The court records of any period in our American history are an unfailing source of profit and delight to the historian. In the town or state whose colonial records still exist there can ever be drawn a picture not only of the crimes and punishments, but of the manners, occupations, and ways of our ancestors and a knowledge can be gained of the social ethics, the morality, the modes of thought, the intelligence of dead-and-gone citizens. We learn that they had daily hopes and plans and interests and harassments just such as our own, as well as vices and wickedness.
In spite of Chancellor Kent’s assertion of their dulness and lack of interest, the court records of Dutch colonial times are not to me dull reading; quaint humor and curious terms abound; the criminal records always are interesting; even the old reken-boeks (the account-books) are of value. These first sources give an unbiassed and well-outlined picture, sometimes a surprising and almost irreconcilable one; for instance, I had always a fixed notion that the early women-colonists of Dutch birth were wholly a quiet, reserved, even timid group; not talkative and never aggressive. It was therefore a great thrust at my established ideas to discover, when poring over an old “Road Book” at the Hall of Records in Brooklyn, containing some entries of an early Court of Sessions, an account of the trial of two dames of Bushwyck, Mistress Jonica Schampf and Widow Rachel Luquer, for assaulting the captain of the Train-Band, Captain Peter Praa, on training-day in October, 1690, while he was at the head of his company. These two vixens most despitefully used him; they beat him, pulled his hair, assaulted and wounded him, and committed “other Ivill Inormities, so that his life was despaired of.” And there was no evidence to show that any of his soldiers, or any of the spectators present, interfered to save either Peter’s life or his honor. The offence which provoked this assault is not even hinted at, though it may have arisen from the troubled state of public affairs. Captain Praa was a man of influence and dignity in the community, an exiled Huguenot, of remarkable skill in horsemanship and arms. In spite of all this, it appears probable that the sentiment of the community was in sympathy with the two turbulent assaulters and batterers, for they were fined only six shillings and three pounds respectively. They threw themselves on the mercy of the Court, and certainly were treated with mercy.
There are, however, few women-criminals named in the old Dutch and early English records, and these few were not prosecuted for any very great crimes or viciousness; the chief number were brought up for defamation of character and slander, though men-slanderers were more plentiful than women. The close intimacy, the ideal neighborliness of the Dutch communities of New York made the settlers deeply abhor all violations of the law of social kindness. To preserve this state of amity, they believed with Chaucer “the first vertue is to restraine and kepen wel thine tonge.”
The magistrates knew how vast a flame might be kindled by a petty spark; and therefore promptly quenched the odious slander in its beginning; petty quarrels were adjusted by arbitration ere they grew to great breaches. As sung the chorus of Batavian women in Van der Vondel’s great poem:—
“If e’er dispute or discord dared intrude,
’Twas soon by wisdom’s voice subdued.”
In spite, however, of all wariness and watchfulness and patience, the inevitable fretfulness engendered in petty natures by a narrow and confined life showed in neighborhood disputes and suits for defamation of character, few of them of great seriousness and most of them easily adjusted by the phlegmatic and somewhat dictatorial Dutch magistrates. In a community so given to nicknaming it seems strange to find such extreme touchiness about being called names. Suits for defamation were frequent, through opprobrious name-calling, and on very slight though irritating grounds. It would certainly seem a rather disproportionate amount of trouble to bring a lawsuit simply because you were called a “black pudding,” or a verklickker, or tale-bearer, or even a “Turk;” though, of course, no one would stand being called a “horned beast” or a “hay thief.” Nor was “Thou swine” an offensive term too petty to be passed over in silence. The terrible epithets, spitter-baard and “Dutch dough-face,” seem to make a climax of opprobriousness; but the word moff was worse, for it was the despised term applied in Holland to the Germans, and it led to a quarrel with knives.
I wish to note in passing that though the Dutch called each other these disagreeable and even degrading names, they did not swear at each other. Profanity was seldom punished in New Amsterdam, for practically it did not exist, as was remarked by travellers. Chaplain Wolley told of “the usual oath” of one Dutch colonist,—the word “sacrament.”
The colonists were impatient of insulting actions as well as words. Sampson said in “Romeo and Juliet,” “I will bite my thumb at them, which is a disgrace to them if they bear it;” so “finger-sticking” was a disgrace in colonial times if unresented, and it was actionable in the courts. The man or woman who pointed the finger of scorn at a neighbor was pretty sure to have the finger of the law pointed at him.
The curious practice of the Dutch settlers alluded to—the giving of nicknames—may be partly explained by the fact that in some cases the persons named had no surname, and the nickname was really a distinguishing name. These nicknames appear not only in the records of criminal cases, but in official documents such as the patents for towns, transfers of estates, civil contracts, etc. In Albany, in 1655 and 1657, we find Jan the Jester, Huybert the Rogue, Jacobus or Cobus the Looper, squint-eyed Harmen, the wicked Domine. On Long Island were John the Swede, Hans the Boor, Tunis the Fisher. In Harlem was Jan Archer the Koop-all (or buy-all). In New York, in English days, in 1691, we find Long Mary, Old Bush, Top-knot Betty, Scarebouch. These names conveyed no offence, and seem to have been universally adopted and responded to.