NEW NETHERLANDS
Activities of the company.—Licenses were at once granted to several traders, who in 1622 visited the Hudson, Delaware, and Connecticut rivers and trafficked with the Indians as far east as Buzzard's Bay. Thirty families of Walloons, Protestants from Flanders, were sent over in 1623, these being the first colonists. Most of them settled on Manhattan Island, at Brooklyn, and on Staten Island. A few migrated to the vicinity of Fort Orange near Albany, and others settled near the present site of Gloucester on the Delaware, where a new fort named Nassau was erected. Other settlers soon followed; the fur trade was developed; and by 1625 the success of the colony seemed assured.
Government of the colony.—The West India Company was governed by a board of directors called the College of Nineteen; of these eight were from Amsterdam, and to them was given the control of New Netherlands. In the colony the chief officer was the director-general. To assist him was a council invested with local legislative, executive, and judicial powers, subject to the supervision and appellate jurisdiction of the Amsterdam directors. There were two minor officials, the "koopman" acting as commissary, bookkeeper, and secretary, and the "schout-fiscal" as an attorney and sheriff.
Administration of Peter Minuit.—In 1626 Peter Minuit became the director-general. One of his first acts was to secure a title to Manhattan Island by purchasing it from the Indians at the nominal price of twenty-four dollars' worth of goods. A fort, the location of which is known to-day as The Battery, was immediately constructed. Near by was built the stone counting house with a thatched roof, and thirty bark houses straggled along the east side of the river, the meager beginnings of a great metropolis. Fearing for the safety of the little groups of settlers at Fort Orange and Fort Nassau, Minuit brought them to New Amsterdam, leaving only a few soldiers and traders at Fort Orange.
Van Der Donck's Map of New Netherland, 1656.
Minuit's preparations for defence were not confined to fortifying the land. Conscious of foreign danger, inspired perhaps by the victories which Heyn was just now winning over Spaniards and Portuguese in the southern waters, and aided by two Belgian shipbuilders, the governor built and launched the New Netherland, a vessel of eight hundred tons and carrying thirty guns. The ship cost more than had been expected, and the bills were severely criticized by the West India Company.
The patroon system.—The returns from the southern raids made the small income from New Netherlands appear paltry, and the company decided to attempt an extensive colonization with a view to larger profit. A type of feudalism known as the patroon system was decided upon. The company reserved Manhattan Island, but other regions were opened to settlement. Each patroon was to receive lands four leagues along one side of a navigable river or two leagues on both sides and extending "so far into the country as the situation of the occupiers will permit," provided that within four years he settled fifty people over fifteen years of age upon his lands. Patroons were forever to "possess and enjoy all the lands lying within the aforesaid limits, together with the fruits, rights, minerals, rivers, and fountains thereof," and were to have complete control over "fishing, fowling, and grinding."