Slavery in NY

“One day in the 1620s, a Dutch ship captured a Portuguese or Spanish vessel that carried a number of African crew members. This was not as unusual as it may sound. Africans sometimes worked on European ships, and Europeans sometimes seized each other’s vessels. The crews of captured ships were usually killed, abandoned, or sold to plantations in the West Indies or South America. The Dutch brought the Africans on this particular ship to New Amsterdam instead, to serve as slaves to the Dutch West India Company. Groot Manuel de Gerrit and Dorothy Creole’s husband, Paulo Angola, were among them.

What made the Dutch do this? Their main reason was practical. New Amsterdam was still a wilderness outpost, and the Dutch West India Company wanted a thriving port. There were not enough colonists to do the work of clearing the land, constructing houses, and planting crops. The Company tried to persuade more Dutch people to come to the colony, but few were interested. It tried to make nearby Indians work in New Amsterdam, but these local people could and often did run off and return to their villages. Bringing the captured African seamen to New Amsterdam seemed to solve these problems. The Africans could be forced to work, and they could not escape and go home.”

Full text Here.

Half Freedom

In 1644, eleven Africans petitioned the New Amsterdam Council and Willem Kieft, the colony’s Director General, for their freedom. Their names were Paulo Angolo, Big Manuel, Little Manuel, Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, Simon Congo, Anthony Portuguese, Gracia, Piter Santomee, Jan Francisco, Little Antony and Jan Fort Orange. They had come from the mixed African-European (creole) world of coastal Africa and the Caribbean. Kieft freed the men and their wives, giving them plots of land to farm but they had to pay a tax every year and they had to work for the colony when asked. Worst of all, their children remained slaves.

(source: New York Historical Society – Slavery in New York)

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