Putting Down Roots

The Dutch add New Netherlands to their growing world empire

By Steve Wick | Staff Writer

What Dutch business interests heard when Adrian Block returned to the Netherlands and told his story about spending the winter on Manhattan Island electrified them. Block had seen the future -- a country filled with furs and ready to be conquered, settled and exploited.

Which is exactly what the Dutch now intended to do. At the beginning of the 17th Century, the Dutch were a major colonial power, promoting business interests in Asia and South America. To these businessmen, this new land would fit nicely into a growing world empire.

In 1614, the year of Block's return, Dutch merchants formed the New Netherland Co. Its goal was to sponsor voyages to the area between 40 and 45 degrees north latitude -- the middle of present-day New Jersey to the coast of Maine. This huge region -- with Long Island sitting dead center, a long, wooded finger of promise -- now had a formal, European name.

``No Christian people had ever been there before,'' wrote a Dutch observer named Adriaen Van Der Donck in the mid-17th Century.

Soon, the Dutch were building a log fort on an island at the northernmost part of the Hudson River that was navigable for their ships, near present-day Albany. At about the same time, merchants in the Netherlands formed a second business entity, the West India Co., for the purposes of exploiting their new fur-rich land.

``During this time, there was wild competition between Dutch merchants to exploit this new area,'' said Paul Otto, an expert on the Dutch history of New York at Dordt College in Iowa. ``The New Netherland Company was an effort to manage the competition, and when its charter ran out, the West India Company was set up. At that time, the Dutch were at war with Spain, although a truce was in effect.

``But the West India Company was different -- it was an instrument of war designed to go against Spain's interests in the New World. It was empowered to create colonies, settle people, attack Spanish vessels, conduct trade and make treaties with the Indians. New Netherlands fell under the broad monopoly of this company.''

By 1624, traders were establishing the fort near Albany. English colonists were in Virginia and Plymouth, and England was claiming the northeastern Atlantic Coast. To bolster their own claims, the Dutch moved to set up settlements. They sent groups of Walloons -- French-speaking refugees from Belgium -- to New Netherlands. One group went to what is now Governors Island. By 1626, these groups were consolidated on Manhattan Island.

That year, a Dutch official, Peter Minuit, purchased Manhattan for 60 guilders' worth of trade goods. In the mid-19th Century, a historian put the value of these goods at $24, but historians today say the figure is wrong.

``That amount represented about three or four months' salary for the average Dutch soldier who was part of the group,'' Otto said. ``No deed for Manhattan Island has ever been found. You can't really see this in terms of dollars. There's no way to come up with an amount. On top of this, the Indians didn't even think they had sold anything; they didn't think they had to leave.''

Soon, the southern tip of Manhattan Island, called New Amsterdam by the Dutch, was a construction site. Trees were cut down and small houses were erected, the streets nothing more than dirt cart paths. Windmills for making flour were built at the tops of creeks; sailing vessels lined new docksides. It was a tiny community walled off to the north by a thick forest laced with Indian trails. And to the east, across the ribbon of salt water that is today's East River, lay Long Island.

A 17th Century Dutch document called ``Description and First Settlement of New Netherland'' details the beginnings of New Amsterdam.

The Colony was planted at this time, on the Manhates where a Fort was staked out by Master Kryn Federycke, an engineer. It will be of large dimensions. The ship which has returned home this month brings samples of all the different sorts of produce there. The cargo consists of 7246 Beavers, 675 Otter skins, 48 Minx, 36 Wild cat, and various other sorts; several pieces of oak timber, and hickory.

The counting house there is kept in a stone building, thatched with reed; the other houses are of the bark of trees ... There are thirty ordinary houses on the east side of the river which runs nearly north and south ... Francois Molemaecker is busy building a horse mill, over which shall be constructed a spacious room sufficient to accommodate a large congregation, and then a tower is to be erected where the bells brought from Porto Rico will be hung ...

The document says that, as the fort was being built, ``two hundred and seventy souls, including Men, Women and Children,'' lived in the houses ``in no fear, as the Natives live peaceably with them.'' Natives, no doubt, who remembered Block's winter on almost this same spot.

To the north of the tiny Dutch settlement, the English colony at Plymouth was beginning to grow. Neither liked the presence of the other, and it was only a matter of time before trouble began.