It is perhaps beyond the possibilities of the human mind to write history, not simply annals, from a thoroughly objective point of view; but the historian must try to suppress his individuality as far as he can, or at least to criticise only the events of a remote period from the standpoint of that period, and not from his own, which is more modern and advanced. Dr. O’Callaghan followed no philosophy of history. He tried to suppress his individuality as Irishman, Canadian revolutionist, and devout Romanist; but occasionally it was stronger than his will, and impaired the objectivity and fairness of his judgment. Yet the descendants of the settlers of New Netherland owe to him a greater debt than to any of their own race, for he, first of any historian, has shown us the colony in its origin—the steadiness, sturdiness, and industry of the colonists, who were men as religious as the New England Puritans, but more tolerant towards adherents of other creeds. Notwithstanding this historian’s desire to be accurate in his statements, his unqualified reliance upon previous writers has on several occasions led him into errors, the gravest of which is perhaps the repetition of Plantagenet’s story of Argal’s invasion. I have tried to show above that the English documents disprove this statement, which O’Callaghan repeats on the authority of Heylin.
J. Romeyn Brodhead, the collaborator of Dr. O’Callaghan in editing the documents procured for the State by his agency, was the next to enter the field as a writer on the history of New York. While Dr. O’Callaghan in a few instances allows his inborn prejudices to make him criticise the actions of the Dutch too harshly, and without due allowance for the times and circumstances, Mr. Brodhead, a descendant both of Dutch and English early settlers, fails on the other side, and becomes too lenient. Generally, however, his History of New York is written with great independence of judgment and with thorough criticism of the authorities. It is to be regretted that death prevented the completion of the work, which does not go farther than 1691; but what Mr. Brodhead has given us must, for its completeness and accuracy of research, and for the genuine historical acumen displayed in it, rank as a standard work and a classical authority on the subject.[880]
There are many additional works to be consulted by those who desire reliable information on the early history of New York,—the more general histories (like Bancroft’s, chap. xv.), monographs,[881] and local histories, the Transactions of the various historical societies of the State, etc.; but the passing of them in review has been in some degree relegated to notes.
When the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras said that man was born to contemplate the heavens, the sun, and the moon, he might have added also the earth and its formation in all its details, and enjoined on his disciples the necessity of representing the result of such contemplations by maps and charts. We require a map fully to understand the geography and chorography of a country; hence a study of the maps made by contemporaneous makers becomes the duty of the writer of New Netherland history. I have already stated that the coast of New York and the neighboring districts were known to Europeans almost a century before Hudson ascended the “Great River of the North,” and that this knowledge is proved by various maps made in the course of the sixteenth century. Nearly all of them place the mouth of a river between the fortieth and forty-first degrees of latitude, or what should be this latitude, but which imperfect instruments have placed farther north. The configuration of the coast-line shows that they meant the mouth of the Hudson. Only one, however, of these sixteenth-century maps, made by Vaz Dourado at Lisbon, in 1571, gives the Hudson River in its almost entire course, from the mountains to the bay. A copy of this map, made in 1580, which found its way to Munich, was probably seen by Peter Plancius, who induced Hudson to explore that region of the New World, so little known to Europeans at that time. Although Vaz Dourado’s map enlightens us so very little, I mention it because his map must lead to the investigation of the question whether the Dutch under Hudson were the first to navigate the river.
FROM THE FIGURATIVE MAP, 1616.
[Brodhead’s statements regarding the finding of this map are in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1845, p. 185; compare also his New York, i. 757. The original parchment map measured 2 × 2 feet, and showed the country from Egg Harbor, in New Jersey, to the Penobscot, 40° to 45°. The paper map covered the territory from below the Delaware Capes to above Albany, and is three feet long. The original is in colors, which are preserved in the chromolithograph of it issued at the Hague in 1850 or thereabout. (Asher’s List, no. 1; Muller’s 1877 Catalogue, no. 2,270.) There is a reduction of it in Cassell’s United States, i. 247.—Ed.]
The oldest map of the territory now comprising the States of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, and known as “The Figurative Map,” was found by Mr. Brodhead in the archives at the Hague. It is on parchment, and is beautifully executed. A fac-simile copy, taken by Mr. Brodhead, was deposited in the State Library at Albany, and reproductions have been published in the New York Colonial Documents, vol. i., also in Dr. O’Callaghan’s History of New Netherland. It purports to have been submitted to the States-General of Holland in 1616, with an application for a charter to trade to New Netherland, but it was probably produced then a second time, having done duty before on a similar occasion in 1614, with a map exhibiting the Delaware region on a larger scale. This 1614 map was on paper, and was found by Mr. Brodhead in the same place, and may be seen in similar reproductions, accompanying those of the 1616 map. Who the draughtsman of either was, is unknown. An inscription on the latter refers to draughts formerly made, which were consulted, and to the report of some men, who had probably been the Dutchmen captured by the Mohawks and mentioned in Captain Hendricksen’s report (New York Colonial Documents, i. 13). De Laet seems to have had these maps before him when he wrote his Novus Orbis, and to have constructed the map accompanying his work from these two. Notwithstanding the great care and detail exhibited in them, they are necessarily inaccurate, but highly interesting and instructive, as they indicate the location of the several Indian tribes at the time of the arrival of the Dutch and of the Spaniards before them. The names given on these maps to some of the Indian tribes are so unmistakably of Spanish origin, that it is hard to believe they were not first applied by the Spaniards, and afterwards repeated by the Indians to the before-mentioned three Dutch prisoners among the Mohawks. We find one tribe called “Capitanasses,” while in colloquial Spanish capitanázo means a great warrior; another, whom the Dutch later knew as Black Minquas, is designated by the name of “Gachos,” the Spanish word gacho being applied to black cattle. Still another is called the “Canoomakers;” canoa being a word of the Indian tongues of South America,[882] the North American Indian could only have learned it from the Spaniards, and in turn have taught its meaning to the Dutch. Even the Indian name given to the island upon which the city of New York now stands, spelled on the earliest maps “Monados, Manados, Manatoes,” and said to mean “a place of drunkenness,” points to a Spanish origin from the colloquially-used noun moñas, drunkenness, moñados, drunken men. If to these indications of Spanish presence on the soil of New York before the Dutch period we add the evidence of the so-called Pompey Stone,[883] found in Oneida County, with its Spanish inscription and date of 1520, and the names of places given in their corruption by the Dutch in a grant covering part of Albany County (“Semesseerse,” Spanish semencera, land sown with seed; “Negogance,” place for trade, Spanish negocio, trade), we can no longer hesitate to believe that the traditions reported by Danckers and other writers mentioned before had some foundation, and that the Spaniards knew and had explored the country on the Hudson long before the Dutch came, but had thought, as Peter Martyr expresses it, after the failures of Esteban Gomez and the Licenciado d’ Aillon, “To the South, to the South, for the great and exceeding riches of the Equinoctial; they that seek gold must not go to the cold and frozen North.” The Spaniards never considered North America as of any value in itself; they looked upon it only as a barrier to the richer fields of Asia.
Dr. O’Callaghan had in his collection[884] a copy, on vellum, of a map entitled “Americæ Septentrionalis Pars,” from the West-Indische Paskaert, which he added to the maps in the first volume of the New York Colonial Documents. The maker of it was A. Jacobsen, and, to judge from the fac-simile of the West India Company’s seal exhibited on it, he made it for that company in 1621. It bears internal evidence that Jacobsen had as model one of the elder Spanish and English maps, as he retains some Spanish and English names for places, which on the Dutch maps just mentioned have Dutch names. No attempt is made to give details of interior chorography. The coast-line is fairly correct, and the rivers named are indicated by their mouths.[885]