The Story of the City of New York

Charles Burr Todd

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9783849653248
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Since Washington Irving with delicious humor satirized the Dutchmen who founded New York, many writers have handled the history of America's chief city. Notable among them has been Mrs. Lamb, and it was thought her work left nothing undone. Mr. Todd, how ever, thought the picturesque story would be well re-told in language and form more likely to be attractive to young people, and this book is the result. The style is lucid, and there is little of the pedantic minuteness that makes so many histories hard reading. On the other hand it has not been thought necessary to make the book puerile in order to get young people to read it, and there is nothing in it to remind one of the primer. So it will prove entertaining, also to older folks who like to take their history in pleasant form.

Part I. The Dutch Dynasty

I. PETER MINUIT.

Sometimes I allow fancy to picture the appearance of the island on that 4th of May, 1626, when the Sea Mew cast anchor off the point of the Battery. Nature's temples, not man's, then adorned it. Somber forests overhung the Jersey shore and fringed the water-line of the island. A chain of low, craggy hills covered with noble forests of oak, chestnut, hickory, and other trees, with pretty grassy valleys between, extended from the Battery to near the present line of Canal Street; on either side along the river banks were wide marshes stretching away to the north; at Canal Street they bore directly across the island, and were so low that on high tides the water flowed across from river to river. In the sheltered valleys were the maize fields and queer villages of the Indians, and the rude log-cabins of the settlers who had come over the year before. Cow-paths crossed the marshes to the upper part of the island, which was much wilder and more savage, with precipitous ledges, and in many places dense thickets of grape-vines, creepers, blackberry and other bushes which no one could penetrate. The settlers did not allow their sheep and calves to cross this marsh, lest they should be throttled by the wolves, bears, and panthers that lurked in the thickets, and in their letters home they complained of the deer and wild turkeys that broke in and destroyed their crops. Minuit's first step — probably before landing his people — was to purchase the island of its Indian owners. He had been directed to do this by the company for two reasons: first, to satisfy the Indians and gain their friendship; second, to strengthen the company's title to the country, as against the English. This recognition of the property right of the Indian was the uniform custom of the Dutch in settling New Netherlands. The bargain was made on the 6th of May, 1626, on the present site of the Battery, perhaps on the very spot where Verrazano had planted his cross one hundred and two years before. Old Knickerbocker's delightful account of the affair, in his version of the story of New York, will at once recur to the reader; but Knickerbocker's exuberant fancy often played sad pranks with his historical faculty. The scene as it actually occurred must have been exceedingly picturesque.

On the one side were the savages, clad in deerskins or in waist-belts of woven grass; on the other, stern, bearded men whose brave costumes and dignified bearing were well calculated to overawe the rude natives. The Hollanders wore long-skirted coats, some loose, some girt about the waist with a military sash, velvet breeches ending at the knee in black Holland stockings, and for foot-gear military boots with high flaring tops, or low shoes adorned with silver buckles. Their hats were made of felt and were low in the crown with very wide brims, which were looped up or not, at the fancy of the wearer. In a sash, slung over the right shoulder and passing under the left arm, a short sword was suspended, but no other warlike weapons were visible. A strong sea-chest of the solid though clumsy workmanship peculiar to Dutch artificers stood open between the two parties, filled with beads, buttons, ribbons, gayly embroidered coats, and similar articles, which were spread out before the delighted savages and were offered in exchange for their island. The red men were only too glad to accept, and thus, for baubles worth scarcely twenty-four dollars, the island, now covered with miles of splendid buildings, passed into the hands of Europeans.

The Dutch, as we have seen, found the Indians in possession of Manhattan Island. It is quite time that the reader was introduced to these Indians. This particular tribe was called the Manhattos or Manhattans, whence the name of the island. They were a branch of the great Algonkin-Lenape family of aborigines. Their neighbors, with whom they were often at war, were the Hackensacks and Raritans, who lived on the opposite shore of the Hudson; the Weekqueskucks, Tankitikes, and Packamies, whose territories lay north of the Raritans; and the Canarsees, Rockaways, Menikokes, Massapeagues, Mattinecocks, Missaqueges, Corchaugs, Secatauges, and Shinnecocks, Long Island Indians. On the western bank of the upper Hudson, extending inland some seventy miles, were the fierce Mohawks, a part of the great clan of the Five Nations. Opposite, inhabiting the country between the Hudson and the Connecticut, were the Mohegans, another powerful tribe. With these tribes the colonists were often in contact. Their first peculiarity, as noted by the curious settlers, was their color, which was of a dull copper, or obscure orange hue, like the bark of the cinnamon tree. Their clothing was, in summer, a piece of deer-skin tied around the waist, in winter the skins of animals sewed together, and hanging loosely from the shoulders. After the Dutch came they used in place of buckskin a piece of duffels, or coarse cloth, thrown over the right shoulder and falling to the knees, which served as a cloak by day and a blanket by night. The men went bareheaded. Their hair was coarse, black, and very strong. Some had hair only on one side of the head, some on both, but all wore the scalp-lock; it was a point of honor with them. This lock was formed as follows: a strip of hair three fingers broad was first allowed to grow on the top of the head from the forehead to the neck. This was cut short, except a tuft on the top of the head three fingers long, which was made to stand erect like a cock's-comb by smearing it with bear's-grease. The women or squaws allowed their hair to grow and bound it behind in a coil shaped like a beaver's tail, over which they drew a square cap ornamented with wampum. The Indians were extremely fond of ornament; even the implements the Dutch gave them were devoted to this use. Heckewelder, for instance, relates that they hung the axes and hoes given them about their necks, and used the stockings for tobacco-pouches; and Creuxis tells of a Huron girl reared by some Ursuline nuns, who on her marriage was given a complete suit of clothes in Parisian style; but what was the surprise of the nuns a few days later to see the young husband arrayed in the finery and strutting up and down before their convent with an air of exultation which was greatly increased on seeing the nuns at the windows smiling at his queer appearance! Wampum played an important part in their economy. It was their money, their measure of value. " It was an ornament, a tribute; it ratified treaties, confirmed alliances, sealed friendships, cemented peace, and was accepted as a blood atonement." In making it the Indian artificer took the inside of the stem of the great conks cast up on the shore, and fashioned from it a small, smooth, white bead, through which he drilled a small hole. For another kind he took the inside purple face of the mussel shell, and made beads shaped like a straw, one third of an inch long, which were then bored lengthwise, and strung on hempen threads or the dried sinews of wild animals. These were then woven into strips of a hand's width and two feet long, called " belts" of wampum. The white beads were served in the same way, but their value was only half that of the purple beads. " They value these little bones," said Dr. Megapolensis, " as highly as many Christians do gold, silver, or pearls, valuing our money no better than they do iron.'

In political economy these people were communists, socialists. The land was held in common; the hunt, the fisheries, were free to all, and their condition is an excellent illustration of the utility of socialism when its principles are put into practice. They were anarchists, too, in that they had no law. Each did as he pleased, restrained only by his savage instincts of right and wrong. Minor crimes were unpunished. Murder was avenged by the next of kin, provided he met the murderer within twenty-four hours after the deed was committed. If he did not, the crime could be atoned for by the payment of wampum. Each tribe had its own chief, and separate practices and government. The houses of the Indians were mere huts made by binding the tops of saplings together, and covering the frame thus formed with strips of birch bark; some of the dwellings were communal — inhabited by many families. One shown in the engraving, found on Manhattan Island by the Dutch, was one hundred and eighty yards long by twenty feet wide. There were within it pots and kettles for cooking food, sharpened stones for axes, sharpened shells for knives, wooden bowls from which the food was eaten, beds formed of bulrushes or the skins of wild animals. The Indians used for food the flesh of animals and fish cooked whole, corn, pumpkins, roots, nuts, and berries. They had boats made of birch bark or hollowed out of the trunks of trees, the largest being capable of holding fourteen men, or one hundred and fifty bushels of grain. Calmly considered, these savages were not a people calculated to inspire respect. They were uncleanly in their food, their dwellings, and their persons. They had neither arts, science, nor commerce, as we understand those terms and there was much in their character and condition to justify the opinion freely expressed by the Dutch, that they " were children of the Devil," " mere cumberers of the ground."

In the midst of this wild, untamed people Minuet set up his orderly government — the product of a thousand years of judicial wisdom and patriotism. Let us consider it briefly. The Director was absolute monarch of his little world, except that he could not execute the death penalty; his subjects also had the right of appeal to the home company, and even from that body's decision to the States-General. Minuit was also instructed to appoint an advisory council of five of the wisest and most prudent men of the colony, to whose opinions he was expected to give due weight. There were but two other officers in the colony — the secretary of the Council Board and the Schout-fiscal — the latter an official who makes as great a figure in the early records of Manhattan as the Director himself. He was sheriff and constable, State's attorney to convict, and prisoner's council to defend, collector of the customs too, and beadle and tithing-man on Sunday. If we fancy him, with his wand of office in his hand, preceding the Burgomasters and Schepens to church on the Lord's Day, and during service patrolling the streets, seeing that no slave or Indian profaned the hour by gaming, or tapster by selling beer, we shall view him in the guise most familiar to the people. The men whom Minuit governed were little more than fiefs or servants of the company. They could not at this time hold land, not even the ground on which their dwellings stood; nor lawfully engage in trade with the Indians, nor among themselves, nor manufacture the necessaries of life. The privileged West India Company held the right to do all these things. Minuit had brought with him a competent engineer — one Kryn Fredericke, — and his first step after forming his government was to build a fort to defend it. It was a triangular earthwork with bastions and red cedar palisades and stood on a slight elevation near the point where Broadway enters the Battery. Minuit named it Fort Amsterdam. Next the busy workers opened quarries in the island crags, and of the " Manhattan stone " found there, built a rude, strong warehouse for housing the company's stores and other property. This warehouse was a creditable work — considering the means at hand for building it — with its stone walls, roof thatched with reeds, and those quaint crow-step gables dear to the heart of every Dutchman, of which one may still see a good specimen in the pretty cottage of Washington Irving at Sunnyside. The next public work was a " horse mill," for the grinding of grain by horse-power — for they seem to have lacked the tools and gear to build a windmill, after the fashion of Hollanders. Some thirty small cabins were also built along the East River shore, and a store was opened in a corner of one of the great warehouses and placed in charge of a salaried servant of the company. Only a church and a minister were lacking to complete the equipment of the village, but church and minister as yet there was not. That the people might not be wholly without spiritual counsel, however, the company had sent out two " Zukenstroosters," or Consolers of the Sick " (lay readers, we should call them), and they called the people together on the Sabbath and expounded the Scriptures to them. Their church — the first church in the city of five hundred temples — was the loft of the horse-mill, rudely fitted up with benches and chairs.

Two years later, a regularly ordained pastor, the Rev. Jonas Michaelis, arrived and organized a church, whose lineal descendant we shall find in Rev. Dr. Terry's church, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-first Street. Minuit was also busy in extending and cementing trade with the Indians. His voyageurs, in sloop, ship's boat, and canoe, explored every bay and creek of the North River where an Indian lodge was planted, exchanging their beads, axes, knives, and gayly colored cloths for furs, and inviting the Indians to come down and trade with their white brothers at the fort. Many accepted the invitation, and soon parties of savages in blankets or skins, some laden with bales of fur, others with venison, turkeys, wild fowl, and other game, were familiar objects in the streets of Manhattan. The company's warehouse became a busy place.

The ship Arms of Amsterdam which sailed for Amsterdam September 23, 1626, carried home " 7,246 beaver skins, 178 otter skins, 675 otter skins, 48 minck skins, 36 wild-cat skins, 33 minck skins, 34 rat skins, and much oak and hickory timber," the whole valued at 45,000 guilders, or nearly $19,000. This ship also took samples of the " summer grain " the colonists had gathered at their recent harvest, viz., wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, canary seed, beans, and flax. And she bore, too, news of the birth of the "firstborn Christian, daughter" in New Netherland — Sarah Rapaelje, daughter of Jan Joris Rapaelje, born June 9, 1625.

An incident occurred this autumn which involved the colony a few years later in a terrible Indian war, and did much to destroy that confidence between the Dutch and Indians which the Director was anxious to cultivate. A Wukquaesguk Indian coming to town to trade, accompanied by his nephew, a mere lad, was set upon by three of the Director's negro slaves, and not only despoiled of his goods but barbarously murdered. The lad escaped, and as soon as he became a man wreaked bloody vengeance, not, as we shall see, on the guilty negroes, but on the innocent whites.

From the Indians who came to trade with him, Minuit heard scattered bits of news about his neighbors, the English on Plymouth Bay, and felt a desire to communicate with them. So he wrote two letters to Governor Bradford, of Plymouth, " in a very fair hand, the one in French and the other in Dutch," and signed by Isaac de Rasieres as provincial secretary, inquiring after his Excellency's health, and offering to accommodate him with any European goods the English might want in exchange for beaver skins and other wares. Governor Bradford replied very courteously, saying that he had not forgotten the kindness shown the Pilgrims in Holland, but that for the current year they were well supplied with necessaries; "thereafter" he would be glad to trade " if the rates were reasonable." At the same time -he expressed a doubt as to the propriety of the Dutch traffic with the Indians on English territory. Director Minuit replied promptly, and, as evidence of good-will, sent a " rundlet of sugar and two Holland cheeses "; but he firmly maintained the right of the Dutch to trade in the disputed territory. Governor Bradford, in his reply, modestly disclaimed the titles bestowed by his worthy and loving " brother of New Netherlands as being " over high " and beyond his deserts, but asked that an ambassador be sent to confer on the matter. Isaac de Rasieres, the secretary, was chosen for this delicate and important mission. Now Rasieres was by nature a very presentable man, and we may be sure that on this occasion he was made to appear at his best. He donned his long coat with its silver buttons, his velvet breeches, and black silk stockings, slipped on his military boots, thrust his sword into its sash, and with a noble retinue of trumpeters and men-at-arms, marched down to the company's dock, where the barque Nassau, neatly painted and furnished, and loaded with wampum, a chest of sugar, and " cloth of three sorts and colors," was waiting to receive him. Of the voyage we have, happily, a minute account by de Rasieres himself, given his patron, Samuel Bloemmaert, in Holland.

The Nassau sailed through Long Island Sound, we learn, bravely flying the orange, white, and blue flag at her peak, threaded the island passages of Narragansett Bay, and then ran " east by north fourteen miles to Frenchman's Point, where in a little harbor where a stream came in the English had an outpost." This was the present Manomet, in the town of Sandwich, at the head of Buzzard's Bay, on the south side of the isthmus connecting Cape Cod with the mainland, and which will be shortly the southern terminus of the Cape Cod ship canal. Plymouth was twenty miles north, across the isthmus " four or five miles " then by boat up the coast. At Manomet the Nassau anchored, while the ambassador dispatched a trumpeter to Governor Bradford with a message saying he had come in a ship to visit him and to report to him " the good will and favor which the Honorable Lords of the American West India Company had toward him." He mentioned the cloth of three sorts and colors, the chest of white sugar, and the seawan (wampum), that they might trade, and begged the Governor to send a conveyance for him, as he had not walked so far " in three or four years." Governor Bradford accordingly sent a boat for him, and he came " honorably attended by a noise of trumpets," as the Governor himself records. De Rasieres spent several days in the village courteously entertained by Governor Bradford and laid the foundation of a very lucrative trade between the two lone colonies. He gives in his letter a graphic description of Plymouth, and of the customs of...

Table of contents

• PREFACE.
• INTRODUCTORY.
• Part I. The Dutch Dynasty
• Part III. The free city
• APPENDICES.