WERE THE DUTCH ON MANHATTAN ISLAND IN 1598?
It will admit of but very little dispute that Verrazano in 1524, and Gomez in 1525, anticipated Henry Hudson by several decades in the discovery of New York Bay and the Hudson River. There is also a claim for previous discovery however, put forward in behalf of the Dutch. One confident historian of the Metropolis starts out bravely and unhesitatingly with the assertion that the Dutch were here as early as 1598; but he gives no authorities from whence he had gathered this startling piece of information, yet before one has read thirty pages of such a well-known work as Dr. E. B. O’Callaghan’s, “History of New Netherland,” the source of the statement is plainly indicated, and fortunately, also the opportunity for a careful weighing of the testimony supporting it.
MANHATTAN ISLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
Dr. O’Callaghan refers his readers to a Dutch document in the State Archives at Albany, discovered by Mr. Brodhead at the Hague, copied by him for his collection of documents and translated and published in that invaluable store-house of historical material, the “Documents relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York,” vol. I, pp. 149, et seq. Here we read: “New Netherland ... was first frequented [explored] by the inhabitants of this country [Holland] in the year 1598, and especially by those of the Greenland Company, but without making any fixed settlements, only as a shelter [resort] in the winter. For which purpose they erected on the North [Hudson] and South [Delaware] Rivers there, two little forts against the incursions of the Indians. A charter was afterwards, on the 11th of October, 1614, granted by their High Mightinesses to trade exclusively to the newly discovered countries.”
Without discussing the nature or merits of this document itself just now, we will first weigh the value of its statement. The Hollanders who “frequented” Manhattan Island in 1598, were in the employ of a Dutch “Greenland Company.” Now it would seem to be of some importance for the establishment of the interesting fact under discussion, that there be brought forward some evidence of the existence of such an association as this Greenland Company. For certainly if no trace of its existence can be found, this would cast serious doubt upon the exploits of its servants in these waters.
We have to begin with announcing the lamentable fact that after a thorough search of every imaginable source of information, we have been unable to discover the existence of a Dutch Greenland Company prior to the year 1600. The works of Dutch historians, both ancient and modern, were carefully scanned, but all in vain. We began with a modern writer, N. G. Van Kampen, sometimes called by his fond and admiring countrymen, the Dutch Macaulay. He wrote an elaborate and extensive work of four or five octavo volumes on “De Nederlanders buiten Europa” (The Netherlanders outside of Europe), giving an eloquent as well as exhaustive review of those splendid achievements in various portions of the globe, which resulted in the establishment of the great Colonial Empire of the Dutch, even at this day second only to that of the English.
But there is found no mention of a Dutch Greenland Company or its doings either in these volumes or in Wagenaar, who lived in the eighteenth century and issued more than one monumental publication, or in Bor or Van Meteren of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These older writers let no event or transaction or institution of any importance escape them. They were not afraid of multiplying their volumes and therefore not at all deterred from noting even the minutest affairs that came within their ken, as they laboriously proceeded from year to year. But they are all strangely silent about this apocryphal company whose mariners were in the habit of sheltering themselves on Manhattan Island before 1600.
But now it is only fair to indicate how the tradition may have originated that there ever was such an organization as the Greenland Company. An appreciation of any reasonable grounds for its origin, will help us understand better how the mistaken statement came to be made, and to see that it was a mistake. There did exist in Holland a “Noordsche Compagnie” or Northern Company and there exists the most abundant and indubitable evidence that the terms “Northern Company” and “Greenland Company” were used interchangeably, and were both applied to the former association. This company was at first confined to the merchants of the Province of Holland, who had received their charter from the States-General, after the approval and endorsement of such a measure by the States of Holland. In 1617, the charter was renewed, but the merchants of Zeeland wished for the same privileges and the States-General granted a charter to a Zeeland “Northern Company” in May 28, 1622. Turning to the “Groot Placcaet Book,” Vol. I, Cols. 673, 674, we discover the two names in question in curious but instructive juxtaposition. The title of the act has Noortsche Compagnie, while in the body of the act we read Groenlandtsche Compagnie. In this same year (Dec., 1622), the Zeeland and Holland Companies were combined into one general or national “Northern Company,” but the act granting a larger charter mentions only the above name both in the title and in the body of it. It is to this Company that Moulton refers in his “History of New York” (p. 362) when he makes the assertion that “the Greenland Company was created in 1622.” He places this association on an exact level with the East and West India Companies.
“Thus the Northern Seas, Asia, Africa and America, were partitioned to three armed associations, possessing powers nearly co-extensive with those of the Republic.” The company chartered in 1622, (as we have seen), can not properly be classed as equal in importance or influence or power with the two great commercial associations named in one breath with it by Mr. Moulton. And we have seen also, that it did not officially bear the name he gives it, although that name might be interchangeable with the true one in the case of subordinate companies. Yet even this is not the case with the charter creating the original company confined to Holland Province alone, where there is no mention of the name “Greenland” in either the title or the body of the document. Lastly there is this significant circumstance about that earliest charter of any “Northern Company;” it bears date January 1614, and distinctly states “that no such company had ever been chartered before.”[12] This therefore settles the question as to whether it could possibly have been men in the employ of this company, miscalled the “Greenland Company,” who habitually sought relief from the rigors of an Arctic winter on the shores of the Hudson River in the year 1598. This could hardly have been when it was not erected or chartered until January 1614.
In the second place, if frequent or habitual visits to Manhattan Island were made by the Dutch in and after the year 1598, we are at a loss to comprehend the entire lack of recollection of such visits on the part of the Indians thereabouts. It is insisted on more than once in various accounts that both the vessel and the persons of its crew, were objects of boundless wonder to the natives, as they beheld the “Half-Moon” resting upon the waters of the bay or gliding up the river. De Laet, one of the earliest to write on Hudson’s discovery, publishing his “Nieuwe Wereld,” (New World) in 1625 and basing his statements on those of Hudson’s own journal, perhaps citing his very words, speaks as follows: “So far as they could judge and find out, there had never been any ships or Christians in this region before, so that they were the first who discovered this river and sailed up so far.” Such a declaration might need to be received with some suspicion, if the author had intended to maintain a claim of the first discovery for the Dutch as against other nations. But he could have had no reason to suppress the circumstance of the visits of the Dutch themselves to our river, in 1598. If that had been patent to De Laet he would have been only too glad to mention it, as only increasing the validity of the Dutch claims to those regions by the right of first discovery. He could have had no particular object in glorifying the Englishman Hudson’s exploit at the expense of the sailors of an exclusively and undoubtedly Dutch Greenland Company. But returning to the Indians, we notice in Vander Donck’s celebrated “Vertoogh,” written at New Amsterdam and published at the Hague in 1650, another arraignment of their poor memories. “Even at the present day those natives of the country who are so old as to recollect when the Dutch ships first came here, declare that when they saw them, they did not know what to make of them. Some among them when the first one arrived, even imagined it to be a fish or some monster of the sea.” Now the Indians might indeed have forgotten a visit made so long ago as 1524 or 1525, if Verrazano and Gomez really did discover the Hudson then, making but a brief stay and a rapid examination of its banks at best, but an habitual resort to its shores, or even one winter spent on the island at its mouth, in forts built to repel their attacks, only eleven years before Hudson came among them, the Indians could not possibly, it would seem, have so utterly forgotten in 1609.
But we will now give our attention more particularly to the document which asserts that the Dutch were on Manhattan Island as early as 1598. What was the nature of it, and to what degree of credence is it entitled? Mr. Brodhead in the explanatory heading which he usually prefixes to the documents in his collection states that it is a report made in 1644 by the Chairman of a Committee or Board of Accounts, appointed by the directors of the West India Company. Several documents were placed in his (the chairman’s) hands for the purpose of enabling him to furnish to the company a succinct review of events connected with the origin of the settlement on Manhattan Island, and with its progress up to that date. The writer begins with the story of the Dutch and their forts in 1598. Immediately after this the official historian glides easily into what he evidently either considers himself, or wishes others to believe, is the next stage in the history of the Manhattan Colony; namely this: “a charter was afterwards on the 11th of October 1614, granted by their High Mightinesses.” As if nothing of importance had happened between 1598 and 1614!
The question therefore arises, if this was meant for history in 1644, why was it written so imperfectly? It could not be that the fact of Hudson’s discovery, so vitally connected with the origin of Manhattan Colony, had been completely forgotten at that time, much less that after a careful examination of all the papers available to directors of the West India Company, the chairman of their committee should not have come across the record of that discovery. How then did he happen to pass it over in utter silence in his official report? Was it purposely suppressed? If so, what could have been the motive for this singular proceeding?
We think we can readily divine what the motive was, when we read in more than one English writer what use that nation contrived to make of the fact that the discovery of the Hudson River was achieved by an Englishman. Peter Heylin, who wrote before the surrender of New Netherland in 1664, remarks: “With him [i. e. Hudson] the Hollanders, in 1609, compounded for his charts and maps; but they were hardly warm in their new Habitations,” when Argall, Governor of Virginia, disputed their title to this region, which was looked upon as part of Virginia territory. The latter advanced this ingenious argument in support of his claim; “that Hudson, under whose sale they claimed that country, being an Englishman and licensed to discover those northern parts by the King of England, could not alienate or dismember it (being but a part or province of Virginia) from the Crown thereof.” This matter of a “sale” by Hudson, which was illegal, and the subsequent “right” of the English to New Netherland, is brought out again in a book written nearly a century later, or long after the problem which was unsolved in Heylin’s time—how to get the Dutch out and the English in—had been solved by Colonel Nicolls in 1664. In this book, William Smith’s “History of New York” (1757), we read, scarcely without a smile: “Henry Hudson, an Englishman, according to our authors[13] in the year 1608 [sic], under a commission from the King, his master, discovered Long Island, New York, and the river which still bears his name; and afterwards sold the country, or rather his Right to the Dutch. Their writers contend that Hudson was sent out by the East India Company in 1609 to discover a northwest passage to China. It is said however, that there was a sale; and that the English objected to it, though they for some time neglected to oppose the Dutch settlement of the country.”
Now we can readily appreciate why the Dutch West India Company might have a distinct and deliberate object in not being too exact in their history of Manhattan Colony. They would naturally be very shy of giving occasion or encouragement to a rival nation on the alert to press a claim avowedly made, however unjust, to territories entrusted to the Company’s care and government. It would to say the least have been very impolitic to give countenance to it in one of their own official papers. About twelve years later the directors, writing to Stuyvesant, while commending him for the reduction of New Sweden, at the same time remonstrated with him for having made a written agreement with the Swedish Commander. And they then put into so many words the shrewd policy which we suggest they followed in the present instance, saying; “What is written is too long preserved and may be produced when not desired, whereas words not recorded are in the lapse of time forgotten, or may be explained away” (O’Callaghan’s “New Netherland,” vol. II. p. 327). If Argall on the spot, and only a few years after the settlement; if Heylin in a book written and published before 1664, could make so much of Hudson’s nationality in the matter of his discovery, so that more than a hundred years after that event, sober historians could still cooly repeat the story of England’s supreme right, and quite cast aside the claims of the Dutch, then it may well have been considered in 1644 that it would be a dangerous concession to have even made an allusion to Hudson in a committee report. Under these circumstances, finding at home a possibly prevalent and convenient rumor about the Greenland Company and its vessels in New York bay and river, without any intention to deliberately falsify, the chairman of the committee simply incorporated the statement under discussion in his report. For business purposes, on a paper prepared by business men and not by historians, this may have been good enough history; but being preserved in this documentary form, and read in an age eager for documentary evidence and too ready to give undue weight to unpublished and original matter, the assertion derived an importance which it does not really deserve, and was not intended to possess. And so entirely unsupported is it by other proofs, or by the facts of history, that even the documentary character of this evidence has not prevailed to deceive wise and judicious investigators. It is clear that it did not commend itself as quite trustworthy for historical purposes to Dr. O’Callaghan. In quoting it, though it own assertion is entirely positive, he introduces its language by the cautious phrase, “it is said.” Brodhead, whose researches brought the paper to light, also deals very gingerly with it, holding it off at arms length, so to speak, and saying: “it needs confirmation”—and indeed, it certainly does.
Daniel Van Pelt.
FOOTNOTES
[12] Groot Placcaet Book, I. Cols. 669, 673, 676.
[13] The italics are ours.
A FAMOUS POLITICAL CONTEST IN ILLINOIS.
HON. HENRY H. EVANS.
The most interesting political contest which has taken place in the State of Illinois since the days of Lincoln and Douglass, was that which ended with the election of General John M. Palmer to the United States Senate, on the 11th day of March, 1891. The contest was of historic interest because it elevated to the Senate, a man who had long been a conspicuous figure in American politics, and who had for many years cherished an ambition to occupy a seat in the Upper Bench of the national Legislature. It was of interest also because it gave to the Democratic party of Illinois, for the first time in many years, a representative in the United States Senate. It was moreover an intensely interesting and exciting contest—and greater interest attached to it on this than on any other account—because it developed a crisis in the political affairs of the State.
It is no harsh criticism of the Republican management of the State campaign of 1890, in Illinois, to say that the campaign was lazily conducted. At the Democratic Convention, held some months before the election, General John M. Palmer had been formally endorsed as the choice of his party for United States Senator, and his adherents at once entered upon a determined and aggressive campaign. The result of this spirited Democratic campaigning, of Republican apathy, and of disturbing “side issues,” was, that when the roll of the Thirty-seventh General Assembly was made up, it was ascertained that there were 101 Democratic members elect, 100 Republicans, and three representatives of the Farmers’ Alliance organization.
This being the political status of the body which was to choose a United States Senator, it was evident that the three independent or Farmers’ Alliance members held the balance of power as between the two great political parties. These three legislators thought they saw before them great opportunities for the advancement of their interests, and starting a political revolution. Once before it had happened in the history of the State, that a little band of five legislators—the representatives of the “Anti-Nebraska” party—had placed in the field a candidate for United States Senator, of their own choosing, and in full sympathy with their political views, and at the end of a long contest that candidate had been triumphantly elected, and a new political party had been brought into existence.
The triumvirate of the Thirty-seventh General Assembly of Illinois, hastily jumped to the conclusion that there was to be a repetition of history, and that what the “Anti-Nebraska” legislators had accomplished in 1885, could be accomplished by the representatives of the Farmers’ Alliance in 1891.
When the Legislature convened they accordingly placed in nomination as their candidate for United States Senator, Alanson J. Streeter, a farmer by occupation, whose large wealth had enabled him to take up politics as a diversion, and whose views had been of a sufficiently variegated character, to enable him to claim political kinship with any of the existing partisan organizations.
General Palmer was already in the field as the Democratic candidate for Senator, and the Republicans named ex-Governor Richard J. Oglesby as their nominee. Balloting began on the 20th day of January and continued from day to day—when the Legislature was in session—until the 11th of March, when the contest ended as already stated.
The attitude of the Farmers’ Alliance members, from start to finish, toward the Republican minority, was in effect, that they presented to them the alternative of electing the Alliance nominee with Republican votes, or of allowing the Democratic nominee to be elected by Alliance votes. The proposition was one as humiliating to the great political organization to which it was made, as it was inconsistent in those who made it. Nevertheless, it was adhered to and all counter-propositions were rejected. Republican diplomacy was tried without result, the Alliance members refusing to vote for a leading representative of their own interests when he was put forward as the Republican nominee.
As the contest was prolonged, the feeling between Republicans and Democrats became more intensely antagonistic, and a point was finally reached where some of the Republican leaders apparently determined to defeat General Palmer at any cost. To do this they determined to throw the support of the entire Republican membership of the Legislature to Streeter, thereby securing his election by a majority of two votes. Principles were for the time being lost sight of by those who favored this movement. Political trusts were relegated to the region of barren idealities, and rank heresies were to be swallowed without a grimace for the sole purpose of compassing the defeat of an old time political adversary.
That the dominant party of the third State in the Union was not in a sense, committed to the vagaries of a nondescript political organization, and made directly responsible for the acts of one of its most erratic representatives, was due to the sound judgment and positive convictions of a very small number of Republican Legislators, of whom Hon. Henry H. Evans, representing the Fourteenth Senatorial District, was the acknowledged leader.
While Colonel Evans had long been prominent in the politics of the State and had had much to do with shaping its legislatures for a dozen years or more, no other event in his life has brought him so conspicuously before the public as the determined stand which he took against, what could not have been regarded in the future, as anything else than a sacrifice of the political integrity of his party. While those who were engineering this movement may have been mistaken in their calculations, they frequently affirmed that they could deliver to the Alliance candidate for Senator, the entire Republican vote of the Legislature, provided Senator Evans would consent to have this vote so recorded, and it is reasonably certain that his colleagues of the opposition were largely influenced by him. The pressure brought to bear on him, to induce him to become a party to the combine with the Alliance, was of the most powerful kind, but to entreaties, arguments and threats alike, he returned the same answer, the gist of which is contained in a brief statement of his intentions, to which he gave utterance at one of the numerous Republican caucuses, at which this matter was considered. On that occasion he said: “I want to say to this caucus, that I will never vote for any of these men for United States Senator, no matter what this caucus may think. I am a Republican, and I am for a Republican. I was elected and sent here to vote for a Republican for United States Senator, and that I will do to the end of this contest. But I do not think we should humiliate the glorious old Republican party of Illinois, by bartering away our independence for the sake of sending to the Senate a political nondescript for whose official action we must be responsible.”
This was the ringing declaration of an honest and courageous representative of well defined political principles. It was a declaration of his purposes from which he did not deviate during the contest, and no public servant ever made a better record for consistency and a strict observance of his obligations to his constituency.
The prominence which he attained in this honorable contest, and through public services previously rendered, have made him one of the prominent figures among the public men of Illinois, and the story of his life becomes interesting.
Born at Toronto, Canada, March 9, 1836, he has been essentially the architect of his own fortune. His father, Griffith Evans, and his wife, (Elizabeth Weldon), were both natives of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, being descendants of families ante-dating the Revolution—so that, although born on Canadian soil, Colonel Evans is of thoroughly American ancestry.
His father was a millwright by trade, who with his wife and family settled at Aurora, Illinois, in 1841. Colonel Evans was next to the eldest of ten children. The father was an industrious and intelligent mechanic who had more or less to do with the erection and equipment of several large mills in the neighborhood of Aurora, but he never accumulated any considerable amount of property, and his children had to depend mainly upon their own resources.
Col. Evans received his education in the public schools of Aurora, grew to manhood there, and then married Alice M. Rhodes, a lady of English birth and parentage. Soon after his marriage, he engaged in the restaurant business and continued in this business until September, 1862, when he enlisted in the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Regiment of Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He was mustered into the service at Springfield, Illinois, went into action first at Jackson, Tenn., participated in the siege of Vicksburg and in successive campaigns, being mustered out of service at the end of three years days from the date of his enlistment.
Immediately after his retirement from the military service, he returned to his old business in Aurora. Enterprising, shrewd and capable, his business expanded and he became the proprietor and then owner of the leading hotel of the city, and one of its most enterprising and public spirited citizens. He became largely interested in real estate, laying out several large additions to the city, and realizing handsome profits from his investments. In 1882, he organized the Aurora Street Railroad Company, took charge of the construction of the road, and pushed to completion, an enterprise which has since been developed into one of the most perfect electric railroad systems in the West. He was also the projector of the Joliet and Aurora Northern Railroad, an enterprise with which he was most actively identified up to the date of its going into operation, and at a late date as one of its leading officials. In everything calculated to contribute in any way to the growth and prosperity of Aurora he has taken a most active interest, and as a natural consequence of this, coupled with a cheering geniality, he has always enjoyed great popularity.
His political life began in 1876, when he was elected an Alderman for one of the wards of Aurora. In the fall of the same year he was elected a member of the State Legislature. After serving one term in the House of Representatives, he was elected, in 1880, a member of the State Senate, and has been twice re-elected since that time. As a member of the General Assembly, he has become recognized as a careful and conscientious legislator, with a large stock of practical ideas, and a capacity for energetic and persistent efforts, which have made his services peculiarly valuable to his constituents. While serving his first term in the Legislature he introduced and succeeded in having enacted into a law, the bill providing for the establishment of a State Soldier’s Home in Illinois—an institution which does great credit to the State.
He was also the author of the law under which the National Guard is now organized, a measure which met with determined opposition at the time of its introduction. Despite the opposition however, it became a law, and the wisdom of the act has since been demonstrated on numerous occasions.
In recognition of his services in perfecting the organization of and rendering effective the State Militia, Governor Shelby M. Cullom made him a member of his military staff, with the rank of colonel. He was appointed to the same position on the staff of Governor Hamilton and Governor Oglesby, and is now serving on the staff of Governor Fifer.
The Police Pension bill was another of the important measures which had his successful advocacy.
The life of Col. Evans strikingly emphasizes the marvelous industry, tireless energy, and broad spirit of enterprise that are to-day so characteristic of the American man of affairs.
W. H. Maguire.