History of Westchester County, New York, Volume 1. Frederic Shonnard
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As we have seen, the status of the West India Company's organization was not exactly settled until 1623, and although it nominally enjoyed exclusive dominion and trade privileges on the shores of the Hudson from the 1st of July, 1621, no steps were taken to colonize the land in the as yet unperfected state of its affairs. Before coming to the era of formal settlement under its administration it is necessary to complete our review of what is known of the history of the ante cedent years.
It is certain that the separate voyages undertaken hither by various adventurous men between 1610 and 1623 resulted in no settlement of the country worthy of the name. We find no record of any transportation of yeomen or families to this locality for the announced object of making it their abode and developing its resources. Although there is no doubt respecting the utilization of Manhattan Island in more or less serious trading connections at an early period, the history of the first years of European occupation is involved in a haze of tradition and myth. From the vague reports given by different voyagers, ingenious and not over-scrupulous writers constructed fanciful accounts of pretended undertakings and exploits in this quarter, which, however, being presented in sober guise, have had to be subjected to methodical investigation. All historical scholars are familiar with the famous Plantagenet or Argall myth. In 1648 a pamphlet was published in England, with the title, " A Description of New Albion," by one Beauchamp Plantagenet, Esq., which assumed to narrate that in the year 1613 the English Captain Samuel Argall, returning from Acadia to Virginia, "landed at Manhattan Isle, in Hudson's River, where they found four houses built, and a pretended Dutch governor under the West India Company of Amsterdam," and that this Dutch population and this Dutch ruler were forced to submit to the tremendous power of Great Britain. The whole story is a sheer fabrication, and so crude as to be almost vulgar. Yet such is the continuing strength of old pseudo-historical statement that we still find in compendious historical reference works of generally authentic character mention of Argall's apocryphal feat of arms — the " first conquest of New Netherland by the English," — usually accompanied, albeit, by the discreet "(?)" conscientiously employed by such faithful compilers in cases of incertitude.
In 1619 occurred the first known visit of an English vessel to the waters of Westchester County and Manhattan Island, which merits passing notice here for an interesting incident attaching to it. Captain Thomas Dermer, sent by Sir Ferdinand Gorges, of the Plymouth Company, to the Island of Monhegan on the coast of Maine, partly to pro cure a cargo of fish and partly to return the unfortunate Indian slave Squanto to his home, came sailing through Long Island Sound in his ship's pinnace on a trip to Virginia which he had decided to make after dispatching his laden vessel back to England. Leaving Martha's Vineyard, he shaped his voyage, he narrates, "as the coast led me till I came to the most westerly part where the coast began to fall away southerly [the eastern entrance to the Sound), In my way I discovered land about thirty leagues in length [Long Island], heretofore taken for main where I feared I had been embayed, but by the help of an Indian I got to sea again, through many crooked and straight passages. I let pass many accidents in this journey occasioned by treachery where we were twice compelled to go together by the ears; once the savages had great advantage of us in a strait, not above a bow-shot [wide], and where a great multitude of Indians let fly at us from the bank; but it pleased God to make us victors. Near unto this we found a most dangerous cataract amongst small, rocky islands, occasioned by two unequal tides, the one ebbing and flowing two hours before the other." An excellent Westchester historian, commenting upon this description, identifies the place where the Indians " let fly " as Throgg's Point (the "dangerous cataract" being, of course, Hell Gate), and adds the following appropriate remarks: " Such was the voyage of the first Englishman who ever sailed through Long Island Sound, and the first whoever beheld the eastern shores of Westchester County. This was five years after the Dutch skipper Block had sailed through the same Sound from the Manhattans, and ten years after Hudson's discovery of the Great River of the Mountains. Very singular it is that fights with the Indians, both on the Hudson and on the Sound, and at points nearly opposite each other, were the beginning of civilization in Westchester County, and that the first was with the Dutch and the second with the English, the two races of whites which, in succession, ruled that county and the Province and State of New York."
Notwithstanding the failure of the old New Netherland Company organized by Block, Christiansen, and their associates, to get its charter of monopoly renewed in 1618, that organization did not pass out of existence. To the New Netherland Company, moreover, belongs the honorable distinction of having made the first tangible proposal for the actual settlement of the country — a proposal quite explicit and manifestly sincere. On February 12, 1620, its directors addressed to Maurice, Prince of Orange, stadtholder or chief executive of the Netherlands, a petition reciting that " there is residing at Leyden a certain English preacher, versed in the Dutch language, who is well inclined to proceed thither [to New Netherland] to live, assuring the petitioners that he has the means of inducing over four hundred families to accompany him thither, both out of this country and England, provided they would be guarded and preserved from all violence on the part of other potentates, by the authority and under the protection of your Princely Excellency and the High and Mighty Lords States-General, in the propagation of the true, pure Christian religion, in the instruction of the Indians in that country in true doctrine, and in converting them to the Christian faith, and thus to the mercy of the Lord, to the greater glory of this country's government, to plant there a new commonwealth, all under the order and command of your Princely Excellency and the High and Mighty Lords States-General." The directors, on their part, offered to the intending emigrants free transportation in the company's vessels and cattle enough to supply each family, upon the single condition that the government would furnish two warships for the protection of the expedition from pirates. This condition was not complied with, and the scheme fell to the ground. It is a coincidence, and very presumably no accidental one, that this offer was volunteered in the same year that the Pilgrims sailed from Holland in the "Mayflower" and landed at Plymouth. Indeed, it is well known that the original intention of the " Mayflower " company was to proceed to New Netherland, and their landing on the New England coast instead was the result of a change of plan almost at the last moment. It will hence be observed that it was by the merest circumstance of fortune that our State of New York did not become the chosen seat of the Puritan element. Yet New Netherland as originally settled was just as distinctly a place of refuge for persecuted religious sectarians as New England, the Walloons who came to New York Bay being no less pilgrims for reasons of belief than the much-sung passengers of the " Mayflower."
It should be borne in mind that the confines of New Netherland, as that territory was understood by the Dutch government, were not limited to the shores of the Hudson River, New York Bay and its estuaries, and Long Island Sound. Henry Hudson, in his voyage of discovery northward from Chesapeake Bay in 1609, had entered and explored Delaware Bay, and in the years which followed that region received the occasional attention of ships from Holland. It was embraced, as a matter of course, in the grant made to the West India Company. The name North River, by which the Hudson is still known at its mouth, was first given to it to distinguish it from the Delaware River or South River, as that stream was called by the Dutch.
We have shown, in perhaps greater detail than some of our readers may think is necessary in the pages of a local history, that the determining consideration in the creation of the West India Company was the desire of the Netherlands statesmen to provide, in view of the impending war with Spain, for a strong offensive and defensive naval arm in the Atlantic Ocean; and that the energies of the company were devoted on a great scale, and with signal success to the realization of this aim. The peaceful colonizing and commercial functions of the company, on the other hand, were not outlined with any degree of special formality in the charter, but were rather left to the natural course of events. Upon this point the document specified simply that the company " Further may promote the populating of fertile and uninhabited regions, and do all that the advantages of these provinces [the United Netherlands], the profit and increase of commerce shall require." " Brief as is this language," aptly says a recent historian, " there was enough of it to express the vicious principle underlying colonization as conducted in those days. It was the advantage of these provinces that must be held mainly in view — that is, the home country must receive the main benefit from the settlements wherever made, and commerce must be made profitable. The welfare, present or prospective, of colonies or colonists,