Dutch and English on the Hudson Part 2

I suspect, however, that the evening hours of these tenants at Rensselaerswyck were spent in anxious keeping of accounts with a wholesome fear of the patroon before the eyes of the accountants. Life on the _bouweries_ was by no means inexpensive, even according to modern standards. Bearing in mind that a stiver was equivalent to two cents of {43} our currency and a florin to forty cents, it is easy to calculate the cost of living in the decade between 1630 and 1640 as set down in the accounts of Rensselaerswyck. A blanket cost eight florins, a hat ten florins, an iron anvil one hundred florins, a musket and cartouche box nineteen florins, a copper sheep's bell one florin and six stivers. On the other hand all domestic produce was cheap, because the tenant and patroon preferred to dispose of it in the settlements rather than by transporting it to New Amsterdam. We learn with envy that b.u.t.ter was only eight stivers or sixteen cents per pound, a pair of fowl two florins, a beaver twenty-five florins.

How hard were the terms on which the tenants held their leases is apparent from a report written by the guardians and tutors of Jan Van Rensselaer, a later patroon of Rensselaerswyck. The patroon reserved to himself the tenth of all grains, fruits, and other products raised on the _bouwerie_. The tenant was bound, in addition to his rent of five hundred guilders or two hundred dollars, to keep up the roads, repair the buildings, cut ten pieces of oak or fir wood, and bring the same to the sh.o.r.e; he must also every year give to the patroon three days' service with his horses and wagon; {44} each year he was to cut, split, and bring to the waterside two fathoms of firewood; and he was further to deliver yearly to the Director as quit-rent two bushels of wheat, twenty-five pounds of b.u.t.ter, and two pairs of fowls.

It was the difficult task of the agent of the colony to harmonize the constant hostilities between the patroon and his "people." Van Curler's letter to Kiliaen Van Rensselaer begins: "Laus Deo! At the Manhattans this 16th June, 1643, Most honorable, wise, powerful, and right discreet Lord, my Lord Patroon--." After which propitiatory beginning it embarks at once on a reply to the reproaches which the honorable, wise, and powerful Lord has heaped upon his obedient servant. Van Curler admits that the accounts and books have not been forwarded to Holland as they should have been; but he pleads the difficulty of securing returns from the tenants, whom he finds slippery in their accounting. "Everything they have laid out on account of the Lord Patroon they well know how to specify for what was expended. But what has been laid out for their private use, that they know nothing about."

If the patroon's relations with his tenants were th.o.r.n.y, he had no less trouble in his dealings with {45} the Director-General at New Amsterdam. It is true, Peter Minuit, the first important Director, was removed in 1632 by the Company for unduly favoring the patroons, and Van Twiller, another Director and a nephew of Van Rensselaer by marriage, was not disposed to antagonize his relative; but when Van Twiller was replaced by Kieft, and he in turn by Stuyvesant, the horizon at Rensselaerswyck grew stormy. In 1643 the patroon ordered Nicholas Coorn to fortify Beeren or Bears Island, and to demand a toll of each ship, except those of the West India Company, that pa.s.sed up and down the river. He also required that the colors on every ship be lowered in pa.s.sing Rensselaer's Stein or Castle Rensselaer, as the fort on the steep little island was named.

Govert Loockermans, sailing down the river one day on the ship _Good Hope_, failed to salute the flag, whereupon a lively dialogue ensued to the following effect, and not, we may be a.s.sured, carried on in low or amicable tones:

_Coorn_: "Lower your colors!"

_Loockermans_: "For whom should I?"

_Coorn_: "For the staple-right of Rensselaerswyck."

_Loockermans_: "I lower my colors for no one {46} except the Prince of Orange and the Lords my masters."

The practical result of this interchange of amenities was a shot which tore the mainsail of the _Good Hope_, "perforated the princely flag,"

and so enraged the skipper that on his arrival at New Amsterdam he hastened to lay his grievance before the Council, who thereupon ordered Coorn to behave with more civility.

The patroon system was from the beginning doomed to failure. As we study the old doc.u.ments 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. The reason for the discontent which prevailed is not far to seek, and all cla.s.ses were responsible for it, for they combined in planting an anachronistic feudalism in a new country, which was dedicated by its very physical conditions to liberty and democracy. The settlers came from a nation which had battled {47} through long years in the cause of freedom.

They found themselves in a colony adjoining those of Englishmen who had braved the perils of the wilderness to establish the same principles of liberty and democracy. No sane mind could have expected the Dutch colonists to return without protest to a medieval system of government.

When the English took possession of New Netherland in 1664, the old patroonships were confirmed as manorial grants from England. As time went on, many new manors were erected until, when the province was finally added to England in 1674, "The Lords of the Manor" along the Hudson had taken on the proportions of a landed aristocracy. On the lower reaches of the river lay the Van Cortlandt and Philipse Manors, the first containing 85,000 acres and a house so firmly built that it is still standing with its walls of freestone, three feet thick. The Philipse Manor, at Tarrytown, represented the remarkable achievement of a self-made man, born in the Old World and a carpenter by trade, who rose in the New World to fortune and eminence. By dint of business ac.u.men and by marrying two heiresses in succession he achieved wealth, and built "Castle Philipse" and the picturesque little church at Sleepy Hollow, {48} still in use. Farther up the river lay the Livingston Manor. In 1685 Robert Livingston was granted by Governor Dongan a patent of a tract half way between New York and Rensselaerswyck, across the river from the Catskills and covering many thousand acres.

But the estate of which we know most, thanks to the records left by Mrs. Grant of Laggan in her _Memoirs of an American Lady_, written in the middle of the eighteenth century, is that belonging to the Schuylers at "the Flats" near Albany, which runs along the western bank of the Hudson for two miles and is bordered with sweeping elm trees.

The mansion consisted of two stories and an attic. Through the middle of the house ran a wide pa.s.sage from the front to the back door. At the front door was a large _stoep_, open at the sides and with seats around it. One room was open for company. The other apartments were bedrooms, a drawing-room being an unheard-of luxury. "The house fronted the river, on the brink of which, under shades of elm and sycamore, ran the great road toward Saratoga, Stillwater, and the northern lakes." Adjoining the orchard was a huge barn raised from the ground by beams which rested on stone and held up a ma.s.sive oak {49} floor. On one side ran a manger. Cattle and horses stood in rows with their heads toward the threshing-floor. "There was a prodigious large box or open chest in one side built up, for holding the corn after it was threshed, and the roof which was very lofty and s.p.a.cious was supported by large cross beams. From one to the other of these was stretched a great number of long poles so as to form a sort of open loft, on which the whole rich crop was laid up."

Altogether it is an attractive picture of peace and plenty, of hospitality and simple luxury, that is drawn by this visitor to the Schuyler homestead. We see through her eyes its carpeted winter rooms, its hall covered with tiled oilcloth and hung with family portraits, its vine-covered _stoeps_, provided with ledges for the birds, and affording "pleasant views of the winding river and the distant hills."

Such a picture relieves pleasantly the arid waste of historical statistics.

But the reader who dwells too long on the picturesque aspects of manors and patroonships is likely to forget that New Netherland was peopled for the most part by colonists who were neither patroons nor lords of manors. It was the small proprietors who eventually predominated on western {50} Long Island, on Staten Island, and along the Hudson. "In the end," it has been well said, "this form of grant played a more important part in the development of the province than did the larger fiefs for which such detailed provision was made."

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CHAPTER IV

THE DIRECTORS

The first Director-General of the colony, Captain Cornelis May, was removed by only a generation from those "Beggars of the Sea" whom the Spaniard held in such contempt; but this mendicant had begged to such advantage that the sea granted him a n.o.ble river to explore and a cape at its mouth to preserve his name to posterity. It is upon his discoveries along the South River, later called the Delaware, and not upon his record as Director of New Netherland, that his t.i.tle to fame must rest. a.s.sociated with him was Tienpont, who appears to have been a.s.signed to the North River while May a.s.sumed personal supervision of the South. May acted as the agent of the West India Company for one year only (1624-1625), and was followed in office by Verhulst (1625-1626), who bequeathed his name to Verhulsten Island, in the Delaware River, and then quietly pa.s.sed out of history.

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Neither of these officials left any permanent impress on the history of the colony. It was therefore a day of vast importance to the dwellers on the North River, and especially to the little group of settlers on Manhattan Island, when the _Meeuwken_ dropped her anchor in the harbor in May, 1626, and her small boat landed Peter Minuit, Director-General of New Netherland, a Governor who had come to govern. Minuit, though registered as "of Wesel," Germany, was of Huguenot ancestry, and is reported to have spoken French, Dutch, German, and English. He proved a tactful and efficient ruler, and the new system of government took form under the Director and Council, the _koopman_, who was commercial agent and secretary, and a _schout_ who performed the duties of sheriff and public prosecutor.

Van Wa.s.senaer, the son of a _domine_ in Amsterdam, gives us a report of the colony as it existed under Minuit. He writes of a counting-house built of stone and thatched with reeds, of thirty ordinary houses on the east side of the river, and a horse-mill yet unfinished over which is to be constructed a s.p.a.cious room to serve as a temporary church and to be decorated with bells captured at the sack of San Juan de Porto Rico in 1625 by the Dutch fleet. {53} According to this chronicler, every one in New Netherland who fills no public office is busy with his own affairs. One trades, one builds houses, another plants farms.

Each farmer pastures the cows under his charge on the _bouwerie_ of the Company, which also owns the cattle; but the milk is the property of the farmer, who sells it to the settlers. "The houses of settlers," he says, "are now outside the fort; but when that is finished they will all remove within, in order to garrison it and be safe from sudden attack."

One of Minuit's first acts as Director was the purchase of Manhattan Island, covering some twenty-two thousand acres, for merchandise valued at sixty guilders or twenty-four dollars. He thus secured the land at the rate of approximately ten acres for one cent. A good bargain, Peter Minuit! The transaction was doubly effective in placating the savages, or the _wilden_, as the settlers called them, and in establishing the Dutch claim as against the English by urging rights both of discovery and of purchase.

In spite of the goodwill manifested by the natives, the settlers were constantly anxious lest some conspiracy might suddenly break out. Van Wa.s.senaer, reporting the news from the colony as {54} it reached him in Amsterdam, wrote in 1626 that Pieter Barentsen was to be sent to command Fort Orange, and that the families were to be brought down the river, sixteen men without women being left to garrison the fort. Two years later he wrote that there were no families at Fort Orange, all having been brought down the river. Only twenty-five or twenty-six traders remained and Krol, who had been vice-director there since 1626.

Minuit showed true statesmanship by following conciliation with a show of strength against hostile powers on every hand. He had brought with him a competent engineer, Kryn Frederycke, or Fredericksen, who had been an officer in the army of Prince Maurice. With his help Minuit laid out Fort Amsterdam on what was then the tip of Manhattan Island, the green park which forms the end of the island today being then under water. Fredericksen found material and labor so scarce that he could plan at first only a blockhouse surrounded by palisades of red cedar strengthened with earthworks. The fort was completed in 1626, and at the close of the year a settlement called New Amsterdam had grown up around it and had been made the capital of New Netherland.

During the building of the fort there occurred {55} an episode fraught with serious consequences. A friendly Indian of the Weckquaesgeeck tribe came with his nephew to traffic at Fort Amsterdam. Three servants of Minuit fell upon the Indian, robbed him, and murdered him.

The nephew, then but a boy, escaped to his tribe and vowed a vengeance which he wreaked in blood nearly a score of years later.

Minuit's preparations for war were not confined to land fortification.

In 1627 the hearts of the colonists were gladdened by a great victory of the Dutch over the Spanish, when, in a battle off San Salvador, Peter Heyn demolished twenty-six Spanish warships. On the 5th of September the same bold sailor captured the whole of the Spanish silver-fleet with spoils amounting to twelve million guilders. In the following year the gallant commander, then a lieutenant-admiral, died in battle on the deck of his ship. The States-General sent to his old peasant mother a message of condolence, to which she replied: "Ay, I thought that would be the end of him. He was always a vagabond; but I did my best to correct him. He got no more than he deserved."

It was perhaps the echo of naval victories like these which prompted Minuit to embark upon a {56} shipbuilding project of great magnitude for that time. Two Belgian shipbuilders arrived in New Amsterdam and asked the help of the Director in constructing a large vessel. Minuit, seeing the opportunity to advertise the resources of the colony, agreed to give his a.s.sistance and the result was that the _New Netherland_, a ship of eight hundred tons carrying thirty guns, was built and launched.

This enterprise cost more than had been expected and the bills were severely criticized by the West India Company, already dissatisfied with Minuit on the ground that he had favored the interests of the patroons, who claimed the right of unrestricted trade within their estates, as against the interests of the Company. Urged by many complaints, the States-General set on foot an investigation of the Director, the patroons, and the West India Company itself, with the result that in 1632 Minuit was recalled and the power of the patroons was limited. New Netherland had not yet seen the last of Peter Minuit, however. Angry and embittered, he entered the service of Sweden and returned later to vex the Dutch colony.

In the interval between Minuit's departure and the arrival of Van Twiller, the reins of authority {57} were held by Sebastian Krol, whose name is memorable chiefly for the fact that he had been influential in purchasing the domain of Rensselaerswyck for its patroon (1630) and the tradition that the cruller, _crolyer_ or _krolyer_, was so called in his honor. The Company's selection of a permanent successor to Minuit was not happy. Wouter Van Twiller, nephew of Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, must have owed his appointment as Director to family influence, since neither his career nor his reputation justified the choice.

David de Vries, writing on April 16, 1633, notes that on arriving about noon before Fort Amsterdam he found there a ship called the _Soutbergh_ which had brought over the new Governor, Wouter Van Twiller, a former clerk in the West India House at Amsterdam. De Vries gives his opinion of Van Twiller in no uncertain terms. He expressed his own surprise that the West India Company should send fools into this country who knew nothing except how to drink, and quotes an Englishman as saying that he could not understand the unruliness among the officers of the Company and that a governor should have no more control over them.

For the personal appearance of this "Walter {58} the Doubter," we must turn again to the testimony of Knickerbocker, whose mocking descriptions have obtained a quasi-historical authority:

This renowned old gentleman arrived at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June.... He was exactly five feet six inches in height and six feet five inches in circ.u.mference. His head was a perfect sphere and of such stupendous dimensions that Dame Nature, with all her s.e.x's ingenuity would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it: Wherefore she wisely declined the attempt and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone just between the shoulders.... His legs were short but st.u.r.dy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression.... His habits were regular. He daily took his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each; he smoked and doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the four-and-twenty.

A later historian, taking up the cudgels in behalf of the Director, resents Knickerbocker's impeachment and protests that "so far from being the aged, fat and overgrown person represented in caricature Van Twiller was youthful and inexperienced, and his faults were those of a young {59} man unused to authority and hampered by his instructions."[1]

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 ma.s.sacres 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 cost of building the fort {60} was more than justifiable. To have neglected the defenses would have been culpable; and the barracks built for the hundred and four soldiers whom he had brought over from the Fatherland may also be set down as necessary. But when the Company was groaning under the expenses of the colony, it was, to say the least, lacking in tact to build for himself the most elaborate house in New Netherland, besides erecting on one of the Company's _bouweries_ a house, a barn, a boathouse, and a brewery, to say nothing of planting another farm with tobacco, working it with slave labor at the Company's expense, and appropriating the profits.

In the year 1688, after he had been five years in office, the outcry against Van Twiller for misfeasance, malfeasance, and especially nonfeasance, grew too loud to be ignored, and he was recalled; but before he left New Netherland he bought Nooten or Nut Island, since called Governor's Island, and also two other islands in the East River.

At the time of his marriage in 1643, Van Twiller was in command of a competence attained at the expense of the West India Company, and there is much excuse for the feeling of his employers that he had been more active in his own affairs than in theirs.

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The princ.i.p.al service which he had rendered to the Company in his term of office was the establishment of "staple right" at New Amsterdam, compelling all ships trading on the coast or the North River to pay tolls or unload their cargoes on the Company's property. But on the reverse side of the account we must remember that he allowed the fort to fall into such decay that when Kieft arrived in 1638 he found the defenses, which had been finished only three years before, already in a shamefully neglected condition, the guns dismounted, the public buildings inside the walls in ruins, and the walls of the fort itself so beaten down that any one might enter at will, "save at the stone point."

The hopes of the colonists rose again with the coming of a new governor; but the appointment of Kieft reflected as little credit as that of Van Twiller upon the sagacity of the West India Company. The man now chosen to rule New Netherland was a narrow-minded busybody, eager to interfere in small matters and without the statesmanship required to conduct large affairs. Some of his activities, it is true, had practical value. He fixed the hours at which the colonists should go to bed and ordered the curfew to be rung at nine o'clock; {62} he established two annual fairs to be held on the present Bowling Green, one in October for cattle and one in November for hogs; and he built a new stone church within the fort, operated a brewery, founded a hostelry, and planted orchards and gardens. But on the other side of the account he was responsible for a b.l.o.o.d.y war with the Indians which came near to wrecking the colony.

His previous record held scant promise for his success as a governor.

He had failed as a merchant in Roch.e.l.le, for which offense his portrait had been affixed to a gallows. Such a man was a poor person to be put in control of the complicated finances of New Netherland and of the delicate relations between the colonists and the Indians--relations calling for infinite tact, wisdom, firmness, and forbearance.

The natives in the region of New Amsterdam were increasingly irritated by the encroachments of the whites. They complained that stray cows spoiled their unfenced cornfields and that various other depredations endangered their crops. To add to this irritation Kieft proposed to tax the natives for the protection afforded them by the Fort, which was now being repaired at large expense. The situation, already bad enough, was {63} further complicated by Kieft's clumsy handling of an altercation on Staten Island. Some pigs were stolen, by servants of the Company as appeared later; but the offense was charged to the Raritan Indians. Without waiting to make investigations Kieft sent out a punitive expedition of seventy men, who attacked the innocent natives, killed a number of them, and laid waste their crops. This stupid and wicked attack still further exasperated the Indians, who in the high tide of mid-summer saw their lands laid bare and their homes desolated by the wanton hand of the intruders.

Some months later the trouble between the whites and the red men was brought to a head by an unforeseen tragedy. A savage came to Claes Smits, _radenmaker_ or wheelwright, to trade beaver for duffel cloth.

As Claes stooped down to take out the duffel from a chest, the Indian seized an axe which chanced to stand near by and struck the wheelwright on the neck, killing him instantly. The murderer then stole the goods from the chest and fled to the forest.

When Kieft sent to the tribe of the Weckquaesgeecks to inquire the cause of this murder and to demand the slayer, the Indian told the chief that he had seen his uncle robbed and killed at the fort {64} while it was being built; that he himself had escaped and had vowed revenge; and that the unlucky Claes was the first white man upon whom he had a chance to wreak vengeance. The chief then replied to the Director that he was sorry that twenty Christians had not been killed and that the Indian had done only a pious duty in avenging his uncle.