Attention is called to one rule then in force: “If a watchman receive any sum of money as a fee, he shall give the same to the Captain; and this fee so brought in shall be paid to the City Treasurer”—oh the good old times!
The presence of a considerable force of troops was a feature of life in some towns. The soldiers were well cared for when quartered within the fort, sleeping on good, soft, goose-feather beds, with warm homespun blankets and even with linen sheets, all hired from the Dutch vrouws; and supplied during the winter with plentiful loads of firewood, several hundred, through levy on the inhabitants; good hard wood, too,—“no watte Pyn wood, willige, oly noote, nor Lindewood” (which was intended for English, but needs translation into “white pine, willow, butternut, nor linden”).
No doubt the soldiers came to be felt a great burden, for often they were billeted in private houses. We find one citizen writing seriously what reads amusingly like modern slang,—that “they made him weary.” Another would furnish bedding, provisions, anything, if he need not have any soldier-boarders assigned to him. One of the twenty-three clauses of the “Articles of Surrender” of the Dutch was that the “townsmen of Manhattans shall not have any soldiers quartered upon them without being satisfied and paid for them by their officers.” In Governor Nicholl’s written instructions to the commander at Fort Albany, he urges him not to lend “too easey an eare” to the soldiers’ complaints against their land-lords.
Since in the year 1658 the soldiers of New Amsterdam paid but twenty cents a week for quarters when lodged with a citizen, it is not surprising that their presence was not desired. A soldier’s pay was four dollars a month.
They were lawless fellows, too lazy to chop wood for their fires; they had to be punished for burning up for firewood the stockades they were enlisted to protect. Their duties were slight,—a drill in the morning, no sentry work during the day, a watch over the city gates at night, and cutting wood. The military code of the day reveals a very lax condition of discipline; it wasn’t really much of an army in Dutch days. And as for the Fort and the Battery in the town of New Amsterdam, read Mr. Janvier’s papers thereon to learn fully their innocuous pretence of warlikeness.
There was very irregular foreign and in-land mail service. It is with a retrospectively pitying shiver that we read a notice, as late as 1730, that “whoever inclines to perform the foot-post to Albany this winter may make application to the Post-Master.” Later we find the postmaster leisurely collecting the mail during several weeks for “the first post to Albany this winter.” Of course this foot-post was only made when the river was frozen over; swift sloops carried the summer mail up the river in two or three weeks,—sometimes in only ten days from New York to Albany. I can fancy the lonesome post journeying alone up the solemn river, under the awe-full shadow of old Cro’nest, sometimes climbing the icy Indian paths with ys-sporen, oftener, I hope, skating swiftly along, as a good son of a Hollander should, and longing every inch of the way for spring and the “breaking-up” of the river.
In 1672, “Indian posts” carried the Albany winter mail; trustworthy redmen, whose endurance and honesty were at the service of their white friends.
The first regular mail started by mounted post from New York for Boston on January 1, 1673. His “portmantles” were crammed with letters and “small portable goods” and “divers bags.” He was “active, stout, indefatigable, and honest.” He could not change horses till he reached Hartford. He was ordered to keep an eye out for the best ways through forests, and accommodations at fords, ferries, etc., and to watch for all fugitive soldiers and servants, and to be kind to all persons journeying in his company. While he was gone eastward a locked box stood in the office of the Colonial Secretary at New York to collect the month’s mail. The mail the post brought in return, being prepaid, was carried to the “coffee-house,” put on a table, well thumbed over by all who cared to examine it, and gradually distributed, two or three weeks’ delay not making much difference any way.
As in all plantations in a new land, there was for a time in New Netherland a lack of servants. Complaints were sent in 1649 to the States-General of “the fewness of boors and farm-servants.” Domestic servants were not found in many households; the capable wife and daughters performed the housework and dairy work. As soon as servants were desired they were speedily procured from Africa. The Dutch brought the first negro slaves to America. In the beginning these slaves in New Netherland were the property of the Dutch West India Company, which rented their services. The company owned slaves from the year 1625, when it first established its authority, and promised to each patroon twelve black men and women from ships taken as prizes. In 1644 it manumitted twelve of the negroes who had worked faithfully nearly a score of years in servitude. In 1652 the Government in Holland consented to the exportation of slaves to the colony for sale. In 1664 Governor Stuyvesant writes of an auction of negroes that they brought good prices, and were a great relief to the garrison in supplying funds to purchase food. Thus did the colony taste the ease of ill-gotten wealth. Though the Duke of York and his governors attempted to check the slave-trade, by the end of the century the negroes had increased much in numbers in the colony. In the Kip family were twelve negro house-servants. Rip van Dam had five; Colonel de Peyster and the Widow Van Courtlandt had each seven adult servants. Colonel Bayard, William Beeckman, David Provoost, and Madam Van Schaick each had three.
On Long Island slaves abounded. It is the universal testimony that they were kindly treated by the Dutch,—too kindly, our English lady thought, who rented out her slaves. Masters were under some bonds to the public. They could not, under Dutch rule, whip their slaves without authorization from the government. The letters in the Lloyd Collection in regard to the slave Obium are striking examples of kindly consideration, and of constant care and thought for his comfort and happiness.