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to 1664

Lenapehoking & New Amsterdam

Before it was New York it was Lenapehoking, then a Dutch trading post at the tip of Manhattan. The record opens with a "purchase" that was nothing of the kind, a war on the people who were already here, and a tolerance the colony had to force on its own governor.

A 17th-century engraving of a low fort and small houses at the southern tip of Manhattan, with sailing ships and a Native canoe on the water.
The 'Hartgers View,' the earliest known image of New Amsterdam, engraving published 1651. New York Public Library, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
  1. 1609

    September 15, 1609

    Hudson Meets 'Loving People'

    Sailing the river that would take his name, Hudson’s officer recorded both warm trade and violence with the river’s nations.

    At night we came to other mountains, which lie from the river’s side. There we found very loving people, and very old men, where we were well used.

    Robert Juet, officer aboard Henry Hudson’s Halve Maen (Half Moon), journal entry, September 15, 1609; first printed in Samuel Purchas, 'Hakluytus Posthumus' (1625)

    The same journal calls Native people "savages" days later, and the voyage ended in a deadly harbor skirmish. The record was never simple.

    Source: New York State Archives / DEC, Juet’s Journal (transcription)
  2. 1609

    First written, 1609

    'Manna-hata' Written Down

    The Lenape gave the city its name long before the Dutch gave it a fort.

    The island the Lenape called home first appears in writing as "Manna-hata" in Robert Juet’s 1609 journal of the Half Moon. The homeland itself was Lenapehoking, the land of the Lenni-Lenape.

    Robert Juet’s 1609 journal (the place-name 'Manna-hata')

    The popular gloss "place where we get bows" rests on a single 19th-century informant. The real meaning is genuinely uncertain, so be wary of anyone who tells you it’s settled.

    Source: Etymology of Manhattan (sources collected)
  3. 1626

    November 5, 1626

    The Schagen Letter: 60 Guilders

    One sentence in a Dutch dispatch is the only contemporary record of the "purchase" of Manhattan.

    They have purchased the Island of Manhattan from the Natives for the value of 60 guilders. It is about 22,000 acres in size.

    Pieter Janszoon Schagen, reporting to the States General of the Netherlands on news off the ship Arms of Amsterdam, November 5, 1626

    The famous "$24 in beads and trinkets" is a myth. The letter says 60 guilders and never lists what was traded. And to the Lenape, land was shared use, not something you could sell away forever.

    Source: Smithsonian / Nationaal Archief, The Hague (the Schaghen letter) Read the full story
  4. 1643

    February 1643

    Eyewitness to the Pavonia Massacre

    Director Willem Kieft ordered a night attack on Lenape families who had camped near the Dutch seeking protection, killing roughly 120 and igniting two years of war.

    Infants were torn from their mothers’ breasts, and hacked to pieces in the presence of their parents, and the pieces thrown into the fire and in the water, and other sucklings being bound to small boards, were cut, stuck, and pierced, and miserably massacred in a manner to move a heart of stone.

    David Pietersz de Vries, eyewitness, published in his journal (1655); he opposed the attack and watched from across the river

    De Vries argued against the slaughter and recorded it in horror. That a Dutch official is the witness is exactly why it is believed.

    Source: Kieft’s War (de Vries’s published journal)
  5. 1644

    February 25, 1644

    Half-Freedom for Eleven Men

    The first eleven Africans were brought to New Amsterdam around 1626; their petition won a constrained freedom and farmland north of the wall that became the city’s first free Black settlement.

    The Council of New Netherland granted conditional "half-freedom" to eleven enslaved African men — among them Paulo d’Angola, Simon Congo, and Anthony Portuguese — who had served the Dutch West India Company some eighteen years, on the condition that they pay an annual tribute, and that their children remain bound to the Company.

    Resolution of the Council of New Netherland, February 25, 1644

    Their land grants sat in what is now Greenwich Village and Washington Square — the city’s first free Black neighborhood, two centuries before emancipation.

    Source: NYPL / Land of the Blacks (council records)
  6. 1654

    September 22, 1654

    Stuyvesant Moves to Expel the Jews

    Twenty-three Jews fleeing the Portuguese reconquest of Dutch Brazil reached New Amsterdam in 1654; Stuyvesant asked his employers for permission to throw them out.

    We have... deemed it useful to require them in a friendly way to depart, praying also most seriously... that the deceitful race, — such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ, — be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony.

    Director-General Peter Stuyvesant, letter to the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company, September 22, 1654

    The Company overruled him and let them stay, partly because Jews were among its shareholders. New Amsterdam’s tolerance was real, but it had to be forced on its own governor.

    Source: Jewish Women’s Archive / Gilder Lehrman
  7. 1657

    December 27, 1657

    The Flushing Remonstrance

    About thirty townsmen refused Stuyvesant’s order to bar Quakers, citing their charter’s promise of liberty of conscience.

    The law of love, peace, and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks, and Egyptians, as they are considered the sons of Adam... condemns hatred, war, and bondage.

    Residents of Flushing, Queens, petition to Stuyvesant protesting his ban on harboring Quakers, December 27, 1657

    Almost none of the signers were Quakers. They defended a faith they didn’t share, and several were jailed for it. It is often called a forerunner of the First Amendment.

    Source: Flushing Remonstrance (NY State Archives) Read the full story
  8. 1664

    September 1664

    The Bloodless Takeover

    Outgunned by four English frigates and pressed by 93 citizens, including his own son, who begged him to give up, Stuyvesant surrendered without a shot. New Amsterdam became New York.

    The Dutch here shall enjoy the liberty of their consciences in Divine Worship and church discipline.

    Articles of Surrender of New Netherland, Article 8, agreed between Stuyvesant’s commissioners and Colonel Richard Nicolls, 1664

    The defiant line "I would rather be carried to my grave than surrender" is a later legend with no contemporary record. What survives is the signed surrender, and the petition begging him to sign it.

    Source: Articles of Surrender of New Netherland Read the full story

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