CHAP. IV.

EMIGRATION FROM HOLLAND.

219

into their adopted country. There they established their peculiar mode of public worship, and were soon ranked among the most thrifty, honest, and religious inhabitants. They were numerous in Amsterdam and Leyden, and were on friendly terms with the Puritan refugees from England. Like those Puritans they heard, from time to time, the enticing stories about the beauty and fertility of Virginia, and some of them desired to emigrate to America. They applied to the British ambassador at the Hague for permission and encouragement. He referred them to his king, and James submitted the matter to the London Company. The latter were not liberal enough in their proffered conditions to induce the Walloons to go. The States-General hearing of the movement commended them and their project to the West India Company. The latter perceived the great advantage which such emigrants would be to them in founding a permanent industrial colony in New Netherland, and took measures immediately to secure them. An agreement was made with several families, and in the spring of 1623, the emigrants were ready for departure for their new home.

The Company, anxious to commence their settlement with a sufficient number of willing hands, fitted out the New Netherland, a ship of two hundred and sixty tons burden, in which thirty families, consisting of one hundred and ten men, women and children, embarked. They were provided with agricultural implements, cows, horses, sheep and swine, and a sufficient quantity of household furniture to make them comfortable. The command of the ship was given to Cornelius Jacobsen May, of Hoorn, who was to remain in New Netherland as first director or governor. His lieutenant was Adrien Joris. The vessel sailed from the Texel early in March, and taking the long and tedious southern route by way of the Canaries and the West Indies, to avoid the storms of the northern Atlantic, they did not reach their destined haven until the beginning of May, where they found the French vessel above mentioned lying at anchor. The yacht Mackerel had just come down the Hudson. With two pieces of cannon taken from the fort at Manhattan, she compelled the Frenchman to desist, and convoyed his vessel out to sea. He went round to the Delaware on the same errand, and received similar treatment from the Dutch traders who were seated on its banks, when he sailed for France. With this ridiculous feat ended attempts of the French to assert jurisdiction below the forty-fifth parallel.

On a beautiful morning in May the Walloons landed from the New Netherland, in small boats, upon the rocky shore where Castle Garden now is. They made a picturesque appearance as they ascended the bank in their quaint costume, every man carrying some article of domestic use, and many women each carrying a babe or small child in her arms. They were cor

dially welcomed by the resident traders and friendly Indians, and were feasted under a tent made of sails stretched between several trees. Under that tent a Christian teacher, who accompanied the settlers, offered up fervent thanksgivings to Almighty God for his preserving care during the long voyage, and implored His blessing upon the great undertaking before them. May then read his commission, which made him first director of New Netherland, and formally assumed the governorship of the colony and country.

Traditions have told us that these emigrants were immediately scattered to different points to form settlements, and so to secure a wide domain for the West India Company. Some, it is said, settled on Long Island and founded the City of Brooklyn; others went up the Connecticut River to a point near the site of Hartford, and built Fort Good Hope; others planted themselves in the present Ulster County in New York, and others founded Albany, where the Dutch had erected a military work and named it Fort Orange. Others, it is said, went to the Delaware and began a settlement at the mouth of Timber Creek, on the east side of the river, a few miles below the site of Philadelphia, and built a small fortification which they named Fort Nassau. The settlers engaged in this enterprise, it is said, were four

CHAP. IV.

FORT AMSTERDAM.

221

young couples who were married on ship-board, and eight seamen who managed a little yacht that conveyed them to the South River, as the Delaware was called. This was to distinguish it from the North River, as the Hudson was then called, and which yet retains that name.

When May's lieutenant, Joris, returned to Amsterdam with a ship laden with furs worth over ten thousand dollars, and reported that the settlers were "getting bravely along," the Company were delighted, and sent out ships with cattle, horses, sheep, swine, farming implements and seeds for their use, and more emigrants. Political affairs in Europe were now favorable to the enterprise. King James of England, angered because of the failure of his son Charles to win the hand of a Spanish princess, had leagued with the Dutch against Spain. At his death, his son became King Charles the First, and he renewed the league with the States-General in a still stronger bond. This alliance with the British sovereign promising noninterference, on his part, in the growth of a permanent colony in New Netherland, the West India Company proceeded to lay the political foundations of a state. They commissioned Peter Minuit director-general or governor of the colony, with a council of seven men, a secretary of state, who was also keeper of the Company's accounts, and a schout or sheriff, who was also public prosecutor or manager of the revenue. The council was invested with all local legislative, judicial and executive powers, subject to the jurisdiction of the Amsterdam College or Chamber of Nineteen. The Council were empowered to administer justice in all criminal cases to the extent of imprisonment, but each capital offender “must be sent, with his sentence, to Holland."

Governor Minuit arrived at Manhattan in the ship Sea-Mew, at the beginning of May, 1626. So soon as he was installed in office, he opened negotiations with the Indians for the purchase of the island, so as to procure a more valid title to its possession than that of discovery and occupation. It was estimated that it contained about twenty-two thousand acres of land, and it was purchased for the West India Company for the sum of about twenty-four dollars. A fort was immediately staked out by the engineer Frederick, at the lower point of the island, where the "Battery" and its stately trees now are, the plan of which called for a work faced with stone and having four angles, by which the bay in front, and the East and Hudson Rivers on its flanks, might be commanded by cannon. Before the work was finished, it was named Fort Amsterdam, and afterward the city that grew up there was called New Amsterdam. It retained that name until the province was surrendered to the English, when it received the title of New York. The States-General constituted the province a county of Holland with an

armorial distinction of a count. Its great seal bore the device of a shield, with an escutcheon enclosed in a chain, emblematic of union, and bearing the figure of a beaver. The crest was the coronet of a count.

While Fort Amsterdam was a-building an event occurred, the sad effects of which were felt long afterwards. Two adult Indians and a small boy, of a tribe in Westchester county, went from their homes to the Dutch settlement with beaver-skins to barter with the Hollanders at the fort. They followed the beaten trail along the East River to Kip's Bay (foot of Thirtyfourth street), where it diverged westward to the pond and marsh formerly known as The Collect, on the borders of which, on Centre street, New York, the Halls of Justice or the "Tombs" now stand. Near that pond, three farm-servants in the employ of Governor Minuit, robbed the Indians of their property and then murdered the men. The boy escaped. He vowed vengeance; and in after years, when he was a stalwart brave, he fearfully executed his vow. The murder was unknown to the Dutch authorities for a long time, and the guilty men probably escaped punishment.

When the stock of the Dutch West India Company was secured, and the several boards of direction were chosen, the College of XIX gave to the Amsterdam Chamber the exclusive management of the affairs of the province of New Netherland. Brodhead enumerates among the prominent members of that Chamber, Jonas Witsen, Hendrick Hamel, Samuel Godyn, John de Laet, the historian; Killian Van Rensselair, Michael Pauw, and Peter Evertsen Hulft. The names of these men were identified with the first European possession of the States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. The Company took measures immediately to secure their title to the domain by more extended actual occupation. They had taken possession of the country before their final organization, by virtue of their charter, because they knew how jealous were the English; and to give a show of actual occupation, they had sent trading vessels which bore instructions to the officers at Manhattan and on the North River, and, as we have seen, proceeded to build fortifications.

Within seventeen years after the discoveries of Hudson, the foundations of the great commonwealth of New York were laid by families, most of whom were voluntary exiles from their native land for the sake of freedom of thought and action. These were the first seeds of the state. To these were added, at the season of germination, noble plants from Holland, of genuine Hollanders, who brought with them those principles of toleration which lie at the foundations of a truly Christian state and give it sustenance. The community of their capital was very soon as cosmopolitan as their mother city of Amsterdam, of which Andrew Marvell quaintly wrote:

CHAP. IV.

NEW AMSTERDAM.

'Hence Amsterdam, Turk, Christian, Pagan, Jew,
Staple of sects and mint of schism grew;

That bank of conscience where not one so strange
Opinion, but finds credit and exchange;

In vain for Catholics ourselves we bear

The Universal Church is only there."

223

New Amsterdam gave to the state and nation a race in whose veins courses the blood of Teuton, Saxon, Celt and Gaul. The colonists from Holland exhibited, from the beginning, a more enlarged vision of the rights of conscience and respect for the dignity of personal freedom, than any other of the early American settlers. Their passion for far-reaching commerce and adventurous enterprise has ever hovered over Manhattan Island like a tutelar deity, during all its social and political vicissitudes, and has made New York City the commercial emporium of the Western Continent.