Lights and Shadows of New York Life | Page 6

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 the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a Spitzenberg apple. His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each; he smoked and doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the four-and-twenty."
Van Twiller ruled the province seven years, and, in spite of his stupidity, it prospered. In 1633, Adam Roelantsen, the