Part 4
Drifting with the tide, he anchored over night (the 13th) just above Yonkers; on the 14th passed Tappan and Haverstraw bays, entered the Highlands and anchored for the night near West Point. On the morning of the 15th he entered Newburgh bay and reached Catskill on the 16th, Athens on the 17th and Castleton and Albany on the 18th, and then sent out an exploring boat as far as Waterford.
Some historians say that Hudson anchored at Hudson and sent a boat containing his mate and four men further up the river to explore and report whether it seemed to be a water-way to the South sea (Pacific ocean) on the way to India. Becoming convinced that it did not, on the 23d of September he leisurely sailed down the river to its mouth. Hudson and his crew were greatly pleased with the grandeur and beauty of the river, the like of which they had never seen, passing through a fruitful, attractive country, which in their descriptions, they painted in glowing colors, justly deserved. It was the season of the year when nature, in that latitude, dons her variegated and most beautiful colors. Hudson had, along the river in many places where he stopped, many interesting and pleasant interviews with the Indians, gaining much information, and exchanging his trinkets for their valuable furs. The Indians, as a rule, were hospitable, entertaining the strangers with game and fruits, etc. There were a few regrettable incidents on Hudson's voyage up the river between the Indians and the crew, and it seems probable the latter were most blameworthy.
October 4, 1609, Henry Hudson and his crew in the "Half Moon" set sail from Sandy Hook for Europe. On the homeward voyage some of the crew wanted to winter in Newfoundland and then in the spring search for a northwestern passage through Davis strait. Many were sick, but none of them were willing to go back to Holland as Hudson wished and was under obligations to do. Bear in mind that the master of a vessel then was not the autocrat that he now is. The crew had to be consulted and their decision controlled. A compromise was finally made that they should sail to Ireland. However, they reached Dartmouth, England, November 7, 1609, from which place Hudson made his report to the Dutch East India Company directors, and proposed to them to go out again for a search in the northwest, and that besides the pay, 1,500 florins should be laid out for an additional supply of provisions. Hudson also wanted six or seven of his men exchanged and his crew to number twenty.
It was a long time before the Dutch East India Company directors learned of the arrival of the "Half Moon" and heard from Hudson. Then they ordered the ship and crew to return as soon as possible. But when they were going to do so, Hudson and other Englishmen were commanded by the government not to leave England, but to serve their own country. These things took place in January, 1610. After a detention of eight months in England the "Half Moon" reached Amsterdam in the summer of 1610.
April 17, 1610, Henry Hudson, in the vessel "Discovery," with many of his crew of former voyages, sailed from England in the service of three Englishmen, Sir Thomas Smythe, Sir Dudley Digges, and John Wolstenholme, in quest of an all-water route to India through the Davis strait. After entering the bay named Hudson, in his honor, he spent much time in trying to find an outlet from it to the Pacific ocean on the way to China, but unsuccessfully.
His crew became quarrelsome, and some of them mutinous. Among the worst were two he had favored most--one his mate, Juet, and another, a Mr. Green, a worthless, degenerate fellow. Juet was tried for insubordination--for attempting to incite to mutiny--found guilty and deposed. The winter of 1610-1611 was a hard one--their provisions were short, owing to a treatment of a native by some of the crew--they could obtain no game from the Indians, nor could they catch fish. It was said, perhaps falsely, that Hudson became very tyrannical, and said something that his enemies thought he meant to prolong his scanty supplies by getting rid of several of the crew. June, 1611, a few days after leaving one of the most southern harbors of James bay (a southern portion of Hudson bay) where they had wintered, a mutiny broke out among the crew. Hudson was seized and bound, and he, his son and seven others, principally sick and infirm, were put in a small boat and set adrift upon the waves, destined soon to perish.
Thus ended, in tragedy, the career of a remarkable man, whose appearance upon the theater had not extended a half dozen years.
To commemorate the tercentenary of _Hendrick_ Hudson's _discovery_ of the Hudson river would be on a false basis--at war with historical facts. Hudson's name was _Henry_ (as has been clearly established) and not _Hendrick_, as doubtless the Dutch wanted him to become a Hollander on his entering the service of the Dutch East India Company.
There is no evidence that Henry Hudson was ever in Holland except late in the year 1608 and early in the year 1609. It is certain that he did not see Holland after his expedition on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, and that born in England, he remained an Englishman, for that government forbid him, as an Englishman, to leave and enter any other service.
It seems most remarkable that in Hudson's honor, as a discoverer, should have been named a _strait_ (Hudson strait discovered by Sebastian Cabot in 1517), _Hudson bay_, the _Hudson Bay Company territory_, which originally included all the land which was drained into Hudson bay--territory ample for an empire--which Hudson did not discover and probably never put his foot on its soil, and the _Hudson river_, which has been clearly shown he did not discover. Unless the word _discoverer_ has a different meaning from what the public understand by it and lexicographers primarily ascribe to it, Hudson, in none of these cases, was a _discoverer_. He was an _explorer_, and as such was a benefactor, and deserved credit. We would "render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's."
Henry Hudson was a bold, skillful navigator, a careful explorer, and had the ability and spirit to have made important discoveries had the time and circumstances favored. It often happens that the discoverer, the inventor, merits less honor than the party coming after, who makes that discovery or invention serviceable--useful, as it had not been before. Robert Fulton was not the discoverer of the application of steam as a motive power in navigation, but he built the "Clermont"--propelled it by steam from New York to Albany, took the wind out of sails, revolutionized navigation, and received the honors. Samuel Finley Breese Morse was not the discoverer, the inventor of the electrical telegraph, but he made it serviceable--of practical utility--almost ignoring distance in the transmission of news, and he won the honors.
Henry Hudson did not discover a new and shorter water route to India, nor did he discover the Hudson river. He, however, did _explore_ the Hudson river, and his glowing accounts of it, and the country through which it flows, attracted immigration, settlements, and was an important element in the founding of the new nation in the western world. The name, it is to be hoped, the _true_ name of Hudson, _Henry_, and not _Hendrick_, will be cherished, for whom living, so little was done. His widow, in extreme poverty, applied to the British government for another of her sons, and he was received and sent to the Government Naval School, and an allowance was made for his outfit. Henry Hudson appears to have had a large family.
The river which Hudson sailed up and down in 1609 has borne many names, given by different peoples at different times. The red men bestow names descriptive or characteristic--while there are no known laws or rules which the white men observe in naming. At the advent of the Europeans to North America many tribes of Indians inhabited the territory from Florida to the St. Lawrence, and back to the Mississippi river, and prominent among them were the Lenapes, to which the Mohicans belonged. These Indians called the river Mah-i-can-i-tuk, meaning "the flowing waters." The Iroquois called it Co-hat-a-tea, or "river that flows from the mountains." It was called the Mauritius, in honor of Prince Maurice of Nassau. Rio de Montagne was a name given to it. The French usually called it "Le Grande." The Spanish called it "The River of the Mountains." It was often called the "North river" in contradistinction to the "South river"--the Delaware.
That Henry Hudson was greatly pleased in exploring this river is not surprising. "There is no river in the western world comparable with it in picturesqueness and beauty, nor has it a superior, if an equal, in these respects, in Europe. In some stretches of the Clyde and the Rhine are features resembling the Hudson, and the Elbe has in sections, such delicately penciled effects, but no European river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in such state to the sea." It has been said that no other river in the world presents so great a variety of views as the Hudson.
"Throughout its whole length, from the wilderness to the sea, from the Adirondacks to Staten Island, a distance of 325 miles, there is a combination of the finest pictures, illustrating some of the best scenery of the old world," which some quaint writer (to me unknown) describes as follows: "The tourist with only a slight stretch of the fancy may find Loch Katrine nestled among the mountains of our own Highlands; in the Catskills may be seen from Sunset Mountain of Arran; and in the Palisades, the Giant's Causeway of Ireland." He divides the Hudson river into five stretches, reaches or divisions, representing five distinct characteristics, namely: Grandeur, Repose, Sublimity, The Picturesque, and Beauty.
1. The Palisades, an unbroken wall of rock for fifteen miles--_Grandeur._ 2. The Tappanzee, surrounded by the sloping hills of Nyack, Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow--_Repose._ 3. The Highlands, where the Hudson for twenty miles plays "hide and seek" with hills "rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun"--_Sublimity._ 4. The Hillsides, for miles above and below Poughkeepsie--_The Picturesque._ 5. The Catskills, on the west, throned in queenly dignity--_Beauty._
George William Curtis, the great traveler, the close observer, the perfect gentleman, pronounced the Hudson grander than the Rhine, and Thackeray, in his "Virginians," has given the Hudson the verdict of beauty.
To New Yorkers it is a river dear, for there is scarcely a single settlement along its banks, from its origin to the sea, which has not some interesting tradition, some notable historic event, to relate.
The beauty and glory of such a river were not, unaided, sufficient to induce the pioneer to leave his home in civilization and go into a wilderness thousands of miles away. Such a river as the Hudson could not have its origin in a low, marshy country, and its flow seaward, in any but a healthy region, but the inducement to seek that country must be more than the mere sentiment of beauty. There must seem to be a prospect of bettering one's condition, so far as physical comforts, or civil and religious rights are concerned. Hudson, after his exploration of the Hudson river, on his return to Europe, took back there many very valuable furs which he obtained from the Indians in exchange for trinkets of little cost and of still less real value. This fur and peltry trade was eagerly sought by the Europeans, especially the French, English and Dutch, and the latter were greatly favored for a time, for the Indians from the far north and northwest came to or near Albany to market their goods and buy their supplies. In the years 1610, 1611, 1612, 1613 and 1614 enterprising Amsterdam merchants sent out vessels to and up the Hudson river to obtain furs and peltry and made large profits. In 1614 the territory extending from Cape Cod to the Delaware river, places which Hudson in his third voyage had touched, was claimed by the Netherlands and called New Netherlands, and in that year the Holland government granted a special charter to a company of Amsterdam merchants and others of the United New Netherlands Company giving them the monopoly until January 1, 1618, of all travel and trade in the New Netherlands, during which time they were at liberty to make four voyages. For a period of five years, from 1618 to 1623, there seems to have been a free trade in the New Netherlands--presumably the fur trade proving less profitable.
June 3, 1621, the government of Holland, called the "Lords States General," incorporated the Dutch West India Company, clothing it with almost kingly powers, to carry on trade and planting settlements from Cape Horn to Newfoundland for a term of twenty-four years.
Its special object was the jurisdiction and exclusive control in New Netherlands. Its government was to be composed of nineteen directors from the five different cities of Holland. The Amsterdam Chamber was to have control of New Netherlands. The company was not fully organized until the spring of 1623. The English never recognized the Dutch claim for the territory called New Netherlands, and as early as 1613 demanded the surrender of the "Dutch trading house" on Manhattan Island, and ten years later the English Ambassador at The Hague protested against the encroachment of the Dutch fur traders--the English claiming the territory under the discoveries of the Cabots in 1497 and 1498. In April, 1623, thirty families, mostly Walloons, or French Protestants, came over and landed at New Amsterdam (New York) and eight of the families came up to Albany and there built Fort Orange near Steamboat Square, about two miles above Fort Nassau, built several years before.
Prior to the coming of the company of the Walloons to the New Netherlands the famous Pilgrim colony had received a patent granted by the Virginia Company giving them the right to settle "about the Hudson river," and when the "Mayflower" left Southampton, England, that was her destination, but mistaking the route and contrary winds drove her to the Massachusetts coast and there that colony was settled in 1620 at Plymouth Rock. Had the Pilgrims settled in the New Netherlands in 1620 the result doubtless would have been different, but it is doubtful if it would have been better or even so good. It is well to bear in mind that the early settlements in New England were made by persons seeking to avoid persecution on account of their religious creeds, at variance with Roman Catholicism and the established Episcopal Church, and that they might found and establish a home where they could enjoy religious and civil rights. "The Pilgrims" settled at Plymouth in 1620 and "the Puritans" in Salem in 1629. Miles Standish was a prominent figure and character among the Pilgrims, though himself not a Pilgrim. Bradford, Brewster, Winslow, and Carver were the trusted leaders among the Pilgrims. Among the Puritans John Endicott and John Winthrop were easily the chiefs. The "_Puritans_" were members of the established (Episcopal) church. They sought to have that church purified. They wanted the clergy to give up wearing the surplice, making the sign of the cross in baptism and using the ring in the marriage service--Roman Catholic observances. The Separatists (afterward known in America as the Pilgrims) were a branch of the Puritans--ultra Puritans who utterly repudiated Roman Catholic ceremonials and everything in imitation of or like and therefore separated from the established (Episcopal) church.
The Dutch did not come to the New Netherlands on religious considerations, for Holland tolerated religious freedom, but they came for gain--immediate gain from the fur and peltry trade. They did not early come to settle and for nearly twenty years after Hudson's exploration and glowing account of it very, very few indeed who came over to engage in, or employed in the fur trade, became settlers. It is said that Sarah Rapelje, a daughter of one of the Walloon settlers, born June 7, 1625, was the first white child born in the New Netherlands. The first reference to the population at Fort Orange (Albany) published seems to have been in a work published in Amsterdam in 1628, which says: "There are no families at Fort Orange. They keep twenty-five or twenty-six traders there."
The report made by the Nineteen in 1629 to the Lords States General said: "All who are inclined to do any sort of work here procure enough to eat without any trouble and therefore are not willing to go far from home on an uncertainty." It was apparent that if the Dutch West India Company was to prove a success in the New Netherlands a different course must be pursued, for Virginia and New England were being settled and their territory, in many respects better, was not.
The Dutch West India Company, modeled after the Dutch East India Company, having powerful fleets, sailing along the coasts of South America and the West Indies, preying on the Spanish commerce, capturing their vessels and cargoes and amassing wealth thereby, sought to induce men of wealth, daring, and ambition to relieve them of the undertaking of settling and developing the New Netherlands, which, instead of a source of revenue, had become a burden. They hit upon what was called the Patroon scheme--based upon the Feudal System--a system of land tenure and service prevalent in Europe during the Middle Ages--a system inevitably tending to exalt the Patroon into a lordly baron and to degrade his subject into a serf.
One who sought the distinction of the title of a Patroon (or Patron) of New Netherlands was entitled to hold as a perpetual inheritance, handing it down in the line of the oldest son, an estate having sixteen miles frontage on one side of a navigable river or eight miles on each side, extending as far into the country as the occupiers would permit. The Patroon must obtain Indian title, which usually cost but a trifle. He was empowered to hold civil and criminal courts on his estate and his decisions were practically final. He appointed the officers and magistrates in all the cities and towns in his territory. In order to be invested with this honor, these privileges and powers, he bound himself to take or send over at least fifty emigrants over fifteen years of age to settle on his patent within the next four years.
The emigrants taken or sent by the Patroons to New Netherlands were bound for a specified number of years as apprentices to serve their masters, agreeing not to hunt or fish without the master's permission, agreeing to grind their grain in his mill and pay his price for grinding. They were pledged not to weave any cloth for themselves or others, but to buy it from the company under the penalty of banishment. They were bound to pay rent in everything they produced. The Patroon and his emigrants were to support a schoolmaster, a minister and a comforter for the sick.
Such in brief was the Patroon system.
The most desirable locations for selections in the New Netherlands were along the Hudson and Delaware rivers, known, of course, by the directors of the Dutch West India Company; prominent among them was Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, a wealthy dealer in diamonds and pearls in Amsterdam.
Van Rensselaer, doubtless, informed of the great advantages of Albany, as the great rendezvous of the Indians to market their furs and near the confluence of the two most important rivers of New York, instructed his agents to obtain title from the Indians and he succeeded in procuring a princely estate along the Hudson river above and below Albany, a distance of twenty-four miles and extending east and west forty-eight miles--a territory ample for a kingdom--greater than the area of North Holland and very little less than that of South Holland.
Other directors of the Dutch West India Company promptly made what they thought the most desirable locations along the Hudson river. Manhattan Island (New York) being reserved by the company, and along the Delaware--immense tracts, though none so extensive as Van Rensselaer's, and became Patroons. Such grants and under such circumstances soon excited jealousy and sharp criticism in Holland and the Patroons felt compelled to make concessions and yield some of their privileges.
Kiliaen Van Rensselaer was a man of energy and executive ability, and strove to increase the growth, importance, and prosperity of Rensselaerwyck in accordance with the Patroon system. It has been said that he visited his estate in the New Netherlands in 1637, but no proof has been found and the report is discredited. A distant landlord frequently is in ignorance, and sometimes designedly kept so, of the actual state of affairs in his estate, which would be remedied if he were present. The Patroon was represented in New Netherlands, when absent, by agents, partners, or directors. Kiliaen admitted into a limited partnership in his estate three prominent members of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company, namely, Samuel Godyn, Johannes de Laet, and Samuel Blommaert, in order the sooner and more effectively to present to the public the attractions of Rensselaerwyck, and, presumably, also to abate the ill feeling against him in the Netherlands for his having taken advantage of his position to secure such an immense estate. Van Rensselaer dominated that partnership and again became sole proprietor. Kiliaen died in 1646 and his son, Johannes, then a minor, under the right of primogeniture, became Patroon and continued to be until 1658, when he died. His interests in Rensselaerwyck were cared for at first by Van Slechtenhorst, or until 1652, and then by the Patroon's half brother, Jan Baptiste.
In 1658 Jeremias, the second son of Kiliaen, became director and subsequently proprietor of Rensselaerwyck and was the first of the Patroons to reside in, or even visit, the estate in New Netherlands.
There were eight of the Van Rensselaers called Patroons, namely and in the order of primogeniture except in the case of Jeremias:
First.--Kiliaen, from 1629 to 1646. Second.--Johannes, from 1646 to 1658. Third.--Jeremias, from 1658 to 1674. Fourth.--Kiliaen 2d, from 1674 to 1720. Fifth.--Stephen, from 1720 to 1747. Sixth.--Stephen 2d, from 1747 to 1769. Seventh.--Stephen 3d, from 1769 to 1839. Eighth.--Stephen 4th, from 1839 to 1868.
Under the Constitution and laws of the United States in 1787 the Rensselaerwyck could no longer be entailed and it was divided by Stephen 3d (the seventh Patroon) between his sons Stephen 4th (called Patroon merely by courtesy) and William Patterson--the former getting the mansion, title, and the estate in Albany, and the latter the estate east of the Hudson.