Dutch and English on the Hudson: A Chronicle of Colonial New York

by Maud Wilder Goodwin

Trusting, no doubt, to the impression which he had made on the minds of the natives, Hudson decided to go ashore. The Indians crowded around him and "sang in their fashion"—a motley horde, as strange to the ship's crew as the Half Moon and its company seemed marvelous to the aborigines. Men, women, and children, dressed in fur or tricked out with feathers, stood about or floated in their boats hewn from solid logs, the men carrying pipes of red copper in which they smoked that precious product, tobacco—the consolation prize offered by the New World to the Old in lieu of the hoped-for passage to Cathay.

Everything seemed to breathe assurance of peaceful relations between the red man and the white; but if the newcomers did not at the moment realize the nature of the Indians, their eyes were opened to possibilities of treachery by the happenings of the next day. John Colman and a boat's crew were sent out to take further soundings before the Half Moon should proceed on her journey. As the boat was returning to report a safe course ahead, the crew, only five in number, were set upon by two war-canoes filled with Indians, whose volley of arrows struck terror to their hearts. Colman was mortally wounded in the throat by an arrow, and two of his companions were seriously, though not fatally, hurt. Keeping up a running fight, the survivors escaped under cover of darkness. During the night, as they crouched with their dead comrade in the boat, the sailors must have thought the minutes hours and the hours days. To add to their discomfort rain was falling, and they drifted forlornly at the mercy of the current. When at last dawn came, they could make out the ship at a great distance; but it was ten o'clock in the morning before they reached her safe shelter. So ended the brief dream of ideal friendship and confidence between the red men and the whites.

After Colman had been buried in a grave by the side of the beautiful sheet of water which he had known for so short a time, the Half Moon worked her way cautiously from the Lower Bay through the Narrows to the inner harbor and reached the tip of the island which stands at its head. What is now a bewildering mass of towers and palaces of industry, looking down upon a far-extended fleet of steam and sailing vessels, was then a point, wooded to the water's edge, with a scattered Indian village nestling among the trees.

A Moravian missionary, writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century, set down an account from the red man's point of view of the arrival of the Half Moon. This account he claimed to have received from old Indians who held it as part of their tribal traditions. As such it is worth noting and quoting, although as history it is of more than doubtful authenticity. The tradition runs that the chiefs of the different tribes on sighting the Half Moon supposed it to be a supernatural visitor and assembled on "York Island" to deliberate on the manner in which they should receive this Manito on his arrival. Plenty of meat was provided for a sacrifice, a grand dance was arranged, and the medicine-men were set to work to determine the meaning of this phenomenon. The runners sent out to observe and report declared it certain that it was the Great Manito, "but other runners soon after arriving, declare it a large house of various colors, full of people yet of quite a different color than they [the Indians] are of. That they were also dressed in a different manner from them and that one in particular appeared altogether red, which must be the Mannitto himself."

The strange craft stopped and a smaller boat drew near. While some stayed behind to guard the boat, the red-clothed man with two others advanced into a large circle formed by the Indian chiefs and wise men. He saluted them and they returned the salute.

A large hock-hack [Indian for gourd or bottle] is brought forward by the supposed Mannitto's servants and from this a substance is poured out into a small cup or glass and handed to the Mannitto. The expected Mannitto drinks, has the glass filled again and hands it to the chief next him to drink. The chief receives the glass but only smelleth at it and passes it on to the next chief who does the same. The glass then passes through the circle without the contents being tasted by anyone, and is upon the point of being returned again to the red-clothed man when one of their number, a spirited man and a great warrior jumps up and harangues the assembly on the impropriety of returning the glass with the contents in it—that the same was handed them by the Mannitto in order that they should drink it as he himself had done before them—that this would please him; but that to return it might provoke him and be the cause of their being destroyed by him. He then took the glass and bidding the assembly a farewell, drank it up. Every eye was fixed on their resolute companion to see what an effect this would have upon him and he soon beginning to stagger about and at last dropping to the ground they bemoan him. He falls into a sleep and they saw him as expiring. He awakes again, jumps up and declares that he never felt himself before so happy as after he had drank the cup. Wishes for more. His wish is granted and the whole assembly soon join him and become intoxicated.

The Delawares, as the missionary points out further, call New York Island "Mannahattanik," "the place where we were all drunk." With this picturesque account let us contrast the curt statement of Robert Juet: "This morning at our first rode in the River there came eight and twenty canoes full of men, women and children to betray us; but we saw their intent and suffered none of them to come aboord of us. At twelve of the clocke they departed. They brought with them oysters and beanes whereof we bought some." If there had been any such striking scene as the missionary's chronicle reports, Juet would probably have recorded it; but in addition to his silence in the matter we must recall the fact that this love-feast is supposed to have occurred only a few days after the killing of Colman and the return of the terror-stricken crew. This makes it seem extremely improbable that Hudson would have taken the risk of going ashore among hostile natives and proffering the hospitalities which had been so ill requited on his previous landing. Let us therefore pass by the Reverend John Heckwelder's account as "well found, but not well founded," and continue to follow the cruise of the Half Moon up the great river.

The days now were fair and warm, and Hudson, looking around him when the autumn sun had swept away the haze from the face of the water, declared it as fair a land as could be trodden by the foot of man. He left Manhattan Island behind, passed the site of Yonkers, and was carried by a southeasterly wind beyond the Highlands till he reached what is now West Point. In this region of the Catskills the Dutch found the natives friendly, and, having apparently recovered from their first suspicious attitude, the explorers began to open barter and exchange with such as wished to come aboard. On at least one occasion Hudson himself went ashore. The early Dutch writer, De Laet, who used Hudson's last journal, quotes at length Hudson's description of this landing, and the quotation, if genuine, is probably the longest description of his travels that we have from the pen of the great navigator. He says that he sailed to the shore in one of their canoes, with an old man who was chief of a tribe. There he found a house of oak bark, circular in shape, apparently well built, and with an arched roof.