In 1607 and 1608, operating under contract to the Dutch East India Company, English explorer Henry Hudson discovers the Delaware Bay. The Company originally hired him to explore the route for the North-EAST passage to Asia, expecting he could find his way through the ice around the north of Russia to the riches of the Orient. After rounding the North Cape of Norway, the ice pack completely blocked his path. Operating on his own initiative, he then turned his ship Halve Mean (Half Moon) westward to search for the expected Northwest Passage. He made landfall in Nova Scotia in early July, and worked his way as far south as Cape Charles. Turning north without exploring the mouth of the Chesapeake, he then began his survey, finally entering the Delaware Bay. Hudson would eventually explore the region around the modern New York metropolitan area, including what is now the Hudson River.
Paul Plante says
With respect to Henry Hudson’s further explorations that led to his untimely death, the HISTORY OF The Seventeen Towns OF Rensselaer County FROM THE Colonization of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck to the Present Time BY A. J. Weise, A.M., AS PUBLISHED IN THE TROY DAILY TIMES. TROY; N. Y. J. M. FRANCIS & TUCKER. 1880, in CHAPTER I, begins thusly:
The history of Rensselaer county properly begins with the first purpose of the Dutch to colonize the attractive and fertile country which bordered the river explored by Henry Hudson, the English navigator, in 1609.
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Because of Henry Hudson, the history of the Hudson River Valley extending north from New York City 160 miles or so north to what is now Albany, begins as Dutch history, not English history as was the case in the rest of the 13 colonies:
PATROON PRIVILEGES.
In Holland there was in 1639 a guild of wealthy merchants known as the West India company.
Conscious that by right of discovery the country adjacent to the river explored by Hudson 20 years previously was a possession of Holland, the association petitioned the legislative bodies of the United Provinces to grant it the exclusive privilege for 34 years of taking charge of this territory and of developing by means of emigrants its agricultural and mineral products.
This petition was granted, and by the powers conferred by it the West India company issued its charter of liberties and exemptions under which the colonization of the possessions of the Dutch in North America began.
Inquiring persons will find in this charter of the West India company valuable information regarding the inducements offered to emigrants and what gave the patroons the proprietary right to such extensive tracts of land, as that of the manor of Rensselaerwick, from which Rensselaer county was erected.
This important instrument provided that any person who wished to become a patroon would be obliged to give notice of his intention to the company, and that he would not be entitled to the absolute property right of such lands on which he intended to settle colonists, if, during the four years following the giving of this notice, 50 souls, upwards of 15 years of age, were not living thereon; one-fourth of the above number during the first year and the remainder the succeeding three years.
The patroons were allowed for these colonies a tract of land on one side of a navigable river, four Dutch or twelve English miles in extent, or two Dutch or six English miles on each side of a river, and which tracts were to extend so far into the country as the situation of the occupiers permitted.
The West India company also agreed to transport emigrants and their effects from Holland at a stipulated price; and the animals and instruments necessary for farming, free of freight.
The company also granted to all patroons who should desire the same the right to hold the tracts of lands settled by them as an eternal heritage, which they could transmit to their heirs by testament.
The charter further provided that the patroons and colonists should in particular and in the speediest manner endeavor to find out ways and means whereby they might support a minister and schoolmaster, that the service of tiod and zeal for religion might not grow cold and be neglected among them.
All the colonies were required, at least once in every 12 months, to make an exact report of their condition to the West India company.
The company also stipulated, on certain conditions, that it would use its best efforts to supply the colonists with as many blacks as it conveniently could after the land had been occupied by a colony.
As a means to protect the manufacturers of Holland, the colonists were not permitted to make any woolen, linen or cotton cloth, nor weave any other stuffs, on pain of banishment.
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There we can see seeds being sown that were going to eventually bloom into the War of the Revolution against the tyranny of England, which took over the Dutch territory of the Hudson River from New York north as the result of a European treaty.
Thus, the Dutch in New York became second class citizens in their own country, and many of the Hudson River Dutch gentry then came down on the side of the rebels in the War of the Revolution starting in 1776:
THE CONDITION OF THE PROVINCE IN 1678.
It should be remembered that the English dispossessed the Dutch, in 1664, of New Netherland, as their possessions in America were called.
However, the Dutch, in turn, wrested the province from the English in 1672, but who, by the treaty of Westminster, restored it again to the English in 1674.
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One of the Dutch gentry families then shows up in the Wikipedia article on exploitation of German Palatine emigrants to America as follows:
Servitude
Settlement by Palatines on the east side (East Camp) of the Hudson River was accomplished as a result of Governor Hunter’s negotiations with Robert Livingston, who owned Livingston Manor in what is now Columbia County, New York.
Livingston was anxious to have his lands developed.
The Livingstons benefited for many years from the revenues they received as a result of this business venture.
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The Palatine Germans were refugees from the Palatinate in Germany, essentially a war zone with them in the middle, who made their way through Holland seeking sanctuary in England, but because they had no skills the English could use, not wanting extra mouths to feed, the English transported them to New York to serve as unpaid labor, or essentially slaves, as well as pincushions for the French and Indians to waste their bullets and arrows on instead of good English bodies:
The German Palatines were early 18th century emigrants from the Middle Rhine region of the Holy Roman Empire, including a minority from the Palatinate which gave its name to the entire group.
Towards the end of the 17th century and into the 18th, the wealthy region was repeatedly invaded by French troops, which resulted in continuous military requisitions, widespread devastation and famine.
The “Poor Palatines” were some 13,000 Germans who migrated to England between May and November 1709.
Their arrival in England, and the inability of the British Government to integrate them, caused a highly politicized debate over the merits of immigration.
The British Crown believed that the Palatines could work and be “useful to this kingdom, particularly in the production of naval stores, and as a frontier against the French and their Indians.”
Naval stores which the British needed were hemp, tar and pitch, poor choices for the climate and the variety of pine trees in New York State.
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And that Dutch influence in the Hudson River valley as a result of Henry Hudson’s travels up the river and its effect of subsequent history in the northern part of North America, that led to the French and Indian War, and from there directly to the American Revolution, shows up in “HISTORIC CAUGHNAWAGA” By E. J. DEVINE, SJ. in CHAPTER I 1667-1675, as follows:
“Strange fact this,” writes a modem author, “which befell the just and humane Champlain; that stumbling on, in his ignorance of Indian politics and power, he should by one blundering shot, on the shores of the lake that was to bear his name, decide the character of a civilization and forfeit in later years a continent to France.”
This first sanguinary meeting with the French taught the Iroquois the efficacy of firearms.
In exchange for furs, they could easily procure these weapons from the Dutch who were soon to settle on the banks of the Hudson.
In a very few years, then, they had discarded their bows and arrows for powder and shot, and with this new power of destruction, added to their craftiness and daring, their hostility became an element with which the French and their Indian allies had to reckon.
The Iroquois had, between 1642 and 1649, slain several members of the Jesuit Order who were engaged in preaching the Gospel; they had destroyed the Huron missions on Georgian Bay, the Montagnais between the Saguenay and Quebec, the Algonquins on the Upper Ottawa, the Neutral nation along Lake Erie, and they had begun the extermination of the peace-loving Attikamegs on the Upper St. Maurice.
The white population, then growing slowly in numbers, did not fare much better.
The Iroquois had, by their constant raiding, struck terror into the hearts of the settlers along the St. Lawrence; they infested the waterways; they paralyzed every effort at colonization; and so desperate had the outlook become that, had it not been for the hope that sooner or later something more substantial and more permanent than the fur trade would be fostered by the Home government — such as the tillage of the soil on a large scale — the colonists would have had to return to France, and the entire country would probably have been abandoned to its original barbarism.
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Imagine that – all of that from one man taking a boat ride around the east shore of America back them which kind of proves the adage that small seeming things in history in one moment in time can blow up to have serious consequences in a later moment of time, which is why we are supposed to learn from history no matter how ugly it is, and let us face it, Henry Hudson’s crew were not kindly men, so let’s not sugar coat that; not bury history so that all those lessons are lost.
Paul Plante says
To the south of me, but to the north of Cape Charles and modern New York City, there occurred what became known to our history as the Esopus Wars, which according to Wikipedia, were two localized conflicts between the indigenous Esopus tribe of Lenape Indians and colonialist New Netherlanders during the latter half of the 17th century in what is now Ulster County, New York, and like many other wars during the colonial period, at bottom they were the result of competition between European and Indian cultures, aggravated by mutual misunderstanding and suspicion.
The first battle was started by Dutch settlers; the second war was a continuation of grudge on the part of the Esopus tribe, and the most lasting result of the wars was the display of power by the Esopus, the two wars coinciding with the broadening of English interests in the Dutch territories of the New World.
The Dutch difficulty in defeating the Esopus alerted the English to the power of these Native Americans.
In connection with this thread, the roots of this conflict go back to Henry Hudson, as Wikipedia informs us, to wit:
In 1609, Henry Hudson explored the river which was named after him.
Many of the natives he encountered had never seen European men before and, some were unaware that there were any other people in the world.
They were disturbed when, five years later, a Dutch factorij (trading post) was established where Kingston, New York stands today.
This land was occupied by the Esopus tribe, who used it for farming.
They destroyed the post and drove the settlers back to the south.
Colonists established a new settlement in 1652 at Kingston, but the Esopus drove them out again.
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The roots of conflict seemed to follow Henry Hudson everywhere he went up this way, as far as the Native peoples, and the Dutch who came after him to claim what Henry Hudson told a foreign government he had discovered in that foreign government’s name, were concerned.
The name of Henry Hudson also appears in HISTORY OF The Seventeen Towns OF Rensselaer County FROM THE Colonization of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck to the Present Time., BY A. J. Weise, A.M., AS PUBLISHED IN THE TROY DAILY TIMES, TROY; N. Y. J. M. FRANCIS & TUCKER. 1880, CHAPTER V., THE TOWN OF GREENBUSH, as follows:
In the month of May, 1633, while the Indians inhabiting the east and west banks of the Hudson were busily engaged with their spring fishing, they beheld a Dutch ship, with all its sails spread, moving slowly past them, going northward.
It was the New Netherland, which had left Holland, in March, for the fertile country bordering the beautiful river recently explored by the English navigator, Henry Hudson.
There were 18 families on board that intended settling about the rudely built outpost, named Fort Orange, which had just been “thrown up and completed” near the river, on a part of the ground that is now occupied by the city of Albany.
It is said that shortly after these emigrants had built themselves “some huts of bark,” the Mohegans, the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas and the Senecas, with the Ottawawa Indians, “came and made covenants of friendship” with the Dutch commander, Adriaen Joris, “bringing him great presents of beaver or other peltry, and desired that they might come and have a constant free trade with them, which was concluded upon.”
It is further related that for years thereafter the Indians “were all as quiet as lambs, and came and traded with all the freedom imaginable.”
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So much for all this liberal chatter about how the “white man” came here and started slaughtering all the Native peoples they could find.
How silly, and how utterly ignorant of our own schoolboy/schoolgirl history that is, which raises the very serious question of how these people could reach adulthood and get out of high school so bereft of knowledge as to how this nation came into being, for if one if going to be a citizen of something, shouldn’t one have at least an inkling as to what that something might in fact be?
As to that history as it relates to relations between the Dutch and Indians in this area subsequent to Henry Hudson, we can find no better reference than “The Hoosic Matters: A Brief History of the Hoosac Valley,” by Lauren R. Stevens, as follows:
Dominance
The Mahican formed a confederacy of five tribes with as many as 40 villages, governed by hereditary sachems through matrilineal descent, advised by a council of the clan leaders.
They had three clans: bear, wolf, and turtle.
A general council of sachems met regularly at their capital of Shodac (Schodack) on the Hudson to decide important matters affecting the entire confederacy.
Warfare, however, required a higher degree of organization.
Then the Mahican council passed its authority to a war chief chosen for his proven ability.
For the duration of the conflict, he exercised almost dictatorial power.
Mahican villages usually consisted of 20 to 30 mid-sized longhouses, located on hills and heavily fortified.
Large cornfields were located nearby.
One may have been at the union of Washtub Brook and the Hoosic in North Pownal.
Most of the Mahican diet was corn and other agricultural products, supplemented by game, fish, and wild foods.
For reasons of safety, the Mahican did not always move to scattered hunting camps during the winter like other Algonquin, usually spending the colder months inside their “castles” (fortified villages).
They used copper, acquired from the Great Lakes through trade, extensively for ornaments and some of their arrowheads.
Once they began trade with the Dutch, the Mahican abandoned many of their traditional weapons, becoming expert with their new firearms.
The Iroquois had organized into the Iroquois League, an alliance of five tribes (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca; later, the Tuscarora became the sixth) thought to pre-figure the colonial confederacy, and were once again formidable.
After 50-years of warfare they had driven an unknown Algonquian-speaking enemy whom they called the Adirondack from the mountains in northern New York and were in the process of reclaiming the St. Lawrence Valley from the Algonkin, Montagnais, and Maliseet.
Thus the St. Lawrence River west of Quebec was a war zone blocking the expansion of the French fur trade to the west.
Mohawk war parties made the Algonkin and their Huron allies reluctant to bring their furs to Quebec so, to win their loyalty, the French decided to help them against the Iroquois.
In July of 1609, Samuel de Champlain and six other French accompanied a combined Algonkin, Montagnais, and Huron war party south into New York.
At the north end of Lake Champlain they encountered a large force of Mohawk warriors massing for battle.
French firearms broke the Mohawk formation killing several of their chiefs.
Confronting a new weapon, the Mohawk broke and ran.
Nevertheless the Iroquois were saved from technological annihilation by the beginning of Dutch trade on the Hudson River.
In order for the Mohawk to trade with the Dutch, however, they first had to cross Mahican territory.
Relations between these two tribes had apparently been hostile for many years.
A source of irritation appears to have been that the Mahican had better access to tribes in the wampum shell producing areas of Long Island Sound, which gave them control of the trade in this valuable commodity.
In any case, the Mahican were reluctant to allow Mohawk access to the Dutch, while the Mohawk needed to trade for steel weapons if they were to survive their war with their northern enemies.
Henry Hudson, employed by the Dutch East India Company to search for the Northwest Passage, sailed through the Verrazano Strait and entered the Hudson River in September 1609, just two months after Champlain’s visit.
The Wappinger Indians on the lower river proved hostile due to previous contact with European fishermen and slave traders, but Hudson continued upstream until stopped by shallow water near the Mahican villages just below Albany.
The Mahican were friendly and eager to trade.
Hudson exhausted his trade goods and returned to Holland with a cargo of valuable furs, which attracted Dutch fur traders the following year to trade with the Mahican.
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And thus began the history that was to lead in an unbroken chain to the French and Indian wars, and the loss of Abercrombie in 1758 to the French, who held Ticondroga, by the French called Carillon, at the foot of Lake Champlain, and the territory north, while the English held the head of the Lake and the territory south, and from there to the American Revolution, and from there to modern times today. all because Henry Hudson took a boat ride to America back when,
Because of Henry Hudson taking a boat ride up the Hudson River after visiting Cape Charles, a multitude of marauding expeditions and lesser conflicts along the shores of Lake George in New York north of New York City and Albany and Cape Charles – on the part of regular soldiers, provincials, partisans, rangers, scouts and Indian allies of either side – then took place as a result, including “The Bloody Morning Scout,” with the death of Colonel Williams and King Hendrick, the Mohawk Sachem, in September 1755; the Battle of Lake George and its defeat of Baron Dieskau on the same day: the winter attack on Fort William Henry in 1757, and the siege and capture, by Montcalm, of Fort William Henry, with its following massacre, in August of that year.
And that, people, is how history happens, one day, somebody like Henry Hudson decides to take a boat ride, and when he does, chaos and strife are the result.
Something to think about, anyway, especially as it is a vital part of why we have our own nation today, as opposed to having to kowtow to an English king.
Paul Plante says
Finishing up with my contribution to this thread on Henry Hudson, whose boat trip to this country back when greatly affected our subsequent history, in the History of Troy, New York As a Village FROM LANDMARKS OF RENSSELAER COUNTY BY: GEORGE BAKER ANDERSON PUBLISHED BY D. MASON & CO. PUBLISHERS,
SYRACUSE, NY 1897, mention is made of him as follows in CHAPTER XV, TROY AS A VILLAGE, to wit:
When the first white men, from Holland, sailed up the Hudson river and landed upon its shore with the intention of making settlements and engaging in trade with the Indians, the site of the present city of Troy was the home of the Mohegan or Mohican Indians, whose chief was Uncas, made immortal in name by the novelist, James Fenimore Cooper, in the “Last of the Mohicans.”
It has been shown that the daring navigator, Sir Henry Hudson, made a landing on the east bank of the river which bears his name during his voyage up that stream, but there is no record that he set foot upon any of the soil of Rensselaer county north of a spot between Schodack and Castleton.
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That is about 160 miles or so north of New York City.
His voyage up the river which now bears his name is further detailed in HISTORY OF The Seventeen Towns OF Rensselaer County FROM THE Colonization of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck to the Present Time, BY A. J. Weise, A.M., AS PUBLISHED IN THE TROY DAILY TIMES, TROY; N. Y., J. M. FRANCIS & TUCKER, 1880, CHAPTER IX, THE TOWN OF SCHODACK, as follows:.
THE INDIANS ENTERTAIN HENRY HUDSON.
In 1625 John de Laet published a work under the name of the “New World, or a Description of the West Indies.”
In his description of the New Netherlands, — the territory now mostly embraced by the state of New York, then possessed by the Dutch, — this historian alludes to some of the incidents connected with Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river which now bears his name.
The Dutch writer says that when the English navigator had sailed up the river as far as latitude 42° 18′, he was invited ashore by the friendly aborigines.
Then quoting Hudson’s journal, he furnishes the following details of the visit made to the home of a hospitable Indian chief by the commander of the Half Moon:
I sailed to the shore in one of their canoes with an old man, who was the chief of a tribe consisting of 40 men and 17 women; these I saw there in a house well constructed of oak-bark, and circular in shape, so that it had the appearance of being built with an arched roof.
It contained a great quantity of maize or Indian corn and beans of the last year’s growth, and there lay near the house for the purpose of drying enough to load three ships, besides what was growing in the fields.
On our coming into the house, two mats were spread out to sit upon, and immediately some food was served in well made red wooden bowls; two men were dispatched at once with bows and arrows in quest of game, who soon after brought in a pair of pigeons which they had shot.
They likewise killed a fat dog, and skinned it in haste with shells which they had got out of the water.
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 in pieces and threw them into the fire.
Tradition adds to this historic record that the place where Hudson was thus entertained was on Castle hill, an eminence east of the village of Castleton, whereon was the house of the Indian chief referred to in De Laet’s history.
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And thus, in many ways, with one man taking a boat ride up a river in what is now New York state, after visiting Cape Charles in Virginia, American history was born.
What is interesting is that even though the river bears his name, up this way, who Henry Hudson was, and what relation he might have to the history of this nation is largely lost knowledge.