Charter for New Netherland Granted
At the Hague, the finest city of the Netherlands, and the residence of the Counts of Holland for four hundred years, may be seen a pile of buildings upon an artificial island irregular and quaint in appearance. They were erected at different periods, and inclose a vast quadrangle paved with small yellow bricks. There was the palace of those Counts. Its great hall, wherein hung trophies of Dutch valor and conquest, is now used as a repository of the archives of Holland. In a superbly-decorated room in the Binnenhof or inner court, the States-General held their meetings. To that sumptuous apartment went the deputies of the Amsterdam Company and gave, in a brief narrative of Block's discoveries, their reasons for asking for the special privilege. They were received by "twelve high and mighty lords" of the great council, who were sitting around an oval table. Among them was the incorruptible patriot John Van Olden Barneveldt, the grand-pensionary or chief magistrate of Holland, who, five years later, was beheaded in that court as a traitor, the victim of his jealous, malicious and unscrupulous prince. Block was probably one of the deputies. The map spoken of was spread upon the table; the countries were described, and their value as parts of the territories of the Dutch were fully set forth. The States-General gladly complied with the wishes of the Company, and on the 11th of October, 1614, a charter was given them, duly signed and sealed, by which the petitioners were granted the usual privileges of the ordinance. The territory included in the charter, and which was defined as lying between Virginia and New France--between the parallels of 40 deg and 45 deg--was called NEW NETHERLAND.
At the expiration of the charter at the beginning of 1618, the Amsterdam Company applied for its renewal. The privilege was denied, because the States-General contemplated the issuing of a more comprehensive and lasting patent to a West India Company. Meanwhile, the Onrust, which Block had left in charge of Cornelius Hendricksen, had entered and explored Delaware Bay and River, probably as far up as the Falls, near Trenton; and on the site of Philadelphia her commander had ransomed three Dutch traders, who had fallen into the hands of the Indians. Efforts were made to obtain a four years trading charter for that region also, but the States-General, considering the domain as a part of the province of Virginia, would not grant one. The directors of New Netherland then prosecuted their trading enterprise upon the borders of the Hudson with increased vigor. They had already built a fort on an island just below the site of Albany. They now enlarged their storehouse at Manhattan, and made the little hamlet a social village. The traders went over the pine-barrens into the Mohawk Valley and became acquainted with the powerful Iroquois league of Five Confederated Nations. They built a new fort on the main at the mouth of the Tawasentha, now Norman's Kill, a little below Albany, where a treaty of friendship was made with the Five Nations, and which was kept inviolate until New Netherland passed into the possession of the English, and long afterwards. It was a wise measure, for that confederacy was strong enough to have swept from the face of the earth all European intruders. Their power was felt, as we have observed, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico
The Hurons been swept from their merciless path,
Around, the Ottawas, like leaves had been strown,
And the Lake of the Eries struck silent and lone.
Made women, bend low at their conqueror's will;
By the far Mississippi the Illini shrank,
When the trail of the Tortoise was seen on the bank.
When the howl of the Wolf swelled at night on the gale;
And the Cherokee shook, in his green smiling bowers,
When the foot of the Bear stampt his carpet of flowers."
Street's "Frontenac."