This letter of Dermer and the Brief Relation first informed the English that “the Hollanders as interlopers had fallen into ye middle betwixt the plantations” of Virginia and New England.[860] The Description of the Province of New Albion[861] informs us that “Capt. Samuel Argal and Thomas Dale on their return [from Canada in 1613] landed at Manhatas Isle in Hudson’s River, where they found four houses built, and a pretended Dutch governor under the West India Company’s of Amsterdam share or part, who kept trading-boats and trucking with the Indians;” but the official correspondence[862] between the authorities of Virginia and the Home Government proves that Argal and his party never went to New Netherland, although they intended to do so in 1621; for, hearing that the Dutch had settled on the Hudson, a “demurre in their prceding was caused.”[863] The motive for making the above-quoted statement concerning Argal’s visit in 1613 is apparent. The imposing pseudonym under which the Description of New Albion appeared was probably assumed by Sir Edmund Ploeyden (Plowden), to whom in 1634 Lord Strafford, then viceroy of Ireland, had granted the patent of New Albion[864] covering the Dutch possession, and who therefore had an obvious interest adverse to the Dutch title. Its publication at the time, when the right of the Dutch to the country was being discussed between England and the States-General of Holland, was intended to influence the British mind. It contains a queer jumble of fact and fancy, and it is not necessary to say more about its claims to be an historical authority than has already been published in the Memoirs of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.[865]
Considering that, according to Van der Donck, Sir Edmund Ploeyden had been in New Netherland several times, it seems almost incredible that he should have made such astonishing statements, if he was the author of the book. A perusal of a work published a few years previous to the Description of New Albion would have set him right, at least so far as the geography of the country was concerned.[866] The author of the Short Discovery has very correct notions of the hydrography of New Netherland, acquired apparently by the study of Dutch maps; but the distances and degrees of latitude are as great a puzzle to him as to many other geographers and seamen of that day. As he wrote before the Dutch title to New Netherland was disputed, he is of course silent concerning the English claims to the territory.
The historian writing of New Netherland to-day has the advantage of being able to consult the journal of a governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, who took an active part in the occurrences which he describes.[867] Although it does not cover the whole of the Dutch period of New York, and his puritanical bias is occasionally evident, we have no more reliable source for the history of the relations between the colonies.
The few historical data given in the next book to be considered[868] are of interest, as the author endeavors to “assert the rights of the English nation in vouching the legal interest of England in right of the first discovery or premier seizure to Novum Belgium.” They show, however, also how in so short a period as a man’s life even contemporary history can be distorted. According to Heylin, who takes Sir Samuel Argal as his source, Hudson had been commissioned by King James I. to make the voyage of 1609, and after making his discoveries sold his maps and charts to the Dutch. The Dutch were willing to surrender their claims to Sir Edmund Ploeyden, he says, for £2,500, but took advantage of the troubles in England, and, instead of surrendering, armed the Indians to help them in resisting any English attempt to reduce New Netherland. Leaving aside Plantagenet’s New Albion, we meet here, in a work which the author’s high reputation must immediately have placed among the standard works of the day, a most startling falsification of facts and events which had occurred during the lifetime of the author. It is impossible to account for it, even if we suppose that these statements were made for political effect; for the men who read Heylin’s book had also read the correct accounts of Hudson’s voyages, and knew that Heylin’s statements were false. The learned prelate is only little less at fault in his geographical account. Although he tells us that Hudson gave his name to one of the rivers, he mentions as the two principal ones only the Manhates or Nassau or Noort and the South rivers, being evidently in doubt which is the Hudson. Heylin had studied geography better than his contemporary Robert Fage, who published about the same time A Description of the whole World, London, 1658, but he is utterly silent as to New Netherland. In 1667, when he published his Cosmography, or a Description of the whole World, represented by a more exact and certain Discovery, he had learned that “to the Southwest of New England lyeth the Dutch plantation; it hath good ground and good air, but few of that Nation are inhabiting there, which makes that there are few plantations in the land, they chiefly intending their East India trade, and but one village, whose inhabitants are part English, part Dutch. Here hath been no news on any matter of war or state since the first settlement. There is the Port Orange, thirty miles up Hudson’s River,” etc. This was written three years after New Netherland had become an English colony, when New York city numbered almost two thousand inhabitants, and some ten or twelve villages were flourishing on Long Island.
The best description, or rather the most ample, written by an Englishman, is that of John Josselyn, who published his observations made during two voyages to New England in 1638-1639 and 1663-1671.[869] Although he had been in the country, his notions concerning it are somewhat crude. New England, under which name he includes New Netherland, is thought to be an island formed by the “spacious” river of Canada, the Hudson, two great lakes “not far off one another,” where the two rivers have their rise, and the ocean. His account of the Indians, of their mode of living and warfare, is highly amusing, and at the same time instructive, although no philologist would probably accept as correct his statement that the Mohawk language was a dialect of the Tartar. Nor would the botanist place implicit faith in the statement that in New England barley degenerated frequently into oats; and the zoölogist would be astonished to learn of “frogs sitting upon their breeches one foot high.” His credulity has led this eccentric raconteur into describing many similar wonderful details; but his work is nevertheless of value, as giving, I believe, the first complete description of the fauna and flora of the Middle Atlantic and New England States. In some of his historical data he follows Plantagenet, probably at second-hand through Heylin, and is so far without credit.
Religion, which had already done so much to increase the population of the colony on the Hudson, was to cause a new invasion by the Dutch into their old possessions. While Arminians and Gomarists, Cocceians and Vœtians, were continuing the religious strife in Holland, a new sect, the Labadists, sprang up. The intolerance with which they were treated compelled their leaders to look out for a country where they might exercise their religion with perfect freedom. An attempt at colonization in Surinam, ceded to Holland by England in the Treaty of Breda, 1667, having failed, they turned their eyes upon New York, then under English rule, and in 1679 sent two of their most prominent men—Jasper Danckers and Peter Sluyter—across the ocean to explore and report. The account of their travels was procured, translated, and published by Mr. Henry C. Murphy in the Collections of the Long Island Historical Society.[870] It tells in simple language, showing frequently their religious bias, what the travellers saw and heard. The drawings with which they illustrated their journal give us a vivid picture of New York two hundred years ago. As they talked with many of the men who had been prominent in Dutch times, their account of historical events acquires special interest. The tradition then current at Albany, that the ruins of a fort on Castle Island indicated the place where Spaniards had made a settlement before the Dutch, is discredited by them; but the discovery of the so-called Pompey Stone, an evident Spanish relic, at not too great a distance from the Hudson River, makes it desirable that this tradition should receive special investigation. It is true the Indians in Van der Donck’s time who were old enough to recollect when the Dutch first came, declared that they were the first white men whom they saw;[871] but their descendants told these travellers “that the first strangers seen in these parts were Spaniards or Portuguese; but they did not remain long, and afterwards the Dutch came.” The Spaniards under Licenciado d’ Aillon had made landings and explored the country south and east of New York, and may not one of their exploring parties have come to Albany and fortified themselves?
While Aitzema gives us, in his Saken van Staat, the Dutch side of the public affairs in the seventeenth century, Thurloe,[872] in his Collection of State Papers, uncovers English statesmanship and diplomacy. His official position as secretary to the Council of State under Charles I., and afterwards to the Protector and his son, gave him a thorough insight into the workings of the public machinery, and makes his selection of papers extremely valuable. Among them will be found a document of the year 1656 on the English rights to New Netherland, which is highly interesting. I can refer only by title to other works of the seventeenth century speaking of New Netherland, as they are only either more or less embellished and incorrect repetitions of former accounts, or because they are beyond my reach.[873]
Skipping over a century, we come to the work of a native of New York, the History of the Province of New York from its first Discovery to the Year 1732, by William Smith, Jr. Considering that it was written and published before the author had reached his thirtieth year,[874] and that he had to gather his information from the then rare and scanty libraries of America and the official records of the province, the work reflects no small credit on its author. For the discovery by Hudson, he follows the accepted version,—that Hudson in 1608, under a commission from King James I., first landed on Long Island, etc., and afterward sold the country, or rather his rights, to the Dutch. Smith’s knowledge of law should have prevented his repeating this statement, for he ought to have been aware that Hudson could not have had any individual claim to the country discovered by him. Another statement, repeated by Smith on the authority of elder writers,—namely, that James I. had conceded to the Dutch in 1620 the right to use Staten Island as a watering-place for their ships going to and coming from Brazil,—a careful perusal of the correspondence between the authorities of New Netherland and the Directors of the West India Company, then within easy reach, would have told him to be untrue or incorrect. If there were any truth in this statement, for which I have not found the slightest foundation, it would only prove that, with their usual tenacity of purpose, the Dutch, having once determined to settle on Manhattan’s Island, could not be deterred from carrying out their project. Although admitting that, in the long run, it would have been impossible for the Dutch to preserve their colony against the increasing strength of their English neighbors, he condemns the treachery with which New Netherland was wrested from the Dutch. It is to be regretted that with so many official Dutch documents as Smith found in the office of the secretary, he did not write the history of the Dutch period of the province with more detail, and that he studied those which he consulted with hardly sufficient care.
Before a proper interest in the history of New York had been reawakened after the exciting times of the Revolution and of 1812, it revived in the European cradle of New York to such an extent as to bring forth a valuable contribution to our historical sources from the pen of the learned Chevalier Lambrechtsen.[875] Its value consists principally in the fact that the author had access to the papers of the West India Company, since lost, and that it instigated research and called attention to the history of their State among New Yorkers, several of whom now set to work writing histories.[876] Not one of them is of great value now, the documents procured in the archives of Europe having thrown more and frequently a different light on many facts. Many statements are given as based on tradition, others are absolutely incorrect,[877] and none tell us anything about New Netherland that we have not already read in De Laet, Van der Donck, and other older writers.
To the anti-rent troubles in this State and to the researches into the rights of the patroons arising from them, we are indebted to the best work on New Netherland which has yet been written. Chancellor Kent’s assertion, that the Dutch annals were of a tame and pacific character and generally dry and uninteresting,[878] had deterred many from their study. Now it became an absolute necessity to discover what privileges had been held by the patroons under the Dutch government, and, upon examining the records, Dr. E. B. O’Callaghan was amazed to find a vast amount of historical material secluded from the English student by an unknown language. The writing of a history of that period, which had been a dark page for so long a time, immediately suggested itself; and as about the same time the papers relating to New York, which the State had procured abroad, were sent home by Mr. Brodhead, the agent of the State, the plan was carried into effect, and the History of New Netherland, or New York under the Dutch, by E. B. O’Callaghan, New York, 1846, vol. ii. 1850, made its appearance.[879]