Chapter V: The Settlement of New York

The Spirits of the Age present at its Foundation.—Who they were and how
they were affected.—The Wonders of Manhattan in September, 1609.—How
the Animal, Vegetable, Ornithological, Maritime, and Human Productions
then compared with those now.—What New York Lots were worth two
hundred and sixty Years ago.—Their Owners.—Hudson’s Trip up the
River.—What he saw and didn’t see.—The four Dutch Governors; their
Doings and Misdoings.—Sketch of Holland and the Characteristics which
she impressed upon New Amsterdam.—Bravery evinced in settling
Brooklyn.—How the Van Rensselaers and other Vans were enticed
hither.—The Troubles and Sorrows of Wouter Van Twiller and William
Kieft.—Of the Surrender of the Dutch, and the Instalment of English
Rule in New York.—Petrus Stuyvesant retires from Business.—His Farm
and what he raised on it.

“The spirit of the age,” says Bancroft, “was present when the foundations of New York were laid.” More justly might it be said that a good deal of spirits, including a fair amount of Holland schnaps, put up in long gray-colored jugs, was there, carried on shore by order of the honest skipper of the Half-Moon, and duly distributed on the auspicious occasion. The corner-stone of the Western metropolis was laid by a mason employed by the Dutch East India Company, whose wide breeches, glittering knee-buckles, and large slouched hat, set off by a smart feather, seemed to the straight-limbed, wondering Algonquins, as they huddled in friendly curiosity around him, to belong to some well-fed, fat Mercury, fresh from a distant Olympus, taking a pleasant trip to their simple island.

THE SPIRITS OF THE AGE LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF NEW YORK.
(p. 127)
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The spirits were not enclosed in a corner-stone, as is customary at these raisings, but were more judiciously used by the sagacious Hendrick Hudson among the bewildered spectators.

Beautiful were the sights which greeted the eye of the adventurous Dutch navigator, as on the twenty-third day of September, 1609, he cast anchor in the broad bay of New York. On every side the shores were feathered by woods, freshly painted by the liberal hand of an American autumn. The varied trees, the golden willow, the scarlet sumach, the red and white maples, the sassafras, mixing with the oaks and beeches and the birch,—unassociated as yet with schools or discipline,—had begun to blaze in their varied gorgeous hues, and their leaves to cover the ground with carpets of beautiful patterns. Upon the branches climbed vines that fell from tree to tree, draping them in garments whose innocent height rivalled those of the Indians who found shelter beneath them.

Through these woods the mocking-bird trilled its varied song, its original strains almost as liquid and sweet as those of its mimic successor, the unfeathered biped who now lures the modern New-Yorker to greenly arching saloons, and there exchanges notes with him. The humming-bird, too, darted in sparkles through the leafy avenues,—not as now carried upon the top of a lady’s head, but dipping its own bill in the wild flowers that hung through all the Boweries of Manhattan. Pigeons, unplucked, sped unhurt through all the saloons of nature. Doves, not those mellifluous names that invite to restaurants, and there present their dear bills to the stranger, but the gayly plumed and round-necked birds, cooed in the thickets. Coveys of quails occupied the place of those other coveys, which, turned to jail-birds, now flutter behind bars. Here and there troops of wild turkey wheeled in long circles, instead of dangling, as now, by one leg in front of a Broadway market.

In the untroubled waters oysters made their own beds, and tucked themselves in as they saw fit, undisturbed by the injurious names of hard shell which a party of frogs or others might croak out around them. The opossum had not yet lent its name to deceitful concealments, but openly showed its offspring in its domestic pouch.

Turtles, although wearing the green, innocently walked around with their feet upon the honest earth, instead of spreading them upwards in the air, with their backs uneasily indorsing the city’s dirty sidewalks, their office-like fatness attracting the liquorish eye of some gourmand.

Even the bears licked their own cubs with innocent delight, not only in Wall Street, but in all the unwalled places in and about New York. The thrifty otter—the only banker on the whole island—made his deposits in safety; nor was he frightened, as he slowly accumulated the savings of his well-spent life, by the lively sallies of the jackdaw, carrying ever with him the burglarious instruments of his trade; nor heeded the harmless slanders of the woodpecker, as he gratified his strange taste in finding out and exploring the tender or rotten character of the neighboring trees.

In keeping with these sylvan and rustic scenes were the native owners. They disdained the waste of time involved in the frequent change of dress; appearing in the same costume, morning and evening. Nothing could be in greater contrast than the simple toilets of these proprietors of the island of Manhattan and their painted successors of our own day. The few men who owned the 141,486 lots into which the surface of New York City is now triturated, seemed, in the plainness of their attire and manners, to be only squatters upon a territory not their own, nor carried their feathered heads half as high as the modern trader in tape and calico, squeezed into a space often only sixteen feet and eight inches wide by one hundred deep. Children were kept in due subordination. Instead of attending parties or clubs, they were quietly hung upon a nail at the door of the wigwam; the heir of a square mile being suspended in unwhimpering silence, until his grave progenitors took their fill of nuts and sleep. There were no complaints of taxes, dirty streets, very common councils, or cheating at elections.

The uncertainty and tediousness of legal proceedings were unknown. The plaintiff was his own attorney, jury, judge, and sheriff; deciding the case summarily, and doing execution on the defendant between sunset and sunrise.

Lingering only a few days among these primitive inhabitants,—shooting game, doubtless, from the ancient trees occupying the very spot at the corner of Nassau and Wall Streets, where, in less than one hundred and eighty years afterwards, the first Federal Congress met, where, four years after that meeting, Washington was inaugurated President, and where, a few generations later, more money was daily disbursed than would have sufficed to buy all the then settlements of America, Hudson turned his little craft of eighty tons up the river which has since borne his name. Banks, since famous for historic events; or wed to literary matings, happy and dear, attracted for forty leagues his pleased attention. Wealth and taste have since embossed cities, towns, cultured villas, and grounds upon these shores; fringed them with varied foliage native and exotic, and thrown over them all the lace-like illusions of legends, stories, poetic fancies, and fairy-tales; but to the simple, honest eyes of Hudson nothing had ever presented itself more wonderful than that ever unrolling panorama of wood and wave, dripping with the intense and varied colors with which nature saturates and transfigures our autumnal woods.

The bosky reaches of Hoboken; the Palisades with their high, massive walls propping up the sky, which leans as lovingly as heaven can upon New Jersey without being taken for railroad purposes; the placid waters, since named Spuyten Duyvil, which parted Manhattan from the main-land, and sent back from its well-framed looking-glass, promontory and foliaged steeps, laced with scarlet vines; the gentle slopes of Westchester, sliding into the sea-like river, unwounded by rails, and innocent of the foul-mouthed smoke of candle-factories; the long-curving bays of Rockland, adorned with crimson capes, pinned with rocky points, yet so as advantageously to show off their bare shoulders; the native site of Sunnyside, where after dwelt the gentle, lamb-like Irving, as true and loyal a soul as was ever lent to men to draw them up where late he went back himself; the grand, majestic Highlands, with their muster-roll of glories, pennoned with crimson banners hung out from every rock-anchored fort of nature, among them Cro’ Nest, the home of that Culprit Fay, whose love treason has been pardoned before so many domestic tribunals; the lake-like bay of New-Burgh, so well sentinelled by its double sentry of shores, which challenge sharply every passer-by; and the dentating, curved shores that stretch in slow haste northwards; often channelled by playful brooks that lay their kissful obedience into the loving lap of the mother river, or were clasped by bracelets of burning maples, whose clustered garnets shone on her rounded arms,—all these varied charms quite intoxicated the sober Hudson, keeping him constantly on deck, and causing heavy draughts on the ship’s supply of Schiedam.

He brought to the Half-Moon off the present city of Hudson,—then altogether too young to present him with its freedom in a box; and in a small boat was rowed up the fresh waters of the river beyond, as far as Albany,—the Trojans assert as far as Troy; but in this a-bridge-d compendium we cannot pause to lay our hands on the necessary documents to settle this question.

DUTCH GENTLEMAN TRADING WITH THE INDIANS.
(p. 134)
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Suffice it to say that there being no legislature in session at Albany, he got away without being fleeced, or even being obliged to listen to a speech from the speaker. He was also spared a sight of the collection in the Agricultural Hall, and thus kept his favorable opinion of the soil and its capacity. His report to his employers, on his return in November following, was such as to stimulate the company to send another vessel the next year to trade with the natives; a trade which was conducted too much on the “heads I win, tails you lose” system to be other than advantageous to the Batavian pedlers. A few of the traders remained, opening stores in the slow settlement of New Amsterdam; putting up a windmill in what is now Pearl Street, raising the wind very easily, and taking as generous a toll from the Indian grists, as the natives now take from the strangers who frequent the island in search of bargains. The settlement grew then, as now, by importation; for although its trade increased, it was not until 1625 that the first white child was born within the present limits of the State. The growth of the place, however, was such, that in 1613, Samuel Argal, returning from an expedition against the French settlement of Port Royal, was attracted into the harbor of New Amsterdam, where, finding several huts and the windmill, he compelled an allegiance, during his two days stay, to England. The arbitrary principles of James I., however, were too repulsive to the sturdy Dutch to make them adhere to this allegiance longer than the existence of the force which compelled it. The Republic of the United Netherlands, twisted together of the two strands, furnished the one by the religious freedom generated by the Reformation under Luther, and the other drawn out by the mailed hand of William of Orange from the hard clutch of Philip II. of Spain, held by its strong yet soft cord the early emigrants from it to New Netherlands to an affectionate loyalty and love for itself. In no country is patriotism stronger than in Holland. Small in dimensions, struggling against the whole force of the sea on the north, from whose overwhelming devastation it is only saved by dikes, anchored by gigantic stones brought from Norway, and built up from thirty to fifty feet higher than the land they guard; its flat meadow surface, ever moist with water, divided by canals which serve the purposes both of fences and roads in other lands, and through which the water is kept flowing by a wonderful and hourly worked system of pumping,—this little state, conquered from the sea by industry, from Spain and the Inquisition by bravery unmatched, from a moneyed aristocracy by incessant vigilance, stood a peer among the largest and proudest monarchies of Europe. Her traders carried their square-rigged, heavy sterned ships in every port from the Cape of Good Hope to Lapland; and Amsterdam drew bills of exchange against shipments of linen and woollen goods, manufactured by herself, and of spices imported from her East India possessions, upon every commercial city in the world. The sea-fowl that drifted across her bright, sparkling meadows daily from the ocean, which she held at arm’s-length,—although rolling its white surf higher than the chimneys of her houses,—could take a bird’s-eye view of a population the thriftiest, of cities the most prosperous, of homes the most comfortable, in Europe. While Dutch enterprise thus built up a happy state at home, and sent thriving colonies abroad, her scholars were advancing the republic of letters, and giving international law to the world. Grotius at this time defined the rights and duties of war, and helped to bridle its atrocities by bits hammered from the sickles and reaping-hooks of peace. No wonder, then, that the thick-set burghers of Utrecht, Haarlaem, Leyden, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, although transferred to a newer Amsterdam, clung with pride to their native land, damp though it was in every pore; and that the square _vrouw_ gratefully preserved her family recollections along with her thickly quilted petticoats, her oleycooks, krulers, and her own dark, well-aired complexion.

The government of the settlement was, although commercial in its aims and purposes, very maternal, whether under the East India Company, which lasted until 1623, or under the West India Company, which then succeeded it with larger powers and authority. Under the last company Peter Minuit was sent out as the first governor, in 1625.

The same year some enterprising Hollanders courageously passed the East River, and bravely encountered the perils of a residence in Brooklyn, from whose Heights so many now look down upon the parent city of New York,—an unhappy type of our civilization in private life.

As yet all was serene in the infant colony of New Amsterdam, as if the lunar influence of the Half-Moon still shone upon its peaceful trade and growing profits. Invitations were sent to the people of Massachusetts Bay and their children in the valley of the Connecticut to come and take tea; and they in turn courteously asked the Amsterdamers to eat clam-chowder and pumpkin-pie, adding, however, at the bottom of the note, that they hoped, for reasons which they gave, that their guests would not bring with them any beaver-skins to swap with the Indians around Narragansett Bay.

The next year, 1626, Governor Minuit made a large real estate transaction, purchasing the whole island of Manhattan from the Indians for twenty-four dollars,—a deed without a name in the annals of American settlements. As the purchase embraced fourteen thousand square acres, we leave it to the millions of advanced juvenile readers who, we expect, will use this history in schools, to cipher out the price per acre; while a still more forward class might determine the amount of land which such a sum would now procure in Wall or Nassau Streets. In 1629 the Dutch West India Company, in order to entice the Van Rensselaers, Van Vechtens, Van Warts, Van Wycks, Brinkerhoofs, and other brown-colored dwellers at home, away from their tulip-beds, canals, and storks, to the growing young colony, promised to any fifty persons who would settle upon it a tract of land upon the Hudson River sixteen miles in length, annexing only two conditions,—that the settlers should purchase the lands of the Indians, and make due provision for the minister and school-teacher.

Under this promise four companies, headed each by a leader, or patroon, settled the southern half of the present State of Delaware; for the Dutch claim extended from Cape Henlopen on the south to Cape Cod.

The next year an agent of the Van Rensselaers purchased a tract twelve miles square below Albany, paying for it in goods,—a tract which had many blank pages, over which contentious pens have been scribbling, sometimes with red ink, within the living memory of our readers.

With prosperity came, as usual, care and trouble. Complaints were made of Minuit. The Yankees on the east, and the Swedes on the Delaware, were jealous of Dutch rule, and stickled for their own institutions, political and social. The fort, established by Minuit at Hartford, was like a piano-forte in an inconvenient place, strongly objected to, and its airs raised a brisk breeze around it.

Finally, in 1633, Peter was requested to give up his stewardship; and Wouter van Twiller, or the Doubter, took the seals of office and all the other seals he could lay hands on. Minuit could not, however, remain quiet. Office, as usual, had produced a restlessness which office medicine only could cure. He went to Europe, and brought out a company of Swedes, and settled with them at Christiana, near Wilmington, naming the place after the girlish Queen of Sweden. The prolific Swedes spread northwards, and gratefully named their territory New Sweden,—a territory stretching, defiant of New Netherlands, and planting its northern line as near as Trenton. The Doubter was too undecided to face their decided advances; and was replaced, in 1638, by William Kieft, the third overseer of the Dutch plantations.

One of Kieft’s first acts was to protest against the Minuit, or Swedish jig, which Peter was dancing with his lively company on the Delaware. The protest was, like so many others since issued from New York, only made a note of, but left unheeded. Sharper protests, backed by bayonets and knapsacks provisioned with good long sausages, were, two years later, made against the Indians of Long Island, who, egged on by the Swedes of the south, and the sleek Pilgrims on the Connecticut, kindled their fires on Staten Island, and threatened to eat their omelets in New Amsterdam itself. For five long years were those Indian eggs and the colony over the fire. At last the Iroquois called away the coppery cooks, and the boiling waters simmered down again. The colony enlarged itself. Broom-corn waved along the Mohawk River; Dutch pigs were made into head-cheese in Schenectady; and Dutch cabbages, sweltered in large hogs-heads, came out sour-kraut for purple-colored families all up the valley, still so plentifully sprinkled with Dutch hamlets, baptized with genuine Holland names. The warm hearts of the colonists blunted Indian hostilities, as their thick heads, almost impenetrable to anything but three meals a day, defied their tomahawks.

In 1647 Kieft was recalled, and Peter Stuyvesant reigned in his stead. His combustible temper was kept constantly crackling, like a bunch of fire-crackers, during the sixteen years he headed the Dutch settlements in America. His wooden leg, like Santa Anna’s in our own day, seemed ever stirring up the fires to renewed blazes. On all sides he was scorched. The wood, long seasoning, piled up by the colonists in Connecticut, and in the territory since divided up into Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, was kindled into a hot flame. Permission to the former, in 1650, to extend their settlements up to Oyster Bay on Long Island, and to Greenwich on the main-land, only whet their appetites for other kinds of oysters and new beds. Five years later, and the fiery Stuyvesant led a regiment of six hundred men against Christiana, and, reducing it to silence, brought his victorious troops back again; the colony now having a liberal supply of candidates for all its offices for that generation. Whether the burgomaster of New Amsterdam and the five scheppens took occasion of the return of these troops to vote themselves suppers, medals, and free rides around the island, is very doubtful, as contemporary accounts are mute on the subject.

At last even Dutch patience became weary of wars with the Indians and disputes with all the neighboring colonies. The growing political privileges, won by the vigilant perseverance of those colonies,—the right of representation in assemblies,—the larger immunities from home taxation, attracted their attention, so that in 1664, when Charles II. granted, however unjustly, to his brother, the Duke of York, the whole country, from the Connecticut River to the Delaware,—including, of course, the Dutch settlements,—and Nichols, the duke’s lieutenant, in September of that year, anchoring before New Amsterdam, asked the peppery Stuyvesant to hand over, the wishes of the inhabitants for change was so great, that the governor, although disposed to resist, found no backers; and so, after stumping around for several hours among his councillors, was obliged to cut his stick into a pen, and sign a document, transferring the American Empire of their High Mightinesses, the States General, to the royal English Duke. So ended the political dominion of Holland in America. The iron feet of the statue were, however, firmly planted on the soil of New York, although the upper parts of the figure have been cast in other metals, and moulded by Saxon, Celtic, Teutonic, and Gallic hands.

The last Dutch governor, let us add, gracefully submitted to the English sway, living in his ample house in the Bowery until his death, happy in his farm, which then grew chestnuts instead of men, and was tracked by cows and calves, sheep and lambs, instead of the iron tracks which now spike New York to its rocky bed, whose sheets are balance sheets, and whose covering is the dirty blankets which its unconscientious Mrs. Gamps throw over her.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW JERSEY.

A spirited Sketch of the Way in which it was done, and the Results.

NEW JERSEY SETTLED.
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