ”

“ In name and theory, New Netherland was past and gone when Schenectady was settled, but was Dutch to the core, and remained so until the Revolution, when its people became intensely American and loyal to the Continental Congress.
Schenectady was not the only free village organized before the fall of New Netherland. In 1652 some free farmers, who chafed under manorial rule and wanted to be owners of the soil they tilled and not semi-serfs, came and settled at Esopus. Receiving the soil as a free gift from the Indians, the settlement was named Wiltwijk ”

“ The shiploads of American furs sold in Amsterdam set Dutch money-makers hot on the trail for more. Led by Usselinx, they urged in the State Legislature of Holland that a West India Company be formed. Asia had enriched the Republic. Why should not New Netherland? ”

“ It was around the Church and the Bible that the best life in New Netherland centred, and from these sources it was nourished.
Social morality in New Netherland was of a high standard. Divorces were unknown. The opinion is practically unanimous among those who have studied the local records and Church discipline in American colonial days, that no colonies, Puritan or Cavalier, North or South, excelled, even if they equaled, in morality the Continental settlers, Walloon, Dutch, and Huguenot, who began the Middle States of the American Union. ”

“ Had the first Exemptions been truly observed, according to their intention, and had they not been carried out with particular views, certainly more friends of New Netherland would have exerted themselves to take people there and make settlements. The other conditions which were introduced have always discouraged individuals and kept them down, so that those who were acquainted with the business, being informed, dared not attempt it. It is very true that the Company have brought over some persons, but they have not continued to do so, and it therefore has done little good. ”

“ If he was born in New Netherland in or about 1614, there must have been at least one European woman in the colony at an earlier date than has been supposed, namely, back in the years of the first Dutch trading along that coast. But many things concerning the earliest years of New Netherland must remain in uncertainty until the publication of a certain group of documents of that period, evidently important, which were sold in 1910 by Muller of Amsterdam and are now in private possession in New York, and withheld from public knowledge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These things considered, it will be little labor for intelligent men to estimate and compute exactly of what importance this naturally noble province is to the Netherland nation, what service it could render it in future, and what a retreat it would be for all the needy in the Netherlands, as well of high and middle, as of low degree; for it is much easier for all men of enterprise to obtain a livelihood here than in the Netherlands. ”

“ Terror increasing all over the land the Eight Men assembled, drew (1) up a proposal in writing wherein they asked that delegates should be sent to the north, to our English neighbors, to request an auxiliary force of one hundred and fifty men, for whose pay a bill of exchange should be given for twenty-five thousand guilders, and that New Netherland should be so long mortgaged to the English as security for the payment thereof. ”

“ The Reformed Dutch Church was the seedbed for the sprouting of American and Continental, as opposed to aristocratic British notions. The language, customs, traditions, and best inheritances of Patria lingered longest, and are to-day found most notably in the Reformed churches in the East and West of our country. When New Netherland ceased to be, the Dutch Church and people still remained a potent element in the making of the American man and the world's grandest political structure. ”