Hudson's Voyages and Discoveries: West India Company and Amsterdam

Traditions have told us that these emigrants were immediately scattered to different points to form settlements, and so to secure a wide domain for the West India Company. Some, it is said, settled on Long Island and founded the City of Brooklyn; others went up the Connecticut River to a point near the site of Hartford, and built Fort Good Hope; others planted themselves in the present Ulster County in New York, and others founded Albany, where the Dutch had erected a military work and named it Fort Orange. Others, it is said, went to the Delaware and began a settlement at the mouth of Timber Creek, on the east side of the river, a few miles below the site of Philadelphia, and built a small fortification which they named Fort Nassau. The settlers engaged in this enterprise, it is said, were four young couples who were married on ship-board, and eight seamen who managed a little yacht that conveyed them to the South River, as the Delaware was called. This was to distinguish it from the North River, as the Hudson was then called, and which yet retains that name.

When May's lieutenant, Joris, returned to Amsterdam with a ship laden with furs worth over ten thousand dollars, and reported that the settlers were "getting bravely along," the Company were delighted, and sent out ships with cattle, horses, sheep, swine, farming implements and seeds for their use, and more emigrants. Political affairs in Europe were now favorable to the enterprise. King James of England, angered because of the failure of his son Charles to win the hand of a Spanish princess, had leagued with the Dutch against Spain. At his death, his son became King Charles the First, and he renewed the league with the States-General in a still stronger bond. This alliance with the British sovereign promising non-interference, on his part, in the growth of a permanent colony in New Netherland, the West India Company proceeded to lay the political foundations of a state. They commissioned Peter Minuit director-general or governor of the colony, with a council of seven men, a secretary of state, who was also keeper of the Company's accounts, and a schout or sheriff, who was also public prosecutor or manager of the revenue. The council was invested with all local legislative, judicial and executive powers, subject to the jurisdiction of the Amsterdam College or Chamber of Nineteen. The Council were empowered to administer justice in all criminal cases to the extent of imprisonment, but each capital offender "must be sent, with his sentence, to Holland."

Governor Minuit arrived at Manhattan in the ship Sea-Mew, at the beginning of May, 1626. So soon as he was installed in office, he opened negotiations with the Indians for the purchase of the island, so as to procure a more valid title to its possession than that of discovery and occupation. It was estimated that it contained about twenty-two thousand acres of land, and it was purchased for the West India Company for the sum of about twenty-four dollars. A fort was immediately staked out by the engineer Frederick, at the lower point of the island, where the "Battery" and its stately trees now are, the plan of which called for a work faced with stone and having four angles, by which the bay in front, and the East and Hudson Rivers on its flanks, might be commanded by cannon. Before the work was finished, it was named Fort Amsterdam, and afterward the city that grew up there was called New Amsterdam. It retained that name until the province was surrendered to the English, when it received the title of New York. The States-General constituted the province a county of Holland with an armorial distinction of a count. Its great seal bore the device of a shield, with an escutcheon enclosed in a chain, emblematic of union, and bearing the figure of a beaver. The crest was the coronet of a count.

While Fort Amsterdam was a-building an event occurred, the sad effects of which were felt long afterwards. Two adult Indians and a small boy, of a tribe in Westchester county, went from their homes to the Dutch settlement with beaver-skins to barter with the Hollanders at the fort. They followed the beaten trail along the East River to Kip's Bay (foot of Thirty-fourth street), where it diverged westward to the pond and marsh formerly known as The Collect, on the borders of which, on Centre street, New York, the Halls of Justice or the "Tombs" now stand. Near that pond, three farm-servants in the employ of Governor Minuit, robbed the Indians of their property and then murdered the men. The boy escaped. He vowed vengeance; and in after years, when he was a stalwart brave, he fearfully executed his vow. The murder was unknown to the Dutch authorities for a long time, and the guilty men probably escaped punishment.