Dr. Eights, of Albany, wrote still further reminiscences of the day. He said that, strangely enough, though all the booths and sports opened on Monday, white curiosity-seekers were, on that first day, the chief visitors to Pinkster Hill. On Tuesday the blacks all appeared, and the consumption of gingerbread, cider, and applejack began. Adam Blake, a truly elegant creature, the body-servant of the old patroon Van Rensselaer, was master of the ceremonies. Charley, the King, was a “Guinea man” from Angola,—and I have noted the fact that nearly all African-born negroes who became leaders in this country, or men of marked note in any way, have been Guinea men. He wore portions of the costume of a British general, and had the power of an autocrat,—his will was law. Dr. Eights says the Pinkster musical instruments were eel-pots covered with dressed sheepskin, on which the negroes pounded with their bare hands, as do all savage nations on their tom-toms. Their song had an African refrain, “Hi-a-bomba-bomba-bomba.” Other authorities state that the dance was called the “Toto Dance,” and partook so largely of savage license that at last the white visitors shunned being present during its performance.
These Pinkster holidays became such bacchanalian revels in other ways that in 1811 the Common Council of Albany prohibited the erection of booths and all dancing, gaming, and drinking at that time; and when the negroes could not dance nor drink, it was but a sorry holiday, and quickly fell into desuetude.
Executions were held on Pinkster Hill, and other public punishments took place there.
In the realm of fiction we find evidence of the glories of Pinkster Day in New York. Cooper, in his “Satanstoe,” tells of its observance in New York City. He calls it the saturnalia of the blacks, and says that they met on what we now know as City Hall Park, and that the negroes came for thirty or forty miles around to join in the festivities.
On Long Island Pinkster Day was widely observed. The blacks went, on the week previous to the celebration, to Brooklyn and New York to sell sassafras and swingling-tow, to earn their scanty spending-money for Pinkster. They were everywhere freely given their time for rioting, and domestic labor was performed by the masters and mistresses; but they had to provide their own spending-money for gingerbread and rum. They gathered around the old market in Brooklyn near the ferry, dancing for eels, blowing fish-horns, eating and drinking. The following morning the judge’s office was full of sorry blacks, hauled up for “disorderly conduct.”
On Long Island the Dutch residents also made the day a festival, “going to pinkster fields for pinkster frolics,” exchanging visits, and drinking schnapps, and eating “soft-wafels” together. About twelve years ago, while driving through Flatlands and New Lots one beautiful day in May, I met a group of young men driving from door to door of the farm-houses, in wagons gayly dressed with branches of dogwood blossoms, and entering each house for a short visit. I asked whether a wedding or a festival were being held in the town, and was answered that it was an old Dutch custom to make visits that week. I tried to learn whence this observance came, but no one knew its reason for being, or what holiday was observed. Poor Pinkster! still vaguely honored as a shadow, a ghost of the past, but with your very name forgotten, even among the children of those who gave to you in this land a name and happy celebration!
Various wild flowers were known as Pinkster flowers. The beautiful azalea that once bloomed—indeed does still bloom—so plentifully throughout New York in May, was universally known as “pinkster flower” or “pinkster bloom,” and along the banks of the Hudson till our own day was called “pinkster blummachee.” The traveller Kalm noted it in 1740, and called it by that name. Mrs. Vanderbilt calls it “pinkster bloomitze.” I was somewhat surprised to hear a Rhode Island farmer, in the summer of 1893, ask me whether he should not pick me “some pinkster blossoms,” pointing at the same time to the beautiful swamp pink that flushed with rosy glow the tangles of vines and bushes on the edge of the Narragansett woods. It is interesting to know that by many authorities the name “pink,” of our common garden flower, is held to be derived from the Dutch Pinkster, German Pfingsten, and owes its name, not to its pink color, but to the season of its blooming. In other localities in New York and New Jersey the blue flag or iris was known as “pinkster bloom.”
Throughout New England the black residents, free and in bondage, held high holiday one day in May, or in some localities during the first week in June; but the day of revelry was everywhere called “Nigger ’Lection.” In Puritandom the observance of Whitsunday was believed to have “superstition writ on its forehead;” but Election Day was a popular and properly Puritanical May holiday; therefore the negro holiday took a similar name, and the “Black Governor” was elected on the week following the election of the white Governor, usually on Saturday.
There was some celebration of days of thanksgiving in New Netherland as in Holland; they were known by a peculiar double name, fast-prayer and thank-day. These days did not develop among the Dutch in the new world into the position of importance they held among English colonists. In 1644 the first public Thanksgiving Day whose record has come down to us was proclaimed in gratitude for the safe return of the Dutch warriors after a battle with the Connecticut Indians on Strickland’s Plains near Stamford. A second Thanksgiving service was announced for the 6th of September, 1645, whereon God was to be “specially thanked, praised, and blessed for suffering” the long-wished-for peace with the Indians. This service was held on Wednesday, which was usually the chosen day of the week. In 1654, at a Thanksgiving ordered on account of the peace established between England and the Netherlands, services were to be held in the morning; the citizens were to be permitted “to indulge in all moderate festivities and rejoicings as the event recommends and their Situation Shall permit.” That these festivities were not always decorous is shown by the fining and punishment of some young lads for drunkenness on one Thanksgiving Day.
Various were the causes of the commemorative services: peace between Spain and the Fatherland; the prosperity of the province, its peace, increased people, and trade; a harvest of self-sown grain (the fields having been deserted for fear of Indians). In 1664 Domine Brown, of Wyltwyck, asked for an established annual Thanksgiving; but there are no records to show that this desire was carried out, though from 1690 to 1710 they were held almost every year.