Chapter VIII: New Netherland, or the Dutch in North America (3)

J. Romeyn Brodhead, the collaborator of Dr. O’Callaghan in editing the documents procured for the State by his agency, was the next to enter the field as a writer on the history of New York. While Dr. O’Callaghan in a few instances allows his inborn prejudices to make him criticise the actions of the Dutch too harshly, and without due allowance for the times and circumstances, Mr. Brodhead, a descendant both of Dutch and English early settlers, fails on the other side, and becomes too lenient. Generally, however, his _History of New York_ is written with great independence of judgment and with thorough criticism of the authorities. It is to be regretted that death prevented the completion of the work, which does not go farther than 1691; but what Mr. Brodhead has given us must, for its completeness and accuracy of research, and for the genuine historical acumen displayed in it, rank as a standard work and a classical authority on the subject.[880]

There are many additional works to be consulted by those who desire reliable information on the early history of New York,—the more general histories (like Bancroft’s, chap. xv.), monographs,[881] and local histories, the _Transactions_ of the various historical societies of the State, etc.; but the passing of them in review has been in some degree relegated to notes.

* * * * *

When the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras said that man was born to contemplate the heavens, the sun, and the moon, he might have added also the earth and its formation in all its details, and enjoined on his disciples the necessity of representing the result of such contemplations by maps and charts. We require a map fully to understand the geography and chorography of a country; hence a study of the maps made by contemporaneous makers becomes the duty of the writer of New Netherland history. I have already stated that the coast of New York and the neighboring districts were known to Europeans almost a century before Hudson ascended the “Great River of the North,” and that this knowledge is proved by various maps made in the course of the sixteenth century. Nearly all of them place the mouth of a river between the fortieth and forty-first degrees of latitude, or what should be this latitude, but which imperfect instruments have placed farther north. The configuration of the coast-line shows that they meant the mouth of the Hudson. Only one, however, of these sixteenth-century maps, made by Vaz Dourado at Lisbon, in 1571, gives the Hudson River in its almost entire course, from the mountains to the bay. A copy of this map, made in 1580, which found its way to Munich, was probably seen by Peter Plancius, who induced Hudson to explore that region of the New World, so little known to Europeans at that time. Although Vaz Dourado’s map enlightens us so very little, I mention it because his map must lead to the investigation of the question whether the Dutch under Hudson were the first to navigate the river.

[Brodhead’s statements regarding the finding of this map are in _N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc._, 1845, p. 185; compare also his _New York_, i. 757. The original parchment map measured 2 × 2 feet, and showed the country from Egg Harbor, in New Jersey, to the Penobscot, 40° to 45°. The paper map covered the territory from below the Delaware Capes to above Albany, and is three feet long. The original is in colors, which are preserved in the chromolithograph of it issued at the Hague in 1850 or thereabout. (Asher’s _List_, no. 1; Muller’s 1877 _Catalogue_, no. 2,270.) There is a reduction of it in Cassell’s _United States_, i. 247.—ED.]]

The oldest map of the territory now comprising the States of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, and known as “The Figurative Map,” was found by Mr. Brodhead in the archives at the Hague. It is on parchment, and is beautifully executed. A fac-simile copy, taken by Mr. Brodhead, was deposited in the State Library at Albany, and reproductions have been published in the _New York Colonial Documents_, vol. i., also in Dr. O’Callaghan’s _History of New Netherland_. It purports to have been submitted to the States-General of Holland in 1616, with an application for a charter to trade to New Netherland, but it was probably produced then a second time, having done duty before on a similar occasion in 1614, with a map exhibiting the Delaware region on a larger scale. This 1614 map was on paper, and was found by Mr. Brodhead in the same place, and may be seen in similar reproductions, accompanying those of the 1616 map. Who the draughtsman of either was, is unknown. An inscription on the latter refers to draughts formerly made, which were consulted, and to the report of some men, who had probably been the Dutchmen captured by the Mohawks and mentioned in Captain Hendricksen’s report (_New York Colonial Documents_, i. 13). De Laet seems to have had these maps before him when he wrote his _Novus Orbis_, and to have constructed the map accompanying his work from these two. Notwithstanding the great care and detail exhibited in them, they are necessarily inaccurate, but highly interesting and instructive, as they indicate the location of the several Indian tribes at the time of the arrival of the Dutch and of the Spaniards before them. The names given on these maps to some of the Indian tribes are so unmistakably of Spanish origin, that it is hard to believe they were not first applied by the Spaniards, and afterwards repeated by the Indians to the before-mentioned three Dutch prisoners among the Mohawks. We find one tribe called “Capitanasses,” while in colloquial Spanish _capitanázo_ means a great warrior; another, whom the Dutch later knew as Black Minquas, is designated by the name of “Gachos,” the Spanish word _gacho_ being applied to black cattle. Still another is called the “Canoomakers;” _canoa_ being a word of the Indian tongues of South America,[882] the North American Indian could only have learned it from the Spaniards, and in turn have taught its meaning to the Dutch. Even the Indian name given to the island upon which the city of New York now stands, spelled on the earliest maps “Monados, Manados, Manatoes,” and said to mean “a place of drunkenness,” points to a Spanish origin from the colloquially-used noun _moñas_, drunkenness, _moñados_, drunken men. If to these indications of Spanish presence on the soil of New York before the Dutch period we add the evidence of the so-called Pompey Stone,[883] found in Oneida County, with its Spanish inscription and date of 1520, and the names of places given in their corruption by the Dutch in a grant covering part of Albany County (“Semesseerse,” Spanish _semencera_, land sown with seed; “Negogance,” place for trade, Spanish _negocio_, trade), we can no longer hesitate to believe that the traditions reported by Danckers and other writers mentioned before had some foundation, and that the Spaniards knew and had explored the country on the Hudson long before the Dutch came, but had thought, as Peter Martyr expresses it, after the failures of Esteban Gomez and the Licenciado d’ Aillon, “To the South, to the South, for the great and exceeding riches of the Equinoctial; they that seek gold must not go to the cold and frozen North.” The Spaniards never considered North America as of any value in itself; they looked upon it only as a barrier to the richer fields of Asia.

Dr. O’Callaghan had in his collection[884] a copy, on vellum, of a map entitled “Americæ Septentrionalis Pars,” from the _West-Indische Paskaert_, which he added to the maps in the first volume of the _New York Colonial Documents_. The maker of it was A. Jacobsen, and, to judge from the fac-simile of the West India Company’s seal exhibited on it, he made it for that company in 1621. It bears internal evidence that Jacobsen had as model one of the elder Spanish and English maps, as he retains some Spanish and English names for places, which on the Dutch maps just mentioned have Dutch names. No attempt is made to give details of interior chorography. The coast-line is fairly correct, and the rivers named are indicated by their mouths.[885]

The next in the order of date is also a manuscript map, of which a reduced copy was published by Dr. O’Callaghan in his _History_. Although it is only a delineation of part of New Netherland, the manor of Rensselaerswyck,[886] it is of importance to the historian, who in consulting it has to exercise his judgment to the utmost. Made in 1630 by Gillis van Schendel at the expense of six dollars, which paid also for four copies on paper, it shows, in the very year in which the land was purchased from the Indians and patented to the patroons, such a large number of settlements on both sides of the river, as to create the suspicion that it was made to induce emigration from Holland, where the four copies on paper were sent. De Laet, whose share of the land, as one of the patroons, is designated by De Laet’s Burg, De Laet’s Island, De Laet’s Mill Creek and Waterfall, makes no reference to this map.

The first printed map of New Netherland accompanies De Laet’s _Novus Orbis_, under the title of “Nova Anglia, Novum Belgium, et Virginia.” In outline it resembles the map of 1621 by Jacobsen, while the details are taken from the maps presented to the States-General. It is very vague, however, and does not even give the names of any river. Long Island is represented by three islands, and the Delaware River rises, as on the 1616 map, out of a large lake in the Seneca country.[887]

Jacobsen’s map of 1621 seems to have been used by Robert Dudley in his _Atlas_, upon which an Italian engraver, Antonio Francesco Lucini, worked; and Lucini’s signature is attached to a “Carta particolare della Nuova Belgia è parte della Nuova Anglia, d’America carta ii.,” which constitutes a part of Dudley’s work.[888] He seems to have consulted Spanish, Dutch, and English maps of more or less correctness, but understood none of them well. The Hudson is called “Rio Martins ò R. Hudsons.” Manhattan’s Island is in its proper place, with New Amsterdam marked on it; but the name “Isla Manhatas” is given to the land between Newark Bay, Passaic River on the west and the Hackensack on the east; while the strip of land now called Bergen Point is called “Oster’s Ilant.” The position of Manhattan has evidently troubled him very much, for we find the name again inserted covering the eastern townships of Westchester County. Stratford Point, at the mouth of the Housatonic, is “Cabo del Fieme,” while Long Island, called “I. di Gebrok Land,” is a group of six islands, the largest of which bears the correct name of Matouwacs, and Fisher’s Island is called “Isla Lange.” Staten Island, “I. State,” is relegated, shorn of its dimensions, to Newark Bay, and its space divided by “I. Godins” and one of the six islands in the Long Island group called “C. Godins.” The low coast of New Jersey, near Long Branch, is properly named “Costa Bassa.” Thence going south, we come to “Porto Eyer” (Egg Harbor) and “I. Eyer,” “C. Pedras Arenas” (Barnegat), “C. Mai,” “Rio Carlo” (Delaware), and “C. Hinlopen ò C. James.” The student of our early cartography must revert often to the rival maps and atlases of Blaeu and Jansson. The elder of the Blaeus, W. J. Blaeu, was long a maker of maps and globes,[889] and began to be known, with his map of the world, in 1606. He had issued many other maps when, in 1631, he collected them into his _Appendix Theatri Ortelii_ (103 maps), the earliest of his atlases, which he later remodelled and enlarged, sometimes giving the text in French, and sometimes in Latin; that of 1638 being known as his _Novas Atlas_, and containing fourteen American maps. After several intermediate issues,[890] following upon the death of the elder Blaeu in 1638,[891] his atlas, under the care of his son, John Blaeu,[892] was issued with various texts, and with a wealth of skill rarely equalled since, as the _Atlas Major_.[893]

Jansson produced a rival of the earliest Blaeu atlas in 1633, with one hundred and six maps.[894] In 1638 it was called _Atlas Novus_, and had seventeen maps of America.[895] In 1639 a French edition was called _Nouveau Théâtre du Monde_, with new maps by Henry Hondius, son of the elder Hondius, eighteen of them being American, and that on New Netherland following De Laet’s map. It includes New England and Virginia, and is the original of various later maps.[896] A fifth part of the _Nouveau Theatre_ was added in 1657, containing coast charts of America. Jansson reached his best in his _Orbis Antiquus_, of about even date (1661) with Blaeu’s best.

In Mr. Edward Armstrong’s essay on _Fort Nassau_ a map in private hands is mentioned which seems to be little known. It exhibits the grant made to Sir Edmund Ploeyden of the Province of New Albion, and was printed at London in 1651. It is a strange combination of knowledge and ignorance, if not intentional deceit, purporting to have been made by “Domina Virginia Farrer,” and shows the headwaters of James River to be within ten days’ march of the California coast.[897]

A map of the Delaware territory was made, about 1638, by Måns Kling, for the Swedish Government. A later map of the same region, made by the Swedish engineer Peter Lindstroem in 1654, unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1697, when the Royal Palace at Stockholm burned down, is reviewed in another chapter. A Dutch map of the Delaware, made about 1656, has also been lost.[898]

Mr. Asher[899] and Mr. Armstrong incline to the opinion that the earliest of the later group of maps made during the Dutch occupancy is the original state of what is called Dancker’s map, known under the title of _Novi Belgii Novæque Angliæ necnon Pennsylvaniæ et Partis Virginiæ tabula, multis in locis emendata a Justo Danckers_, and supposed to date between 1650 and 1656.[900] The map purporting to be the oldest, and which there is reason to believe was this earlier plate retouched, is the _Novi Belgii, etc., tabula multis in locis emendata a Nicolao Joannis Visschero_, of which Asher speaks of a copy in the Royal Library at the Hague.[901]

It was afterward included in what is known as Visscher’s _Atlas Minor_.[902] Visscher’s map, with its view of New Amsterdam, was reproduced in what is known as Van der Donck’s map, _Nova Belgica sive Nieuw Nederlandt_,[903] which appeared in the second edition of the _Beschrijvinge van Nieuw Nederlant_, 1656.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

=A.= BIBLIOGRAPHY.—In the bibliography of New Netherland, the first place must be given to the _Bibliographical and Historical Essay on the Dutch Books and Pamphlets relating to New Netherland_, by G. M. Asher, Amsterdam, 1854-1867, the work appearing in parts. It embodies the results of work in the royal library and in the royal archives at the Hague; at Leyden in the library of the University and in that of Dr. Bodel Nyenhuis, rich in maps, and particularly in the Thysiana Library, which he found a rich field; and at Amsterdam, among the extensive stock of Mr. Frederick Muller, without whose assistance, the author says, the book would not have been written.[904] In his Introduction he gives a succinct sketch of the history and geography of New Netherland.

Next in importance are the catalogues of Frederick Muller of Amsterdam, particularly the series, _Catalogue of Books, Maps, and Plates on America_,[905] begun in 1872, and which he calls “an essay towards a Dutch-American bibliography.” It was also under Mr. Muller’s direction and patronage that Mr. P. A. Tiele prepared his _Mémoire bibliographique sur les journaux des navigateurs néerlandais réimprimés dans les collections de De Bry et de Hulsius_, etc., Amsterdam, 1867. It covers those voyages not Dutch of which accounts have appeared in Dutch, as well as the distinctively Dutch collections. The compiler dedicated it to Mr. James Lenox, from whose rich collection he derived much help. Muller’s _Catalogue_ (1872), no. 110; Stevens, _Hist. Coll._, i. 1,002.

The best American collection of books on New Netherland is probably that now in the Lenox Library. Mr. Asher said of it some years ago (_Essay_, p. xlix, _sub anno_ 1867) that it was “absolutely complete.”

=B.= NEW AMSTERDAM.—The earliest accounts of the town by Wassenaer (1623), De Laet (1625), De Rasiere (1627), and Michaelis (1628), have already been mentioned. (Cf. the paper on the first settlement by the Dutch in _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, vol. iii.) Stuyvesant, in his letter to Nicoll in 1664, claimed that the town was founded in 1623. This statement is repeated in De la Croix’s book, with De Vries’s additions, published in Dutch as _Algemeene Wereldt-Beschrijving_, 1705. (Asher, no. 19.) O’Callaghan, _New Netherland_, ii. 210, has established that the town was incorporated in 1653.

The original Dutch records of New Amsterdam have been put into English in MS. volumes in the archives of the city, and some parts of them are printed in Valentine’s _New York City Manual_, and in _Historical Magazine_, xi. 33, 108, 170, 224, 354; xii. 30; xiii. 39, 168. Cf. paper on the development of its municipal government in the Dutch period, in _Mag. of Amer. Hist._, May, 1882, and the papers on the city of New York in _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, vols. i. and iii. Some notes on the Indian incursions in and about New Amsterdam during the Dutch period are in Valentine’s _New York City Manual_, 1863, p. 533. The principal histories of the town are Martha J. Lamb’s (1877), M. L. Booth’s (1859), W. L. Stone’s (1872), and David T. Valentine’s (1853). The last comes down only to 1750, and this and Lamb’s are of the most importance.

This fac-simile of the lower portion of the map entitled “De Noord Rivier, anders R. Manhattans, off Hudson’s Rivier, genaamt t’Groodt,” which appeared in a tract at Middleburgh (and also at the Hague in 1666 in Goos’s _Zee-Atlas_) in answer to the reply of Downing to the memoir (1664) of the deputies of the States-General. The cut is made from the reproduction in Mr. Lenox’s edition of H. C. Murphy’s translation of the _Vertoogh_ and _Breeden Raedt_, New York, 1854. The North is to the right.]

Something can be derived from the gatherings of J. F. Watson in his _Annals of New York City and State_, 1846, and the appendix to his _Annals of Philadelphia_, 1830. The reader will find interest in various local antiquarian quests, as exemplified in J. W. Gerard’s _Old Streets of New York under the Dutch_ (1874).[906] A map of the original grants of village lots on the island, from the Dutch West India Company, is in the _City Manual_ (1857), and in the same (1856) is a map showing the made and swampy lands, as indicating the original surface of the town. In other volumes (1852 and 1853), and in Valentine’s _History_, p. 379, is a modern plan of the city, showing the line of the original high-water marks and the location of the early farms. It is one of these farms, that of Dominie Bogardus, the pastor of the Dutch church, who so vigorously opposed Kieft’s plans, that is now the property of Trinity Church, and the source of a large revenue. (See the Key in Valentine’s _History_, p. 380.) The same serial preserves views of sundry landmarks, like the canal in Broad Street, of 1659 (in 1862, p. 515), a windmill of 1661 (in 1862, p. 547), a house built in 1626 (in 1847, p. 346). A plan of the fort built in 1633-1635 is in Valentine’s _New York_, p. 27; and at p. 38 is a plan of the town in 1642, as well as the author could make it out from existing data.

For the northern part of the island, James Riker’s _History of Harlem_, 1881, affords much interest, tracing more minutely than usual the associations of the early comers with their family stocks in Europe, and showing by a map the original locations of their house-lots at Harlem.

=C.= LOCAL HISTORIES.—The Editor is not aware of any considerable bibliography of New York local histories, except as they are included in F. B. Perkins’s _Check List of American Local History_. Some help may be derived from the _Brinley_ and _Alofsen Catalogues_, and others of a classified character. We have indicated in another Note the labors of Mr. Munsell for the Albany region. An edition of G. Furman’s _Antiquities of Long Island_, edited by F. Moore in 1875, includes a bibliography of Long Island by Henry Onderdonk, Jr. The most considerable of all the local histories is Stiles’s _History of Brooklyn_, 1867-1870, which gives a map of the Breuckelen settlements in 1646. The Faust Club in 1865 issued (125 copies) an older book, G. Furman’s _Notes of Brooklyn_, which had originally appeared in 1824. Benj. F. Thompson’s _History of Long Island_, 2d ed., 1843, is the most comprehensive of the accounts of that island, while N. S. Prime’s _History of Long Island_ is more particularly concerned with its ecclesiastical history. There are various lesser monographs on the island towns, like Riker’s _Newton_ (1852), Onderdonk’s _Hempstead_ (1878), etc. Cf. also _Historical Magazine_, viii. 89; and in the same, vi. 145, Mr. G. P. Disosway recounts the early history of Staten Island.

Mr. Fernow translated and edited in the _Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York_, vol. xiii., the papers in the State archives upon the history and settlements on the Hudson and the Mohawk (1630-1684), as he has said in the text, which must stand as the basis for much which is given in the special treatises of Bolton on _West Chester County_ (or such thorough monographs as that of C. W. Baird on the _History of Rye_, 1781 in this county), P. H. Smith on _Duchess County_, 1877, not to name others. The more remote parts of the State have little or no connection with the Dutch period.

=D.= THE DUTCH GOVERNORS.—Mr. George Folsom has a paper on the governors in 2 _N. Y. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. On Peter Minuit, the first governor, there is a paper by J. B. Moore in _N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc._, 1849, p. 73, and another in _Historical Magazine_, xiii. 205. An autograph of Kieft is given herewith. Of Stuyvesant, the last governor, who survived the surrender, and died in 1672 (Brodhead, ii. 183), we have various memorials. His portrait is preserved, belonging to Mr. Robert Van Rensselaer Stuyvesant, and has been engraved several times,—Dunlap’s _New York_, vol. i.; O’Callaghan’s _New Netherland_, vol. ii.; Lamb’s New York, i. 127; Gay’s _Popular History of the United States_, vol. ii. (Cf. _Catalogue of the N. Y. Hist. Soc. Gallery_, no. 67.) Two reminders of him long remained to New Yorkers,—his house in the Bowery, which is shown as it existed at the time of his death in Valentine’s _New York_, p. 53, and in his _Manual_, 1852, p. 407; and in Watson’s _Annals of New York_, p. 196, as it stood later perched upon so much of the original knoll as improvements had not removed. The old pear-tree associated with his name is depicted in Valentine’s _Manual_, 1861, p. 533, and in Lossing’s _Hudson River_, p. 416.

Mr. Fernow contributed to the _Magazine of American History_, ii. 540, a monograph on Stuyvesant’s journey to Esopus in 1658. See also 4 _Massachusetts Historical Collections_, vi. 533.

=E.= LEVINUS HULSIUS’S COLLECTION OF VOYAGES.—The twenty-six parts of this work were originally issued between 1598 and 1650, and this long interval, as well as their German text finding more popular use than the Latin of De Bry, has conduced to make sets much rarer of Hulsius than of De Bry. Scholars also award Hulsius the possession of more judgment in compiling and translating than is claimed for De Bry. Asher printed in 1833 a _Short Bibliographical Memoir_ of Hulsius, which became, when extended, his _Bibliographical Essay on the Voyages and Travels of Hulsius and his Successors_, in 1839; and in this he doubts if a perfect set of all the editions of all the parts had ever been got together. An approximate completeness, however, pertains to the sets in the Carter-Brown and Lenox libraries, as described in the _Catalogue_ of the former, vol. i. p. 467, and in the _Contributions to a Catalogue of the Lenox Library_, no. i, New York, 1877. The set described in this shows all the first editions of the twenty-six parts, with second issues of three of them, Latin as well as German of two of them; two parts successively issued of one of them (part xi.) and other copies with variations of three of them. There are eighteen second editions, counting variations (one is lacking); nine third editions or variations; six fourth editions (with one lacking); two fifth editions (with one lacking). This would indicate that an absolutely complete set, to include every part, edition, and variety, would increase the twenty-six parts to seventy-three. The Carter-Brown copy seems to be less perfect. The _Huth Catalogue_ shows a complete series of first editions only.

Tiele’s _Mémoire Bibliographique_ pertains to such voyages in this collection as were made by Dutch navigators. Sabin’s _Dictionary_, viii. 526, gives fuller collations for the parts relating to America. Quaritch printed a collation in 1860.

Bohn published a collation of Lord Lyndsay’s copy.

The Lenox Library possesses MS. Collations of the Grenville and other sets in the British Museum, of those in the Royal Library, Berlin, and the City Library of Hamburg.

Sets of such completeness as collectors may hope to attain have been quoted at £335 (Crowninshield sale, 1860,—all first editions but one), and 6,700 and 4,500 marks.