The Island at the Center of the World Part 2

Beyond the sea that stretched in front of the settlers, then, the world was turning. Heyn's deed seemed proof that the body of the Spanish Empire was in decay. Half a world away on the island of Java, Dutchman Jan Pieterszoon Coen was undertaking an oriental version of Minuit's project: the building of a city (Batavia: the modern Jakarta) in an inhospitable wilderness that would be the base for Dutch trade in southeast Asia. In Frankfurt, meanwhile, William Harvey published his Exercitatio Anatomica De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus, Exercitatio Anatomica De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus, spelling out his theories on the circulation of the blood, while in Italy the physician Santorio Santorio developed the trick of measuring body temperature using a thermometer. The methodical Dutch system of communication (missives went in duplicate or triplicate on different ships) was slow but ensured that news got through; thanks to it, the Manhattanites knew of developments in the wider world and felt themselves a part of it. spelling out his theories on the circulation of the blood, while in Italy the physician Santorio Santorio developed the trick of measuring body temperature using a thermometer. The methodical Dutch system of communication (missives went in duplicate or triplicate on different ships) was slow but ensured that news got through; thanks to it, the Manhattanites knew of developments in the wider world and felt themselves a part of it.

To the north, the Pilgrim colony was limping along, and Minuit, feeling flush and expansive, decided it was time to establish contact. He sent letters of friendship, along with "a rundlet of sugar, and two Holland cheeses." William Bradford, governor of the struggling English colony, replied with thanks, adding that they were sorry they "must remain your debtors till another time, not having any thing to send you for the present that may be acceptable." Shortly after, Isaack de Rasiere sailed to New Plymouth in person as official envoy of New Netherland, appearing in the Pilgrims' midst with "a noise of trumpets" (the Manhattanites feeling a bit of show was called for) and bringing with him "some cloth of three sorts and colours, and a chest of white sugar," as well as something the English had little acquaintance with, but which the New Amsterdam traders had become proficient in: belts of strung beads made of seash.e.l.l, called sewant sewant by the Algonquins, otherwise known as wampum. by the Algonquins, otherwise known as wampum.

At about this time, and perhaps none too soon, a man of G.o.d arrived at Manhattan. But if the settlers expected leadership and encouragement from the colony's first minister they were to be disappointed. The Reverend Jonas Michaelius might well have won a contest for the moodiest, b.i.t.c.hiest resident of New Amsterdam. In his bitter letters home he complained about the voyage, the settlers ("rough and unrestrained"), the climate, the natives ("entirely savage and wild, strangers to all decency, yeah, uncivil and stupid as garden poles, proficient in all wickedness and G.o.dlessness; devilish men, who serve n.o.body but the Devil"), and the food ("scanty and poor"). "I cannot say whether or not I shall remain here any longer after the three years [of his contract] shall have expired," he wrote home, adding, "we lead a hard and sober existence like poor people." Michaelius could be excused to some extent for his bitterness: the voyage to the new world had taken his pregnant, sickly wife, leaving him alone to care for their two young daughters.

For the time being, New Amsterdam was a free trade port. The company allowed freelance businessmen to strike deals with the Indians provided the company itself was the middle man that would resell furs in Europe. Business was being conducted in half a dozen languages; Dutch guilders, beaver skins, and Indian wampum were the common currencies. In a culture based on cheese and b.u.t.ter, cows were also a highly valued and tradable commodity.

But while beaver furs by the thousands were arriving at the West India Company's warehouse on the Amsterdam waterfront, the settlement was far from turning a profit. The directors wanted their North America colony to repay their investment the way Caribbean salt colonies were doing, and a split formed in the board over how to make it happen. Some of the directors argued that the colony would never work properly without a ma.s.sive influx of settlers, and that the best way to get people to go there was by allowing wealthy men to establish plantations there. In return for these estates, each patron (patroon (patroon in Dutch) would transport a population of farmers, smiths, masons, wheelwrights, bakers, chandlers, and other workers. The directors who favored this scheme proposed themselves as patroons. The other directors thought it was a stupid idea, one that would essentially carve the colony into small fiefs and add to the difficulty of dealing with pirates and renegade traders. Peter Minuit injected himself into this argument, supporting the patroon faction. The Rev. Michaelius took the other side and fired off a raft of letters branding Minuit as a dark force who was in the process of cheating the directors. He managed to convince them that the situation was dire enough that, in 1631, they recalled both Minuit and Michaelius to Holland. They ordered Krol, the lay minister who had been left in charge of Fort Orange, to serve as provisional director of the colony. in Dutch) would transport a population of farmers, smiths, masons, wheelwrights, bakers, chandlers, and other workers. The directors who favored this scheme proposed themselves as patroons. The other directors thought it was a stupid idea, one that would essentially carve the colony into small fiefs and add to the difficulty of dealing with pirates and renegade traders. Peter Minuit injected himself into this argument, supporting the patroon faction. The Rev. Michaelius took the other side and fired off a raft of letters branding Minuit as a dark force who was in the process of cheating the directors. He managed to convince them that the situation was dire enough that, in 1631, they recalled both Minuit and Michaelius to Holland. They ordered Krol, the lay minister who had been left in charge of Fort Orange, to serve as provisional director of the colony.

Minuit was filled with rage as he climbed on board the ironically named Unity, Unity, his gall only increased by the knowledge that he would have to spend the two-month journey in close confines with Michaelius. He had gone far since leaving the little German town where he was raised, and he wasn't about to take this interruption in his career lightly. In five years he had established a rough but real outpost of European civilization on the edge of a limitless wilderness. He had made peace with the Mohawks to the north following the unfortunate Van Crieckenbeeck incident, forging an alliance that would last through the whole of the colony's existence. He had bought Manhattan and Staten islands as well as huge tracts along the Hudson River and around the bay of the South (Delaware) River from their native inhabitants while also managing to keep good relations with them. In so doing, he had outlined the perimeters of a New World province that occupied a considerable chunk of the Atlantic coast of North America, extending from the future state of Delaware in the south to the city of Albany in the north, and established a trade that sent more than fifty-two thousand furs to Amsterdam. Most important, he had pinpointed and begun to develop the colony's capital, a place whose natural strategic importance was by now apparent to him and his fellow Manhattanites, but which the West India Company directors would realize only belatedly. Even the vengeful Michaelius, for all his complaints about the place, could see this. "True," he had admitted in wone of his bilious letters home, "this island is the key and princ.i.p.al stronghold of the country." his gall only increased by the knowledge that he would have to spend the two-month journey in close confines with Michaelius. He had gone far since leaving the little German town where he was raised, and he wasn't about to take this interruption in his career lightly. In five years he had established a rough but real outpost of European civilization on the edge of a limitless wilderness. He had made peace with the Mohawks to the north following the unfortunate Van Crieckenbeeck incident, forging an alliance that would last through the whole of the colony's existence. He had bought Manhattan and Staten islands as well as huge tracts along the Hudson River and around the bay of the South (Delaware) River from their native inhabitants while also managing to keep good relations with them. In so doing, he had outlined the perimeters of a New World province that occupied a considerable chunk of the Atlantic coast of North America, extending from the future state of Delaware in the south to the city of Albany in the north, and established a trade that sent more than fifty-two thousand furs to Amsterdam. Most important, he had pinpointed and begun to develop the colony's capital, a place whose natural strategic importance was by now apparent to him and his fellow Manhattanites, but which the West India Company directors would realize only belatedly. Even the vengeful Michaelius, for all his complaints about the place, could see this. "True," he had admitted in wone of his bilious letters home, "this island is the key and princ.i.p.al stronghold of the country."

On a cold day in early 1632, then, Minuit stood on the deck of a ship laden with five thousand furs, fruits of the new world bound to warm the old, looking out on a sullen, wintry ocean, and plotting his defense. He had no idea of the rude detour that fate was about to deliver to him, or to the colony he had coaxed into being.

Chapter 4.

THE KING, THE SURGEON, THE TURK,.

AND THE Wh.o.r.e.

Charles I, king of England, regarded horses and Dutchmen with something like equal and opposite intensity. As the famous equestrian portrait of Charles by Anthony Van Dyck and the mounted statue of him in Trafalgar Square in London suggest, he was never more at ease than when in the saddle. His devotion to racing was such that he spent a good portion of every year at Newmarket, site of the country's most important turf event. In the year 1632 he came early, leaving London in mid-February for the arduous sixty-mile journey. ("Ess.e.x miles" were said to be longer than standard, since the roads in that corner of England were in particularly bad repair.) It was a major undertaking because when the king went to Newmarket, so did everyone else: the political, military, and economic leadership of the country, as well as the king's household (his personal physician, William Harvey, did his historic work on the circulation of the blood while attending Charles at Newmarket). Charles was almost religiously devoted to splendor, and his Newmarket banquets had already become legendary, even infamous: in a single racing season, 7,000 sheep, 6,800 lambs, and 1,500 oxen would be consumed at the eighty-six tables set daily. When not viewing the heats or entertaining, he spent his days at the retreat hunting, playing tennis, or visiting his favorite horses in their stables.

As to the Dutch, he despised them. For that matter, he couldn't stand French people (never mind that he was married to one) and he considered the Scots, of whom he was one by birth, such irritants that he encouraged as many of them as possible to emigrate to Canada. But the Dutch irked him in several special ways. They were engaged in a vigorous revolt, one that they hoped would, through bloodshed, throw off a monarchy and replace it with a republic. Charles pa.s.sionately upheld the notion of the divine right of kings and he considered republicanism to be a form of ma.s.s hysteria. Of course he believed in freedom for his subjects, he famously explained, ". . . but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consist in having having government. . . . It is not their having a government. . . . It is not their having a share share in government; that is nothing appertaining to them." (He gave this explanation to the crowd gathered to watch his beheading.) He was now in the midst of what would become known as the Personal Rule, the eleven-year period in which, having dismissed Parliament because it quarreled with him, he governed on his own. During this time he would grow steadily isolated from his country, the court becoming more insular and the king's spending and partying progressively more lavish, as members of Parliament fumed and the ma.s.ses moved toward open rebellion. It would end with his worst nightmare coming true: revolt, and his beheading. in government; that is nothing appertaining to them." (He gave this explanation to the crowd gathered to watch his beheading.) He was now in the midst of what would become known as the Personal Rule, the eleven-year period in which, having dismissed Parliament because it quarreled with him, he governed on his own. During this time he would grow steadily isolated from his country, the court becoming more insular and the king's spending and partying progressively more lavish, as members of Parliament fumed and the ma.s.ses moved toward open rebellion. It would end with his worst nightmare coming true: revolt, and his beheading.

While Charles thought the Dutch rebels mad and dangerous, there was the additional annoyance that currently, in ports around the world, Dutch merchant fleets were giving their English counterparts a thorough spanking. The Dutch were in the process of muscling the English out of the richest source of commerce, the East Indies; Dutch ships now controlled much of the world's trade in sugar, spices, and textiles. Ironically, Charles was hamstrung by his own authoritarian rule: having dismissed Parliament, he couldn't raise the funds he needed to compete.

Adding to his gall was the fact that, despite all of these irritations, Charles was forced to remain allied with the Dutch. Calvinism held sway in the Dutch provinces that were in revolt against Spain and, going back to Queen Elizabeth's time, England's policy had been to support the revolt in the name of Protestantism. But the alliance was weakening; Charles himself, the English leadership, and the ma.s.ses of the English people were turning against the Dutch, beginning to see them as the new threat.

Such was the situation, then, as Charles settled in to enjoy the racing season at Newmarket in March of 1632. There was the deep thud of hooves beating the earth, the roar of the crowd, the bright flash of pennants against the sky. The king was in his element, richly dressed, with flowing chestnut hair and tapered fawn-colored beard (the original Van Dyck), casting a discerning eye over the favorites, placing bets with the Earl of Pembroke, whom everyone knew had a bit of a gambling problem. Surely the last thing on earth Charles would care for here was a distracting, importuning emba.s.sy from the upstart Dutch Republic. When Albert Joachimi, the old and dignified amba.s.sador from the States General, rode into Newmarket, asking for an audience, Charles's first reaction was probably to recoil and send him away. But in the current international climate that would have been a political blunder; eventually he agreed to see the man.

The amba.s.sador began the meeting blathering diplomatically and at length about the long friendship between the two nations, which he said had recently been disrupted by "the enemy" seeking "to foment some misunderstanding." Charles understood perfectly well the subtext of the man's complaint and was no doubt amused by the purposely fuzzy use of "the enemy." It was true that for decades the English had aided the Dutch in their war on Spain. But two years before, also at Newmarket, Charles had received another emissary, from the Spanish court. This one he had welcomed-in fact, eagerly antic.i.p.ated, and it had altered the geopolitical landscape considerably.

Besides horses, Charles's other great and abiding love was for art. His personal collection, which included Raphaels, t.i.tians, Tintorettos, Mantegnas, and Correggios, added both to his royal l.u.s.ter and, because of its staggering cost, to the simmering hatred for him among certain segments of the populace. The fact that, in his collecting, he had become amiable pen pals with the Pope, who had given him paintings from the Vatican collection, only increased Puritan suspicion of him. By now Philip IV, the king of Spain, whose resources were nearly exhausted by the Dutch revolt, wanted very much for England to end its support to the United Provinces. In a stroke of ingenuity that historians have credited to his wife, Philip chose as his emissary to persuade Charles to sign a peace treaty Peter Paul Rubens, the most famous and sought-after artist in Europe. Rubens, who was also something of a politician, considered himself a loyal Dutchman, but he came from Antwerp, in the Catholic-dominated southern provinces, which had chosen not to break with Spain. As Rubens gathered with Philip in Madrid to discuss the mission, his own hope was that if Charles were to end English hostilities with Spain the rebel Dutch provinces would give up on their ruinous rebellion, and the north and south would reunite. He agreed to the mission.

In England, Charles greeted Rubens with delight. He commissioned the artist to paint the ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace, newly built by Inigo Jones in the modern, forward-looking Palladian style. The central panel of the completed ceiling (today, the only work of Rubens still in its intended position) epitomized Charles's ardent monarchic beliefs: amid a swirling stew of cherubs, his father, James, divine kingship personified, rises to heaven. Proving that the English have always had a sardonic wit, Charles's subjects later executed him outside this very room.

Rubens also introduced Charles to his pupil, Anthony Van Dyck, who became Charles's court painter; it is thanks to him that we have a gallery of portraits capturing the king's every mood and manner. Charles knighted both men. He also signed a peace treaty with Spain-another step in the movement between England and the Dutch Republic away from friendship and toward confrontation. Rubens was elated and went next to visit his countryman, Amba.s.sador Joachimi, in London, hoping to persuade him that now the best hope for a unified Dutch Republic was for the rebel government to seek terms with Spain. But Rubens seriously underestimated the resolve of the northern provinces. Joachimi was as much a rebel as those he served, and told the painter that the only way the provinces would unify would be if those in the south joined in the war. (They did not and eventually the Catholic southern provinces became the nation of Belgium.) It was against this backdrop of England's recent peace treaty with Spain that Joachimi now approached Charles, amid the stamping and whinnying of Newmarket. In using the phrase "the enemy" in relation to both the English and the Dutch, he was implying that, recent treaties aside, Protestants still had to stick together in the face of the universal foe of Catholicism. ("We cannot perceive that his Majesty is indisposed towards us," Joachimi wrote to the States General after his audience, "because we have neither Saints nor Festivals, wherein the Spanish nation is very superst.i.tious.") Specifically, the amba.s.sador wanted the king to put a stop to a recent disturbing practice. Since England's treaty with Spain, Spanish ships that had been captured by Dutch privateers were being seized when they entered English ports, contrary to long-standing agreement between the two nations.

The king heard the man out, and with great decorum dodged the issue. Joachimi went away empty-handed.

Less than two weeks later, however, Charles, just returned to Whitehall, was forced to deal with the man yet again. This time Joachimi's diplomatic reserve showed signs of cracking. There had been a new development. Another ship had been seized, but this was not a Spanish ship prized by the Dutch. It was a bona fide Dutch vessel, Joachimi informed the king, bound for Amsterdam from "a certain island named Manathans." Reports indicated that it carried five thousand furs, as well as the former director of the province of New Netherland.

At that moment, two hundred miles to the southwest, Peter Minuit sat in English custody, fuming. It wasn't enough that he had been (to his mind) unreasonably removed from his post, forced to abandon the colony he had coaxed into being and make the long, hazardous voyage home to defend his conduct. After two frigid months at sea, the Unity Unity had been caught in a storm off the coast of England and forced to make an emergency landfall at Plymouth. There, the courtesy of receiving a troubled ship from a friendly nation was not extended. Crowning the whole bitter turn of events that his life had taken, Minuit was taken prisoner. The only salve for him was the fact that his nemesis, the odious Reverend Michaelius, was also in English custody. had been caught in a storm off the coast of England and forced to make an emergency landfall at Plymouth. There, the courtesy of receiving a troubled ship from a friendly nation was not extended. Crowning the whole bitter turn of events that his life had taken, Minuit was taken prisoner. The only salve for him was the fact that his nemesis, the odious Reverend Michaelius, was also in English custody.

After word of the seizure reached the United Provinces, the leaders there were at first inclined to believe that, as one official wrote, "this intrigue was set on foot by the Spanish Amba.s.sador in England." But as more information came in, they learned that the English had taken possession of the Dutch vessel on the grounds that its cargo was illegally gotten in English territory. The Dutch were confused-their traders had not intruded on the English territory to the north of the Dutch colony. Surely, Amba.s.sador Joachimi now put it to His Majesty, there must be some mistake.

But this time Charles would leave no room for the amba.s.sador to be hopeful. Speaking with a lawyerly mix of precision and subtlety, the king told the man he understood there was some dispute over claims to the territory in question, and that he could not release the ship until he was certain of his rights in the matter. The "answer of his Majesty," Joachimi reported to his superiors, "though expressed in polite terms and with a friendly disposition, did not please us . . ."

Joachimi surely understood what underlay the sudden chill in relations. The Dutch had gained mastery over the East Indies trade. And Charles was also aware that New World colonies represented another source of wealth, though reaping it to full advantage was further in the future. He had recently given-as repayment of a favor-a vast tract of the Virginia territory to his father's friend and advisor, George Calvert, a.k.a. Baron Baltimore, which his son named Maryland apparently in honor of Charles's wife, Henrietta Maria. And Charles himself had backed the tobacco trade in Virginia.

But the English had a particular reason for going at the Dutch territory in North America just now. The whole swirl of geopolitical doings involving the two rising powers had recently crystallized in one event-one of those small, far-off, seemingly minor occurrences that would have historical echoes all out of proportion to its size. On one of the lucrative Spice Islands of the East Indies (today part of Indonesia), the island of Amboyna or Ambon, a b.l.o.o.d.y encounter had taken place recently between the Dutch and English. The Dutch had won control of the island and its clove trade, but a colony of English merchants was allowed to live and work there. Probably in retaliation for a recent English a.s.sault on Dutch ships in the Indies, Dutch soldiers there tortured and killed ten Englishmen, as well as several j.a.panese mercenaries, whom they accused of plotting to take over the fort. The English survivors insisted there had been no such plot, and that the Dutch behavior had been motivated by simple barbarity.

However outraged the English authorities may actually have been by the incident, they spun it ferociously for moral and political advantage. Pamphlets and books appeared in England, with t.i.tles like A True Relation of the Unjust, Cruel, and Barbarous Proceedings against the English at Amboyna, A True Relation of the Unjust, Cruel, and Barbarous Proceedings against the English at Amboyna, containing vivid, novelistic descriptions and graphic woodcut ill.u.s.trations of the varieties of torture the men had been subjected to, including both water and fire (". . . Johnson [was] brought againe to the torture," ran one breathless account, "where Beomont heard him for sometime cry aloud, then quiet again, then roare afresh. At last, after hee had beene about an houre in this second examination, hee was brought forth wailing and lamenting, all wet, and cruelly burnt in divers parts of his body . . ."). So great was the uproar over these accounts that, in addition to lamenting the seizure of the containing vivid, novelistic descriptions and graphic woodcut ill.u.s.trations of the varieties of torture the men had been subjected to, including both water and fire (". . . Johnson [was] brought againe to the torture," ran one breathless account, "where Beomont heard him for sometime cry aloud, then quiet again, then roare afresh. At last, after hee had beene about an houre in this second examination, hee was brought forth wailing and lamenting, all wet, and cruelly burnt in divers parts of his body . . ."). So great was the uproar over these accounts that, in addition to lamenting the seizure of the Unity, Unity, Joachimi complained about them as well in his audience with Charles. The amba.s.sador wanted the king to understand that the Dutch considered these books to be slanderous, "the tendency whereof is only to excite the temper of one people against the other." But the king would do nothing to stop their dissemination, and so, entering the battle for public opinion in England, the Dutch countered with pamphlets of their own, printed in English, with which they flooded the English market, giving their side of the affair. (They denied burning the men, but admitted using water torture as "the most a.s.sured and civill" and "a thing customable throughout Europe.") Joachimi complained about them as well in his audience with Charles. The amba.s.sador wanted the king to understand that the Dutch considered these books to be slanderous, "the tendency whereof is only to excite the temper of one people against the other." But the king would do nothing to stop their dissemination, and so, entering the battle for public opinion in England, the Dutch countered with pamphlets of their own, printed in English, with which they flooded the English market, giving their side of the affair. (They denied burning the men, but admitted using water torture as "the most a.s.sured and civill" and "a thing customable throughout Europe.") The mileage the English got out of Amboyna was astounding. For decades it fueled the English sense of the Dutch merchants as relentless, bloodless fiends. The Dutch record of atrocities was surely no better or worse than that of the English, Portuguese, or other European empire-builders, but believing it to be more barbarous helped a.s.sauge English bitterness that the tiny, water-logged nation had so outdistanced them in the global race. As late as 1691, more than six decades after the incident, John Dryden would write his play Amboyna: A Tragedy, Amboyna: A Tragedy, employing as characters all the actors in the actual events, from the monstrous Dutch governor, Harmon ("Bring more candles, and burn him from the Wrists up to the Elbows"), to the heroic Englishman Beaumont ("Do; I'll enjoy the Flames like Scaevola; and when one's roasted, give the other hand."). employing as characters all the actors in the actual events, from the monstrous Dutch governor, Harmon ("Bring more candles, and burn him from the Wrists up to the Elbows"), to the heroic Englishman Beaumont ("Do; I'll enjoy the Flames like Scaevola; and when one's roasted, give the other hand.").

But there was also a negative result. The English succeeded so well in portraying the Dutch merchant-soldiers as inexorable that England virtually ceded the East Indies to the Dutch shippers, and refocused its energies elsewhere in Asia. Thus, one far-flung consequence of Amboyna, echoing through the coming centuries, would be the buildup of British India.

Another was New York. No such colony existed or would exist for decades, but in the thrust-and-parry of the two empires-in-the-making in the 1620s and '30s, events on one side of the globe would generate reactions on the other. By now some in England realized that the Dutch-controlled portion of North America was the linchpin to the continent, and they were determined that the Dutch not have control of both the East Indies and the vast unknown riches of North America. Legal minds went to work, and the case for overriding the Dutch claim to its territory was developed.

One month after Joachimi's second audience with the king, Charles's formal reply arrived at The Hague. The king declared he had no intention of suppressing books published in England that dealt with the Amboyna ma.s.sacre (his response to Dutch anger on this score: "nothing save the balm of justice can heal ulcerated hearts"). Regarding the complaint about the seizure of the ship that had set sail from Manhattan Island, His Majesty countered it by disputing the Dutch claim to the territory. The Dutchmen and their vessel, Charles advised, came from "a certain plantation usurped by them in the north parts of Virginia, which they say was acquired from the natives of the country." There followed a flurry of attacks on the Dutch claim to Manhattan Island and the territory extending more than a hundred miles to the north and south of it, some quite novel. "[F]irst, it is denied that the Indians were possessores bonae fidei possessores bonae fidei of those countries, so as to be able to dispose of them either by sale or donation, their residences being unsettled and uncertain . . . and in the second place, it cannot be proved, of those countries, so as to be able to dispose of them either by sale or donation, their residences being unsettled and uncertain . . . and in the second place, it cannot be proved, de facto, de facto, that all the Natives of said country had contracted with them at the said pretended sale." Moreover, the English claimed that they had true t.i.tle to the land in question, which was "justified by first discovery." In this, the English were stretching then-accepted legalities to the point of absurdity-an absurdity that underlies all of the land grabs of the age of empire and exploration. The "first discovery" was that of John Cabot, who in 1497 made footfall at Newfoundland. By the logic of the concept of "discovery," when the foot of an explorer made contact with soil that had not previously been settled by humans whom Europeans regarded as having a proper civilization, that soil, and all soil stretching out from it for as far as the metaphysical aura of discovery could be made to stretch, came under the flag of the explorer's sponsoring nation. Even adherents of this magic-wand approach to extending one's domain, however, had to have marveled at the claim that because an Italian foot once touched the soil of a portion of land astride North America (Newfoundland is, after all, an island)-and never mind the fact that at the time Cabot thought he was in an uninhabited region of Asia-the entire land ma.s.s, millions of square miles extending up to the North Pole, westward to the Pacific, and south as far as the Spanish-held territories, miraculously and incontrovertibly became the property of England. that all the Natives of said country had contracted with them at the said pretended sale." Moreover, the English claimed that they had true t.i.tle to the land in question, which was "justified by first discovery." In this, the English were stretching then-accepted legalities to the point of absurdity-an absurdity that underlies all of the land grabs of the age of empire and exploration. The "first discovery" was that of John Cabot, who in 1497 made footfall at Newfoundland. By the logic of the concept of "discovery," when the foot of an explorer made contact with soil that had not previously been settled by humans whom Europeans regarded as having a proper civilization, that soil, and all soil stretching out from it for as far as the metaphysical aura of discovery could be made to stretch, came under the flag of the explorer's sponsoring nation. Even adherents of this magic-wand approach to extending one's domain, however, had to have marveled at the claim that because an Italian foot once touched the soil of a portion of land astride North America (Newfoundland is, after all, an island)-and never mind the fact that at the time Cabot thought he was in an uninhabited region of Asia-the entire land ma.s.s, millions of square miles extending up to the North Pole, westward to the Pacific, and south as far as the Spanish-held territories, miraculously and incontrovertibly became the property of England.

The Dutch didn't buy it. For one thing, they had a different legal basis for ownership. In their scheme, the discoverer also had to occupy and chart the land; thus the decision to send settlers, however few, to each of the three river systems in New Netherland. By May the matter was over; the ship was released. The English had pushed, and the Dutch-who were simply the more powerful nation at the time-had pushed back. Charles had served notice of England's interest in the property in question, but just now he was not in a position to back up his words.

No one recorded what Peter Minuit said when, on the third of May, he came tramping into the courtyard of the elegant West India Company headquarters in Amsterdam, livid to the point of distraction, and heard that, on top of everything else, the English were now denying the very right to exist of the colony he had nurtured. He probably didn't feel outrage-not after the way the Dutch directors had treated him. It may be that what struck him most about the international dispute was how unsettled things were-that the colony itself was up for grabs. For at some point after the hearing into his conduct as director of New Netherland-which resulted in his formal dismissal, and which turned on the charge that not enough settlers had been shipped to the colony under his tenure (an outrage because Minuit had repeatedly pressed for more settlers)-he met with Willem Usselincx, who had been the original booster of New Netherland, but who, like Minuit, was now disgruntled. The two of them would soon dream up a secret international colonizing scheme of their own, as audacious as it would be ridiculous.

TWO YEARS BEFORE it brought Peter Minuit back to Europe and sailed into an international incident, the it brought Peter Minuit back to Europe and sailed into an international incident, the Unity, Unity, shipping the other direction, had delivered to the sh.o.r.es of Manhattan a raw, tough-minded eighteen-year-old named Harmen Myndersz van den Bogaert. He came equipped with training that was certain to be of value in a frontier settlement, having undergone the two-year, hands-on apprenticeship (no book work required) to be inducted into the ancient and not especially venerated guild of the "barber-surgeon." In that time in the colony he apparently did more than trim the beards of New Netherland's residents, and must have impressed people with his nerves in amputations and blood-letting, because following the run-in with the English over the fate of the colony he was given the weighty responsibility of saving it from another European threat. shipping the other direction, had delivered to the sh.o.r.es of Manhattan a raw, tough-minded eighteen-year-old named Harmen Myndersz van den Bogaert. He came equipped with training that was certain to be of value in a frontier settlement, having undergone the two-year, hands-on apprenticeship (no book work required) to be inducted into the ancient and not especially venerated guild of the "barber-surgeon." In that time in the colony he apparently did more than trim the beards of New Netherland's residents, and must have impressed people with his nerves in amputations and blood-letting, because following the run-in with the English over the fate of the colony he was given the weighty responsibility of saving it from another European threat.

By now the colony had an undisputed second city-or rather village. In fact, Fort Orange, the trading post at the conjunction of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers where Joris Rapalje and Catalina Trico had spent their first two years, had become the center of the fur trade. From far out in the uncharted west, Indians came down the Mohawk Valley with their heavy loads of pelts; the traders bought them, stored them at the fort, then shipped them downriver to Manhattan. They had a strong relationship with the Mohawks now, one that would last the whole life span of the Dutch settlement, so the trade seemed secure.

It wasn't. In late 1634, fur traffic on the Mohawk suddenly dried up. The Dutch, whose worldview was based on water, knew the river and lake system of their territory, knew that far out there in the unexplored west lay a series of lakes, which were the main beaver areas hunted by the Indians who supplied them. If the Indians had stopped coming, there could only be one reason: the French, who long before had infiltrated the waterways far to the north and forged fur-trading alliances with Indians of Canada, had moved south into that territory and made new agreements with the Indians there. At this stage the fur trade was the colony's entire reason for being. For decades to come, debts on Manhattan would be paid in the interchangeable currencies of beaver pelts, Dutch guilders, and Indian wampum. While they were prized for their fur, beavers were even more sought-after for the pelt beneath the outer layer of fur, which was made into felt. Felt hats were a status-symbol-c.u.m-necessity throughout Europe, from the Puritans' austere black bonnets to the dashing chapeaux of the Dutch officers in Rembrandt's The Night Watch The Night Watch and, later, the English top hat. The entire beaver-to-hat process had a fantastic quality to it. On the production end, hat makers used mercury to separate fur from felt, leading to routine mental illness and, perhaps, to the phrase "mad as a hatter." The hats were wildly expensive; the English diarist Samuel Pepys paid four pounds five shillings for one in 1641-about three months' wages for an average laborer. This, in turn, meant serious income for the Indian trappers, and for the French, English, and Dutch who competed to trade with them. (It also accounts for the image of the beaver still found on the seal of New York City.) The disruption in the beaver trade was serious. Within a very short time, the French outflanking maneuver would prove to be a coup de grace. Something had to be done. and, later, the English top hat. The entire beaver-to-hat process had a fantastic quality to it. On the production end, hat makers used mercury to separate fur from felt, leading to routine mental illness and, perhaps, to the phrase "mad as a hatter." The hats were wildly expensive; the English diarist Samuel Pepys paid four pounds five shillings for one in 1641-about three months' wages for an average laborer. This, in turn, meant serious income for the Indian trappers, and for the French, English, and Dutch who competed to trade with them. (It also accounts for the image of the beaver still found on the seal of New York City.) The disruption in the beaver trade was serious. Within a very short time, the French outflanking maneuver would prove to be a coup de grace. Something had to be done.

The now twenty-two-year-old Harmen van den Bogaert got the desperate commission to do what no resident had yet done: travel into the interior of the continent, seek out the Mohawks in their villages, and convince them that the Dutch were better trading partners. By sheer luck, the journal he kept on the voyage-which details one of the earliest forays by Europeans from the coast westward into the North American continent, provides an extraordinarily rare glimpse of thriving Mohawk villages, and also includes the first-ever Mohawk dictionary-survived. It was discovered in the late nineteenth century and has only recently been studied in depth. It gives a remarkably fresh and full-blooded view of the Eastern Indians, uncolored by the history that was to follow.

The situation was desperate enough that the mission couldn't wait until spring; choosing two men to accompany him, Jeronimus dela Croix and sailor Willem Thoma.s.sen, Van den Bogaert set out on the eleventh of December. They left Fort Orange in icy weather, their packs filled with food as well as knives, scissors, and other items intended as presents, in the company of five Mohawk guides.

Things started out hopefully enough, as they hiked into virgin pine forest, but it was a bad sign when, in the middle of the first night, Van den Bogaert woke up to find the guides silently preparing to leave camp without them. He and his mates threw their things together and hurried to catch up; later they discovered that the Indians' dogs had eaten the meat and cheese from their packs, leaving them with only bread. There followed days of brutal hiking through snow two and a half feet deep, with slashing winds, swirling snow, and sightings of bear and elk through the trees.

On the twentieth, chilled to the bone, they came to a stop before a stream that, Van den Bogaert wrote, was "running very hard with many large chunks of ice . . . so that we were in great danger. Had one of us fallen, it would have been the end. But the Lord G.o.d protected us and we made it across. We were soaked up to the waist." They slogged on, shivering, "with wet and frozen clothing, stockings and shoes." Then they reached a hilltop and an amazing sight: thirty-two houses set in a clearing, some of them two hundred feet long, each covered with elm bark, the whole surrounded by a picket palisade. The men had reached their goal: a Mohawk village, and a new civilization.

The series of villages they visited in the ensuing days surprised Van den Bogaert with their level of civilization. In one there were "36 houses, row on row in the manner of streets," each of which held several families. Some of the houses already bore the signs of European contact: iron hinges, bolts, chains. The men found boats and barrels made from bark. They encountered cemeteries, surrounded by palisades "so neatly made that it was a wonder," the graves painted red, white, and black. A chief's tomb they found was large enough to have an entrance and was decorated with carvings and paintings of animals. In some villages penned bears were being kept and fattened. Each longhouse had several hearths. They were welcomed at the first village and given baked pumpkin, beans, and venison. In the light of the fire that night, Van den Bogaert cut open Thoma.s.sen's leg to relieve swelling brought on by the long march, and smeared the cut with bear grease.

The people met them with curiosity or fear. Some, encountering them in the forest, dropped their belongings and ran. In one village, however, "we caused much curiosity in the young and old; indeed, we could hardly pa.s.s through the Indians here. They pushed one another into the fire to see us. It was almost midnight before they left us. We could not do anything without having them shamelessly running about us." The chief presented Van den Bogaert with a mountain lion skin, which he slept with, only to discover that "in the morning I had at least 100 lice."

There was an irony to the reception the Europeans received in some places. At one village, a chief eagerly invited them into his house, which was set away from the village proper because he feared the smallpox that was beginning to ravage the Indians of the region. No one on either side realized that the illness, which would decimate the Northeast Indians over the course of the century, was a result of the contact with Europeans, who brought diseases to which they themselves were immune but before which the Indians were helpless.

At every village, the people called to them, "Allese rondade!" or "shoot!" There was a great deal of excitement when the men obliged and fired their weapons-here, preserved in the amber of Van den Bogaert's journal, we catch that fleeting moment when Indian society was aware of firearms but hadn't yet begun to use them. On Christmas Eve, Van den Bogaert watched in awe as their shamans went to work, and recorded one of the most detailed and dramatic descriptions of an East Coast Indian healing ritual: As soon as they arrived, they began to sing, and kindled a large fire, sealing the house all around so that no draft could enter. Then both of them put a snakeskin around their heads and washed their hands and faces. They then took the sick person and laid him before the large fire. Taking a bucket of water in which they had put some medicine, they washed a stick in it 12 ell long. They stuck it down their throats so that the end could not be seen, and vomited on the patient's head and all over his body. Then they performed many farces with shouting and rapid clapping of hands, as is their custom, with much display, first on one thing and then on the other, so that the sweat rolled off them everywhere.

Eventually, the travelers made their way to the most important village, where they would negotiate. The scene Van den Bogaert describes opens like the third act of a Western, in which the white man finally meets the Indians on their terms. The residents of the village formed two long lines outside the gate of the village, and the Europeans pa.s.sed ceremonially between the columns, and through the elaborately carved entryway, to the house at the farthest end. The houses here had gables decorated with paintings. In the flickering firelight, amid much whooping and excitement, the men were fed and feted.

And then the rough business tactics began.

A secondary tribal leader berated them for not bringing adequate presents. He showed them the presents the French had given, including French shirts and coats. The atmosphere became tense. As the man kept up his verbal a.s.sault the others "sat so close to us here that we could barely sit." Van den Bogaert counted forty-six people crowded around them in the room. One of the Indians then began to scream, calling them, in Van den Bogaert's translation, "scoundrels," and his tirade reached such a fury that Willem Thoma.s.sen, a hardened sailor, burst into angry tears. Finally, Van den Bogaert hollered back.

At this, the tactic changed. The Indian laughed, suggested there had been a misunderstanding, and said, "You must not be angry. We are happy that you have come here." An old man stepped forward and put his hand against Van den Bogaert's chest to feel his heart; he announced with approval that the man was not afraid. The Dutchmen had apparently pa.s.sed a test. Warily, the visitors dispensed knives, scissors, and other presents. Six leaders of the village stepped forward and presented Van den Bogaert with a beaver coat. When they sat down to discuss business, Van den Bogaert learned that these Mohawks would prefer to maintain relations with the Dutch because they feared the Hurons, with whom the French were allied. The Mohawks offered their terms: henceforth, each beaver pelt would be worth four hands of sewant and four hands of cloth (a hand of sewant, or wampum, being one string of beads stretched from outstretched thumb to little finger). When Van den Bogaert did not reply, an old chief from another of the five tribes of the Iroquois confederation, of which the Mohawks were a part, stepped forward. He required a translator because he spoke Onondaga, not Mohawk, and said, "You have not said whether we shall have four hands or not." Van den Bogaert told them he was not authorized to finalize the deal, but would return in the spring with the answer. They accepted this, but the old man cautioned him, "You must not lie, and come in the spring to us and bring us all an answer. If we receive four hands, then we shall trade our pelts with no one else."

A provisional agreement was made. The Indians began a chant, which Van den Bogaert diligently recorded. The chant turns out to contain the names of the five tribes of the Iroquois League, through some of whose lands the Dutchmen had traveled, and Van den Bogaert's doc.u.mentation of it provides the earliest written record of this confederacy that would play a role in the American Revolution. A rough translation of the chant, given to me by Iroquois linguist Gunther Michelson, is: "This white man is a magician. He has leave to go around to all the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, and lie down safely among them. This is a useful thing for the Iroquois League." The chant indicates how much Van den Bogaert succeeded in impressing the Iroquois. The reference to him as a magician also dates this to the period in which the East Coast Indians, still amazed by the tools of the whites, thought of them as having wondrous powers.

Following the agreement, Van den Bogaert was given a house, presents, and thick portions of bear meat. Although he doesn't mention it, he may have been given other things as well, for the detailed list of Mohawk vocabulary words he compiled includes the words and phrases for man, woman, prost.i.tute, v.a.g.i.n.a, phallus, t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, "to have intercourse," "very beautiful," "When shall you return?" and "I do not know."

The three travelers said their farewells and began the long journey home. They arrived back at Fort Orange in late January, where the people had feared them dead. They had traveled to Oneida Lake-nearly as far as Lake Ontario-and back, through savage weather, powered only by their own feet. It is no accident that their route was the one that generations of Americans and millions of tons of goods would follow westward in the coming centuries, once the Erie Ca.n.a.l was constructed. It was the natural highway connecting the Atlantic coast to the heart of the continent, the reason the Dutch had focused their attention on the Hudson River, and why, beginning with Minuit, they saw Manhattan Island as the logical hub. Van den Bogaert's trip would prove to be pioneering in the fullest sense.

In the spring, the deal with the Mohawks was indeed finalized. The furs began coming again. Van den Bogaert's impact on the colony would not end here-he would later make a final, tragicomic contribution to history. But for now he had done what was asked of him: the colony could go on.

WHICH, HOWEVER, BEGGED a question: why bother? While the old amba.s.sador and the young explorer-surgeon were doing their utmost to preserve the colony, its parents, the merchant-princes who ran the West India Company, were running it into the ground. They disagreed over how to manage it, with the result that it went largely unmanaged. To replace the capable Peter Minuit they chose a young clerk in the company's Amsterdam offices with no particular set of skills to recommend him, only a dull devotion to the company and a family relation to an important man connected with the colony. Immediately upon arrival in Manhattan, Wouter van Twiller set about proving himself a drunk and a nonleader. At times he even managed to combine the two traits. Shortly after he began his duties, and on the heels of the recent trouble with England over the ship carrying his predecessor back to Europe, an English trader sailed into the harbor and anch.o.r.ed before the fort. Her captain made clear his intention to sail upriver and trade with the Indians: an open flaunting of Dutch sovereignty. Van Twiller dealt with the matter by boarding the vessel and proceeding to drink with the captain. He became so drunk that David de Vries, a Dutch adventurer who had spent time in the East Indies and now proposed to throw his lot in with the New Amsterdammers, and who had himself just sailed into the harbor, was embarra.s.sed. The English captain then made the bold declaration that he had every right to sail upriver because the river and all the land around it was English. De Vries responded that New Netherland had long been settled by the Dutch, and that their claim was secure. The English captain countered that the area had been discovered by an English explorer, "David Hutson." That was close enough for De Vries, but he countered, quite properly, that Hudson had charted the river under Dutch auspices. Van Twiller appears to have stayed out of the conversation. a question: why bother? While the old amba.s.sador and the young explorer-surgeon were doing their utmost to preserve the colony, its parents, the merchant-princes who ran the West India Company, were running it into the ground. They disagreed over how to manage it, with the result that it went largely unmanaged. To replace the capable Peter Minuit they chose a young clerk in the company's Amsterdam offices with no particular set of skills to recommend him, only a dull devotion to the company and a family relation to an important man connected with the colony. Immediately upon arrival in Manhattan, Wouter van Twiller set about proving himself a drunk and a nonleader. At times he even managed to combine the two traits. Shortly after he began his duties, and on the heels of the recent trouble with England over the ship carrying his predecessor back to Europe, an English trader sailed into the harbor and anch.o.r.ed before the fort. Her captain made clear his intention to sail upriver and trade with the Indians: an open flaunting of Dutch sovereignty. Van Twiller dealt with the matter by boarding the vessel and proceeding to drink with the captain. He became so drunk that David de Vries, a Dutch adventurer who had spent time in the East Indies and now proposed to throw his lot in with the New Amsterdammers, and who had himself just sailed into the harbor, was embarra.s.sed. The English captain then made the bold declaration that he had every right to sail upriver because the river and all the land around it was English. De Vries responded that New Netherland had long been settled by the Dutch, and that their claim was secure. The English captain countered that the area had been discovered by an English explorer, "David Hutson." That was close enough for De Vries, but he countered, quite properly, that Hudson had charted the river under Dutch auspices. Van Twiller appears to have stayed out of the conversation.

After lying at anchor several days, the English ship set sail and headed upriver in defiance of the Dutch leader. Van Twiller moved quickly. He ordered a cask of wine brought to his office in the fort at once, filled b.u.mpers for himself and the soldiers and other company employees a.s.sembled there, and cried out for those who loved the Prince of Orange and him to join him in stopping the Englishman. Whereupon, De Vries reported, "The people all began to laugh at him."

Van Twiller let the matter go, and the English ship sailed off northward. De Vries was incensed. He sat the man down and explained that it was precisely incidents like this that made or broke a colony. "I said, if it were my matter, I would have helped him away from the fort with beans from the eight-pounders, and not permitted him to sail up the river," De Vries wrote in his journal, and added that "if the English committed any excesses against us in the East Indies, we should strike back at them; otherwise one cannot control that nation, for they were of so proud a nature, that they thought everything belonged to them."

Clearly Van Twiller had some decisive weaknesses, but it should also be kept in mind that for this period of the Dutch colony's existence the official records are almost nonexistent, so that history has relied on bits and pieces, such as De Vries's journal, in order to re-create the times. Thanks to the wave of scholarship now under way, however, new evidence is emerging that complicates the picture. A letter written by Van Twiller in 1635 to the company directors, discovered recently in the Dutch National Archives in The Hague by historian Jaap Jacobs, shows Van Twiller building a fort on the Connecticut River (the earliest doc.u.mentation for the settlement of what would become Hartford), holding the English at bay, and trying to deal with his unruly population-acting, in other words, like the colonial administrator he was supposed to be.

But if Van Twiller was not the outright incompetent that history has made him out to be, he was clearly not equal to the challenge of his rowdy, expanding capital. New Amsterdam now had a downtown arcade of five shops, and dozens of private houses. Ships carried bricks as ballast on the trip from Europe, and the settlers used these-the slender yellow bricks of Holland, which still turn up occasionally in digs in lower Manhattan-in their first houses, particularly in chimney stacks. Ramparts were added to the fort. There was a boathouse and sailmaker's loft, a guardhouse and soldiers' barracks, and a church. But there were few residents with the drive, guts, and pioneering spirit of David de Vries. Many were pirates or itinerant fur traders. The most famous New Amsterdam pirate-Willem Blauvelt-used New Amsterdam as his base to plunder off the Spanish main (the waters north of South America), mixed piracy with privateering, and was a member of the community in good standing who dutifully logged his voyages with the provincial secretary. His financial backers included many of the town's leading citizens.

Piracy in turn brought another wave of residents, for the "cargo" of pilfered Spanish galleons included not only cases of indigo, chests of sugar, and sacks bulging with pieces of eight, but slaves bound for the Caribbean salt fields. As privateers brought them to Manhattan, some of the Africans became slaves in the West India Company's service; others worked for their freedom or were employed as freedmen from the outset. The very names of Manhattan's Africans-Pedro Negretto, Antony Congo, Jan Negro, Manuel de Spanje, Anthony the Portuguese, Bastiaen d'Angola-evoked their tempestuous journeys, from capture and enslavement in Africa to purchase by Portuguese traders and forced voyage westward on Spanish ships, only to be captured once again by Dutch pirates. Decades later, terms of slavery would be more or less standardized in the colonies, but at this point, on the free-form, slightly anarchic island, some of these people were among the more stable residents of the island; many would become farmers, carpenters, smiths, and barber-surgeons.

Such an unruly population required servicing. Prost.i.tution became a mainstay (the wife of Tymen Jansen was known to "commit adultery . . . not for money, but for otters and beavers"). The island sp.a.w.ned taverns and breweries with remarkable speed-at one point in the early years one-quarter of its buildings were devoted to making or selling alcohol. The "bar scene" seems to have rivaled anything New York City could boast today (and, ironically enough, would occupy the same general downtown quadrant that accounts for much of today's nightlife): an enraged woman who came upon her husband in a tap room later wondered in court "what he was doing with another man's wife . . . touching her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and putting his mouth on them." A man named Simon Root had part of his ear cut off "with a cutla.s.s" and pet.i.tioned the court to get a certificate clarifying that it happened in a fairly routine barroom brawl and should not be confused with the standard punishment for thievery. The records are rife with murderous a.s.saults, and the leaders favored extreme forms of punishment-branding, pillorying, whipping, beating with rods, garroting, hanging-in an effort to instill order. Visible punishment of all sorts-removing an ear, boring a hole in the ear or tongue with a redhot poker, "riding the horse," which involved shackling the evildoer to a wooden horse, often for days at a time, with heavy weights attached to his arms and legs-was prized for its deterrent effect.

Harsh as punishment often was, there was a certain flexibility in carrying it out: people were occasionally let off at the last minute, sometimes in novel ways. On a cold January day in 1641, eight African slaves were brought into the fort, accused of murdering another slave, Jan Premero, "in the woods near their houses" (an area north of the town set aside for slave quarters-today it is where the United Nations resides). The men admitted to the crime "without torture or shackles." But it couldn't be determined which one did the deed, so the court, in its wisdom, decided they would draw lots to see who would be put to death, thus letting "G.o.d designate the culprit." G.o.d chose Manuel Gerrit, a.k.a. "The Giant." A week later, a crowd gathered near the sh.o.r.e for the entertainment of a public hanging. In theory, drawing lots may have satisfied the law; in reality, hanging a possibly innocent man may have been distasteful to the colony's leaders, or maybe they saw it as a senseless waste of a good slave. There is no proof of tampering in what followed, but the results are suspicious. The executioner fastened "two good ropes" around the man's neck and pushed him off the ladder, whereupon, to the gasps of the spectators, both ropes broke and the man tumbled to the ground unharmed. The crowd clamored for mercy, and the court granted it. The Giant went free; the system worked.

A scene that appears in the court records from a few years later nicely sums up the atmosphere of casual mayhem, of violence erupting in the midst of ordinary life, that reigned in this period: Piere Malenfant, of Riennes [i.e., Rennes], in Brittany, 35 years of age, declares that yesterday evening about nine o'clock, as it was getting dark, he came from the farm in company with Paulus Heyman and his wife, he carrying the child on his arm and the woman the gun. Near Damen's house, the sentry, named Andries Tummelyn, called out, 'Who goes there?' He answered, 'A friend.' Paulus Heyman said, 'Good evening, Jonker n.o.bleman,' to which the sentry replied, 'What do you want, Merchant?' Heyman retorted, 'Lick my a.s.s.'

At this, the Frenchman and the sentry fell on one another with swords, Malenfant was stabbed through the arm and thigh, and came limping into court seeking compensation.

Clearly, the New Netherland settlers were quite unlike their fellow pioneers to the north, the pious English Pilgrims and the Puritans who were struggling to establish their "new Jerusalem," governed by G.o.dly morality. Whether the Pilgrims, via the Thanksgiving celebration, or the Puritans made truly worthy role models for the nation that was in the distant future is another matter; throughout this period the Puritans were busy ma.s.sacring the Pequot Indians in the name of G.o.d and persecuting internal "heretics" (i.e., anyone who didn't subscribe to their brand of Puritanism). One might say the English and Dutch colonies represented the extreme conservative and liberal wings of the seventeenth-century social spectrum. Technically, hard-line Calvinism was the moral force at work in the Manhattan colony, but in the records of the colony expressions of piety are overwhelmed by accounts like that of a woman who, while her husband dozed on a nearby chair, "dishonorably manipulated the male member" of a certain Irishman while two other men looked on. Excessive rigidity (of the moral kind) was not the sin of New Amsterdam's residents.

There was a kind of duke and d.u.c.h.ess of this era of New Amsterdam, who outdid their neighbors for sheer rabble-rousing. Back in Europe, Griet Reyniers had worked as a barmaid at the tavern of Pieter de Winter in Amsterdam. In fact, she practiced two professions at once-the mistress of the tavern once spotted her in a back room, "her petticoat upon her knees," s.e.xually servicing a party of soldiers. It's impossible to say whether the young Wouter van Twiller wandered into her establishment one evening and became enamored of her. All we know is that when he set sail for Manhattan on de Zoutberg de Zoutberg ("Salt Mountain"), Griet was on board, too, ready to seek her fortune in a new land. It was a haza