Lights and Shadows of New York Life | Page 6

under consideration, that band of English Puritans who afterward
set up the ensign of free institutions on the shores of Massachusetts Bay,
were being nurtured in the bosom of that republic, and instructed in
those principles of civil liberty that became a salutary leaven in the
bigotry which they brought with them.
[Picture: First settlement of New York]
"Such were the people who laid the foundations of the Commonwealth
of New York. They were men of expanded views, liberal feelings, and
never dreamed of questioning any man's inalienable right to 'life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' among them, whether he first
inspired the common air in Holland, England, Abyssinia, or
Kamtschatka. And as the population increased and became
heterogeneous, that very toleration became a reproach; and their
Puritan neighbors on the east, and Churchmen and Romanists on the
south, called New Amsterdam 'a cage of unclean birds.'"
The English, now awake to the importance of Hudson's discoveries,
warned the Dutch Government to refrain from making further
settlements on "Hudson's River," as they called the Mauritius; but the
latter, relying upon the justice of their claim, which was based upon
Hudson's discovery, paid no attention to these warnings, and in the
spring of 1623 the Dutch West India Company sent over thirty families
of Walloons, or 110 persons in all, to found a permanent colony at New
Amsterdam, which, until now, had been inhabited only by fur traders.
These Walloons were Protestants, from the frontier between France and

Flanders, and had fled to Amsterdam to escape religious persecution in
France. They were sound, healthy, vigorous, and pious people, and
could be relied upon to make homes in the New World. The majority of
them settled in New Amsterdam. Others went to Long Island, where
Sarah de Rapelje, the first white child born in the province of New
Netherlands, saw the light.
In 1626, Peter Minuit, the first regular Governor, was sent over from
Holland. He brought with him a Koopman or general commissary, who
was also secretary of the province, and a Schout, or sheriff, to assist
him in his government. The only laws to which he was subject were the
instructions of the West India Company. The colonists, on their part,
were to regard his will as their law. He set to work with great vigor to
lay the foundations of the colony. He called a council of the Indian
chiefs, and purchased the Island of Manhattan from them for presents
valued at about twenty dollars, United States coin. He thus secured an
equitable title to the island, and won the friendship of the Indians.
Under his vigorous administration, the colony prospered; houses were
built, farms laid off; the population was largely increased by new
arrivals from Europe; and New Amsterdam fairly entered upon its
career as one of the most important places in America. It was a happy
settlement, as well; the rights of the people were respected, and they
were as free as they had been in Holland. Troubles with the Indians
marked the close of Minuit's administration. The latter were provoked
by the murder of some of their number by the whites, and by the aid
rendered by the commander at Fort Orange (Albany) to the Mohegans,
in one of their forays upon the Mohawks. Many of the families at Fort
Orange, and from the region between the Hudson and the Delaware,
abandoned their settlements, and came to New Amsterdam for safety,
thus adding to the population of that place. Minuit was recalled in 1632,
and he left the province in a highly prosperous condition. During the
last year of his government New Amsterdam sent over $60,000 worth
of furs to Holland.
His successor was the redoubtable Wouter Van Twiller, a clerk in the
company's warehouse at Amsterdam, who owed his appointment to his
being the husband of the niece of Killian Van Rensselaer, the patroon

of Albany. Irving has given us the following admirable portrait of him:
"He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches
in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such
stupendous dimensions, that dame Nature, with all her sex's ingenuity,
would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it;
wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the
top of his back bone, just between the shoulders. His body was oblong,
and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by
Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very
averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were very short, but sturdy
in proportion to the weight they had to sustain: so that, when erect, he
had not a little the appearance of a beer barrel on skids. His face, that
infallible index of