1. The Palisades, an unbroken wall of rock for fifteen miles—Grandeur. 2. The Tappanzee, surrounded by the sloping hills of Nyack, Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow—Repose. 3. The Highlands, where the Hudson for twenty miles plays “hide and seek” with hills “rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun”—Sublimity. 4. The Hillsides, for miles above and below Poughkeepsie—The Picturesque. 5. The Catskills, on the west, throned in queenly dignity—Beauty.
George William Curtis, the great traveler, the close observer, the perfect gentleman, pronounced the Hudson grander than the Rhine, and Thackeray, in his “Virginians,” has given the Hudson the verdict of beauty.
To New Yorkers it is a river dear, for there is scarcely a single settlement along its banks, from its origin to the sea, which has not some interesting tradition, some notable historic event, to relate.
The beauty and glory of such a river were not, unaided, sufficient to induce the pioneer to leave his home in civilization and go into a wilderness thousands of miles away. Such a river as the Hudson could not have its origin in a low, marshy country, and its flow seaward, in any but a healthy region, but the inducement to seek that country must be more than the mere sentiment of beauty. There must seem to be a prospect of bettering one’s condition, so far as physical comforts, or civil and religious rights are concerned. Hudson, after his exploration of the Hudson river, on his return to Europe, took back there many very valuable furs which he obtained from the Indians in exchange for trinkets of little cost and of still less real value. This fur and peltry trade was eagerly sought by the Europeans, especially the French, English and Dutch, and the latter were greatly favored for a time, for the Indians from the far north and northwest came to or near Albany to market their goods and buy their supplies. In the years 1610, 1611, 1612, 1613 and 1614 enterprising Amsterdam merchants sent out vessels to and up the Hudson river to obtain furs and peltry and made large profits. In 1614 the territory extending from Cape Cod to the Delaware river, places which Hudson in his third voyage had touched, was claimed by the Netherlands and called New Netherlands, and in that year the Holland government granted a special charter to a company of Amsterdam merchants and others of the United New Netherlands Company giving them the monopoly until January 1, 1618, of all travel and trade in the New Netherlands, during which time they were at liberty to make four voyages. For a period of five years, from 1618 to 1623, there seems to have been a free trade in the New Netherlands—presumably the fur trade proving less profitable.
June 3, 1621, the government of Holland, called the “Lords States General,” incorporated the Dutch West India Company, clothing it with almost kingly powers, to carry on trade and planting settlements from Cape Horn to Newfoundland for a term of twenty-four years.
Its special object was the jurisdiction and exclusive control in New Netherlands. Its government was to be composed of nineteen directors from the five different cities of Holland. The Amsterdam Chamber was to have control of New Netherlands. The company was not fully organized until the spring of 1623. The English never recognized the Dutch claim for the territory called New Netherlands, and as early as 1613 demanded the surrender of the “Dutch trading house” on Manhattan Island, and ten years later the English Ambassador at The Hague protested against the encroachment of the Dutch fur traders—the English claiming the territory under the discoveries of the Cabots in 1497 and 1498. In April, 1623, thirty families, mostly Walloons, or French Protestants, came over and landed at New Amsterdam (New York) and eight of the families came up to Albany and there built Fort Orange near Steamboat Square, about two miles above Fort Nassau, built several years before.
Prior to the coming of the company of the Walloons to the New Netherlands the famous Pilgrim colony had received a patent granted by the Virginia Company giving them the right to settle “about the Hudson river,” and when the “Mayflower” left Southampton, England, that was her destination, but mistaking the route and contrary winds drove her to the Massachusetts coast and there that colony was settled in 1620 at Plymouth Rock. Had the Pilgrims settled in the New Netherlands in 1620 the result doubtless would have been different, but it is doubtful if it would have been better or even so good. It is well to bear in mind that the early settlements in New England were made by persons seeking to avoid persecution on account of their religious creeds, at variance with Roman Catholicism and the established Episcopal Church, and that they might found and establish a home where they could enjoy religious and civil rights. “The Pilgrims” settled at Plymouth in 1620 and “the Puritans” in Salem in 1629. Miles Standish was a prominent figure and character among the Pilgrims, though himself not a Pilgrim. Bradford, Brewster, Winslow, and Carver were the trusted leaders among the Pilgrims. Among the Puritans John Endicott and John Winthrop were easily the chiefs. The “Puritans” were members of the established (Episcopal) church. They sought to have that church purified. They wanted the clergy to give up wearing the surplice, making the sign of the cross in baptism and using the ring in the marriage service—Roman Catholic observances. The Separatists (afterward known in America as the Pilgrims) were a branch of the Puritans—ultra Puritans who utterly repudiated Roman Catholic ceremonials and everything in imitation of or like and therefore separated from the established (Episcopal) church.
The Dutch did not come to the New Netherlands on religious considerations, for Holland tolerated religious freedom, but they came for gain—immediate gain from the fur and peltry trade. They did not early come to settle and for nearly twenty years after Hudson’s exploration and glowing account of it very, very few indeed who came over to engage in, or employed in the fur trade, became settlers. It is said that Sarah Rapelje, a daughter of one of the Walloon settlers, born June 7, 1625, was the first white child born in the New Netherlands. The first reference to the population at Fort Orange (Albany) published seems to have been in a work published in Amsterdam in 1628, which says: “There are no families at Fort Orange. They keep twenty-five or twenty-six traders there.”
The report made by the Nineteen in 1629 to the Lords States General said: “All who are inclined to do any sort of work here procure enough to eat without any trouble and therefore are not willing to go far from home on an uncertainty.” It was apparent that if the Dutch West India Company was to prove a success in the New Netherlands a different course must be pursued, for Virginia and New England were being settled and their territory, in many respects better, was not.
The Dutch West India Company, modeled after the Dutch East India Company, having powerful fleets, sailing along the coasts of South America and the West Indies, preying on the Spanish commerce, capturing their vessels and cargoes and amassing wealth thereby, sought to induce men of wealth, daring, and ambition to relieve them of the undertaking of settling and developing the New Netherlands, which, instead of a source of revenue, had become a burden. They hit upon what was called the Patroon scheme—based upon the Feudal System—a system of land tenure and service prevalent in Europe during the Middle Ages—a system inevitably tending to exalt the Patroon into a lordly baron and to degrade his subject into a serf.