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Discovery and Settlement: New Amsterdam
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New Amsterdam, later to become New York, was founded upon the pursuit of profit. The economic basis of the colony (as opposed to the religious basis of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies) and the centrality of the concern for material success facilitated a tolerance for difference unique to the colony.
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Respond to the statement above, specifying whether you partly or entirely agree or disagree. Use the documents provided and your knowledge of the time period to support your arguments.
Whatever position you take, be sure to explain the how and to address the who, what, when, and especially the why in your response. Be sure to address the counterargument, what historians might say in opposition to your thesis, and to support your argument with historical evidence. Remember that "tolerance" and "difference" are relative terms, so be sure to define your terms carefully. Do not forget to consider the point of view of the sources you employ.
Primary source: Peter Schaghen to the directors of the Dutch West India Company, letter, 1626.
Background information: Written in 1626, this letter from Peter Schaghen, the liaison between the Dutch government and the Dutch West India Company (which helped develop trade in the New World), makes the earliest known reference to the company's purchase of Manhattan Island from the Lenape Indians for 60 guilders.
Rcvd. 7 November 1626
High and Mighty Lords,
Yesterday the ship the Arms of Amsterdam arrived here. It sailed from New Netherland out of the River Mauritius on the 23d of September. They report that our people are in good spirit and live in peace. The women also have borne some children there. They have purchased the Island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders. It is 11,000 morgens in size [about 22,000 acres]. They had all their grain sowed by the middle of May, and reaped by the middle of August. They sent samples of these summer grains: wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, canary seed, beans and flax. The cargo of the aforesaid ship is:
7246 Beaver skins
178½ Otter skins
675 Otter skins
48 Mink skins
36 Lynx skins
33 Minks
34 Weasel skins
Many oak timbers and nut wood. Herewith, High and Mighty Lords, be commended to the mercy of the Almighty,
Your High and Mightinesses' obedient, P.Schaghen
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Peter Schaghen to the directors of the Dutch West India Company (7 November 1926), Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, at http://www.nnp.org/documents/schagen_main.html.
Courtesy of the New Netherland Project at the New York State Library.
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Primary source: Johan de Laet, "From the 'New World,'" early 1600s.
Background information: Johan de Laet, a director of the Dutch West India Company, collected the seventeenth-century observations of European visitors to the New World. De Laet claimed that Henry Hudson (c. 1575–1611), the great English explorer, wrote the following about his encounter in 1609 with the indigenous inhabitants of what would become Manhattan Island. De Laet concludes from Hudson's report that these people were peculiar but not a serious threat to Europeans.
[De Laet quotes Henry Hudson as saying:]
When I came on shore, the swarthy natives all stood and sang in their fashion. Their clothing consists of the skins of foxes and other animals, which they dress and make the garments from skins of various sorts. . . They always carry with them all their goods, as well as their food and green tobacco, which is strong and good for use. They appear to be friendly people, but are much inclined to steal, and are adroit in carrying away whatever they take a fancy to. . .
It is a pleasant land as one can tread upon, very abundant in all kinds of timber suitable for ship-building, and for making large casks . . . [T]wo mats were spread out [for us] to sit upon . . . [T]wo men were also dispatched at once with bows and arrows in quest of game, who soon after brought in a pair of pigeons which they had just shot . . . They supposed that I would remain with them for the night, but I returned after a short time on board the ship. The land is the finest for cultivation that I ever in my life set foot upon, and it also abounds in trees of every description. The natives are a very good people; for, when they saw that I would not remain, they supposed that I was afraid of their bows, and taking the arrows, they broke them into pieces, and threw them into the fire . . .
[De Laet concludes:]
From all these things there is sufficient reason to conclude. . . that the natives are well disposed, if they are only well treated; although they are very changeable . . . They have no religion whatever, nor any divine worship, [but serve the Devil. . . [who they call] Menutto; and every thing that is wonderful or strange or that surpasses human understanding, that they also call Menutto]. . . [W]ith mild and proper treatment, and especially by intercourse with Christians, this people might be civilized and brought under better regulation . . .
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Johan de Laet, "From the 'New World,'" in Narratives of New Netherland, 1609–1664, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (1909; facsimile reprint, Bowie, Md.: Heritage, 1990), 48–50.
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Primary source: John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity," sermon, 1630.
Background information: While crossing the Atlantic Ocean aboard the Arbella in 1630, John Winthrop (1588–1649), the leader of a band of Puritans, composed this sermon setting out God's divine plan for "the city on the hill" Winthrop would establish in New England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
God Almighty in his most holy and wise providence has so disposed of the Condition of mankind, [that] in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.
[. . . ]
[F]or this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man . . . [W]e must delight in each other. . . rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our Commission and Community in the work, our Community as members of the same body. . . . [W]e must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. . .
Modernized spelling is provided by Columbia University Digital Knowledge Ventures.
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John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity," Winthrop Papersm ed. Stewart Mitchell (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1931), 2: 282, 294–295.
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Primary source: "The Examination of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson . . . ," transcript of trial, 1637.
Background information: Anne Hutchinson (1591–1643), a Puritan woman living in Boston, was charged with heresy, excommunicated, and banished from the colony in 1637. The conclusion of the court examination follows.
[. . . ]
The court hath already declared themselves satisfied concerning the things you [Mrs. Ann Hutchinson] hear, and concerning the troublesomness of her spirit, and the danger of her course amongst us, which is not to be suffered. Therefore if it be the mind of the court that Mrs. Hutchinson for these things that appear before us is unfit for our society, and if it be the mind of the court that she shall be banished out of our liberties and imprisoned till she be sent away. . . . Mrs. Hutchinson, the sentence of the court you hear is that you are banished from out of our jurisdiction as being a woman not fit for our society, and are to be imprisoned till the court shall send you away.
[. . . ]
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"The Examination of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson at the Court of Newtown, November 1637," in The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), 391. (Note: Though earlier documents spell Mrs. Hutchinson's first name "Ann," the standard modern spelling is "Anne.")
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Primary source: David De Vries, "Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge," 1655.
Background information: As a prosperous Dutch merchant and skilled sea captain, David de Vries purchased a large estate on present-day Staten Island in 1639. The attacks launched on Native Americans there by Dutch governor Willem Kieft in 1641 led to a terrible, drawn-out war, leading de Vries and others to abandon New Amsterdam for Europe. These excerpts are drawn from his recollections of this period.
[A] harmless Dutchman, named Claes Rademaker, was murdered by a savage . . . . The Commander . . . made inquiry in Wickquasgeck why this Dutchman had been so shamefully murdered. The murderer answered that, while the fort was being built, he came. . . bringing beavers, in order to trade with the Dutchmen, that some Swannekes (as they call the Netherlanders) came there, took away from his uncle his beavers, and then killed him. He was then a small boy, and resolved that, when he should grow up, he would revenge that deed upon the Dutch. . . I told Commander Kieft that no profit was to be derived from a war with the savages; that he was the means of my people being murdered at the colony which I had commenced on Staten Island in the year forty; and that I well knew that the directors did not desire a war waged against the savages. . .
[. . . ]
But it appeared that my speaking was of no avail. He had, with his co-murderers, determined to commit the murder, deeming it a Roman deed, and to do it without warning the inhabitants in the open lands, that each one might take care of himself against the retaliation of the savages, for he could not kill all the Indians.. . . Then I spoke again to Governor Willem Kieft: "Let this work alone; you wish to break the mouths of the Indians, but you will also murder our own nation. . . "
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When it was day the soldiers returned to the fort, having massacred or murdered eighty Indians. . . infants were torn from their mother's breasts, and hacked to pieces in the presence of the parents, and the pieces thrown into the fire and in the water, and other sucklings. . . [were] miserably massacred in a manner to move the heart of stone.
[. . . ]
As soon as the savages understood that the Swannekens had so treated them, all the men whom they could surprise on the farm-lands, they killed; but we have never heard that they have ever permitted women or children to be killed.
[. . . ]
The 8th of the same month I took my leave of Commander Kieft. . . I told him that this murder which he had committed on so much innocent blood would yet avenge upon him, and thus I left him.
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David De Vries, "From the 'Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge'" (1655) in Narratives of New Netherland, 1609–64, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (1909; facsimile reprint, Bowie, Md.: Heritage, 1990), 212–14, 227–29, 234.
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Primary source: Father Isaac Jogues, "Novum Belgium," travel narrative, 1643.
Background information: Father Isaac Jogues, a French Jesuit missionary, recalls the great religious and cultural diversity he found in New Amsterdam during his visit there in 1643.
New Holland, which the Dutch call in Latin Novum Belgium—in their own language, Nieuw Nederland, that is to say, New Low Countries—is situated between Virginia and New England. . . The channel is deep, fit for the largest ships, which ascend to Manhattes Island, which is seven leagues in circuit, and on which there is a fort to serve as the commencement of a town to be built here, and to be called New Amsterdam. . .
On the island of Manhate, and in its environs, there may well be four or five hundred men of different sects and nations: the Director General told me that there were men of eighteen different languages; they are scattered here and there on the river, above and below, as the beauty and convenience of the spot has invited each to settle: some mechanics however, who ply their trade, are ranged under the fort; all the others are exposed to the incursions of the natives, who in the year 1643, while I was there, actually killed some two score Hollanders, and burnt many houses and barns full of wheat. . .
Shortly before I arrived there, three large ships of 300 tons each had come to load wheat; two found cargoes, the third could not be loaded, because the savages had burnt a part of the grain. These ships had come from the West Indies, where the West India Company usually keeps up seventeen ships of war.
No religion is publicly exercised but the Calvinist, and orders are to admit none but Calvinists, but this is not observed; for besides the Calvinists there are in the colony Catholics, English Puritans, Lutherans, Anabaptists, here called Mnistes [Mennonites], etc.
When any one comes to settle in the country, they lend him horses, cows, etc.; they give him provisions, all which he returns as soon as he is at ease; and as to the land, after ten years he pays in to the West India Company the tenth of the produce which he reaps.
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Father Isaac Jogues, "Novum Belgium," in Narratives of New Netherland, 1609–64, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (1909; facsimile reprint, Bowie, Md.: Heritage, 1990), 259–60.
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Primary source: I. N. Phelps Stokes, "The Castello Plan," map, 1660.
Background information: This drawing depicts the Dutch settlement at New Amsterdam in 1660 along the southern tip of present-day Manhattan Island.
I. N. Phelps Stokes, "The Castello Plan," map, color wash on paper (1660).
Collection of The New-York Historical Society.
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Primary source: Peter Stuyvesant to the directors of the Dutch West India Company, letter, 1654.
Background information: This exchange of letters between Peter Stuyvesant (c. 1592–1672) and the Dutch West India Company was prompted by the arrival of the first Jewish settlers in New Amsterdam in 1654. Most of them had narrowly escaped from Brazil, after the Portugese and Spanish arrived under the banner of the Inquisition.
[. . . ]
The Jews who have arrived would nearly all like to remain here, but learning that they (with their customary usury and deceitful trading with the Christians) were very repugnant to the inferior magistrates, as also to the people having the most affection for you; the Deaconry also fearing that owing to their present indigence they might become a charge in the coming winter, we have, for the benefit of this weak and newly developing place and the land in general, deemed it useful to require them in a friendly way to depart; praying also most seriously in this connection, for ourselves as also for the general community of your worships, that the deceitful race—such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ—be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony to the detraction of your worships and the dissatisfaction of your worships' most affectionate subjects.
[. . . ]
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Peter Stuyvesant to the directors of the Dutch West India Company, letter (22 September 1654), in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
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Primary source: Seal of New Netherlands, 1623.
Background information: The official seal of New Netherlands was created in 1623.
Learning Adventures in Citizenship, a PBS web site.
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