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The Origins of New Netherland. Interpreting Native American Responses to Henry Hudson's Visit*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

Paul Otto
Paul Otto
Affiliation:
(Indiana University)
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Extract

When Adriaen van der Donck wrote A Description of the New Netherlands in 1655, he rightly pointed to Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage and discovery as the foundation of Dutch claims to the North American territory. Presumably arguing on the basis of the right of first discovery, he proposed that local Indian lore supported the fact that the Dutch-employed Englishman had been the first to discover and explore the Hudson River. As a settler in New Netherland, Van der Donck had often heard the native inhabitants claim that before Hudson came they had never seen such a thing as a European ship.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , July 1994 , pp. 22 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1994

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References

Notes

1 der Donck, Van, A Description of New Netherlands, ed. O'Donnell, Thomas F. (Syracuse 1968) 2–4Google Scholar.

2 Campisi, Jack, ‘The Hudson Valley Indians through Dutch Eyes’ in: Hauptman, Laurence M. and Campisi, Jack eds., Neighbors and Intruders: An Ethnohistorical Exploration of the Indians of Hudson's River, National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Canadian Ethnology Service 39 (Ottawa 1978) 166, 168Google Scholar; Gehring, Charles T. and Starna, William A., ‘Dutch and Indians in die Hudson Valley: The Early Period’, The Hudson Valley Regional Review 9/2 (1993) 7–8Google Scholar; Starna, , ‘Seventeenth-Century Dutch-Indian Trade: A Perspective from Iroquoia’, De Halve Maen 59/3 (1986) 5Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Morison, Samuel Eliot, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600 (New York 1971)Google Scholar; Quinn, David B., North America from Earliest Discovery to First Voyages: The None Voyages to 1612 (New York 1977)Google Scholar; Quinn, , Explorers and Colonies: America, 1500-1625 (London 1990)Google Scholar.

4 Adriaen van der Donck recorded it first in 1650 and then published it in a different version a few years later. Donck, Van der, ‘The Representation of New Netherland, 1650’ in: Jameson, J. Franklin ed., Narratives ofNew Netherland, 1609–1664 (New York 1909) 293 (hereafter NNN)Google Scholar; Donck, Van der, Description, 3–4Google Scholar . It was eventually recorded in great detail by the eighteenth-century Moravian missionary Heckewelder, John. ‘Indian Tradition of the First Arrival of the Dutch at Manhattan Island, Now New York’ in: Collections of the New-York Historical Society, 2nd series (New York 1841) I. 68–74Google Scholar.

5 The evidence in this article focuses solely upon ethnohistorical evidence – that is evidence relating to and clarified by a study of Native American culture. There is further documentary and cartographical evidence which should be taken into account for a fuller analysis of the early contacts between Europeans and Native Americans in the Hudson River region. For such an analysis, see Otto, Paul, ‘First Contacts’, chapter one in: New Netherland Frontier: Europeans andNativeAmericans along the Lower Hudson River, 1524–1664, dissertation in progress, Indiana University, Bloomington, IndianaGoogle Scholar.

6 Heckewelder wrote on January 26, 1801: ‘As I receive my information from the Indians, in their language and style, I return it the same way.’ He introduced the account by stating that, ‘the following account of die first arrival of Europeans at York Island, is verbatim as it was related to me by aged and respected Delawares, Momeys and Mahicanni, nearly forty years ago’. Heckewelder, , Collections, I, 70–71Google Scholar.

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19 Verrazzano to Francis I, 8 July 1524 in Quinn, , New American World, I, 283Google Scholar.

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21 Ibid., 284. Wroth stated: ‘It has been customary for commentators to accept the explorer's interpretation of the Indian's action as the offer of fire, but to me it seems that the burning stick may well have been a tobacco reed pipe and the action the offer of friendship rather than of fire. This would have been more in accord with Indian practice and ritual of the day and area. We shall never know, but it is pleasant to think that the Indians of Arcadia were offering peace and friendship to their strange visitors.’ Wroth, , Voyages, 83Google Scholar.

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34 These were Jehan Alfonse de Saintonge who saw or entered New York Bay in 1541 or 1542 and Jehan Cossin who probably explored the region sometime before 1570. See Stokes, I.N. Phelps, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909 (New York 1916) II, 29–30, 33–34Google Scholar; also Otto, ‘First Contact’.

35 Hudson and his crew had earlier encountered several Native American tribes earlier on their voyage along the coasts of Nova Scotia, Maine, and Massachusetts. Asher, G.M., Henry Hudson the Navigator. The Original Documents in which his Career is Recorded (London 1860) 59–61, 64–65Google Scholar.

36 De Laet, , ‘New World’, NNN, 38Google Scholar . The record of Hudson's voyage has been preserved in the journal of one of his crewmen, Robert Juet and by the historian, Emanuel van Meteren. Hudson's own log of this journey is lost, although portions of his descriptions of the journey have been preserved by De Laet who had access to Hudson's journal or some other report written by him of his journey to North America.

37 It is not clear where the Half Moon landed and which exact bands of Munsee-speakers the crew met, although these early meetings all took place somewhere in the lower bay, perhaps either on Long Island or near Sandy Hook. See Jameson, , NNN, 17–18Google Scholar and Asher, , Henry Hudson, 77–80Google Scholar.

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42 Juet, ‘Third Voyage’, in Asher, , Henry Hudson, 59–61Google Scholar; Salisbury, , Manilou and Providence, 94–95Google Scholar.

43 Juet, , ‘Third Voyage’, NNN, 18Google Scholar.

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45 Ibid., 20–22; De Laet, , ‘New World’, NNN, 48–49Google Scholar; Meteren, , ‘On Hudson's Voyage’, NNN, 7Google Scholar.

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47 Juet, , ‘Third Voyage’, NNN, 21Google Scholar.

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49 Campisi, , ‘Hudson Valley Indians’, 166, 168Google Scholar; Gehring, and Starna, , ‘Dutch and Indians in the Hudson Valley’, 7–8Google Scholar; Starna, , ‘Seventeenth-Century Dutch-Indian Trade’, 5Google Scholar.

50 Brasser, Ted J., ‘The Coastal New York Indians in the Early Contact Period’ in: Neighbors and Intruders 153Google Scholar; Lenig, , ‘Dutchmen’, 73Google Scholar.

51 Juet, , ‘Third Voyage’, NNN, 22Google Scholar.

52 Trade goods began appearing among the Senecas at least by 1560, and by 1575 on Oneida sites, while similar finds have been made among the Mohawk sites for goods dating from 1550. Some findings in Western New York date as far back as 1525. Ceci, Lynn, The Effect of European Contact and Trade on the Settlement Pattern of Indians in coastal New York, 1524–1665 (Ph.D. dissertation. City University of New York 1977) 158, 170–171Google Scholar; Lenig, , ‘Dutchmen’, 73, 75Google Scholar; Baart, Jan, ‘Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee en de Nederlanders: De Wissel-werking tussen de Materiēle Culturen van Autochtonen en Allochtonen in 17e-eeuws Nieuw-Nederland’, Bulletin WVOB84/2 and 3 (1985) 98–99Google Scholar; Wray, Charles F., ‘The Volume of Dutch Trade Goods Received by the Seneca Iroquois, 1600–1687 A.D.’, Bulletin KNOB 84/2 and 3 (1985) 103Google Scholar; Hamell, George R., ‘The Iroquois and the World's Rim: Speculaotions on Color, Culture, and Contact’, American Indian Quarterly XVI/4 (1992) 458Google Scholar; Axtell, James, ‘At the Water's Edge: Trading in the Sixteenth Century’, in: After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (New York 1988) 175–177Google Scholar; Richter, Daniel K., The Ordeal of the Long House: The Peoples ofthe Iroquois League in the Era ofEuropean Colonization (Chapel Hill 1992) 53–54Google Scholar . While there is strong archeological evidence for such indirect European-Native American trade among the Iroquois, similar evidence has not been found to support extensive pre-Hudson trade, either directly or indirectly, between Europeans and the Lenapes. See Otto, ‘First Contact’.

53 Brasser, , ‘Coastal New York Indians’, 153Google Scholar . Perhaps they had received word from Indians further downstream that strangers were coming and this added to their mental preparedness.

54 Juet, , ‘Third Voyage’, NNN, 22–23Google Scholar.

55 De Laet, , ‘New World’, NNN, 49Google Scholar.

56 Jameson, , NNN, 4, 34Google Scholar; Asher, , Henry Hudson, ccviii–ccxGoogle Scholar.

57 Laet, De, ‘New World’, NNN, 49Google Scholar.