http://live.7scenes.com/scene/349660

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.”

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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)

Early Manhattan
April 4th, 1644: Wall St. was born. Manhattan had a couple thousand Dutch settlers (notice the stepped roofs) living below Wall Street. Unlike the British colonies in Virginia, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, New Amsterdam (renamed New York in 1664) was exclusively a trading colony, set up to extract valuable resources from surrounding area. Beaver pelts, in particular, were in high demand in Europe.

The Dutch did not even need to trap them themselves, but could trade with the local indians who were much more adept at it. The Dutch provided the indians with wampum (sea shells collected off the banks of Long Island), liquor, guns and ammunition, in return for beaver pelts and anything else they needed. This was a double-edged sword, however, because these mercenary colonists tended to make quick enemies of the indians, and once they were armed with European weapons, they became a serious threat – hence, the wall.

(source: http://www.racontours.com/archive/beginning_wall_street.php)

Below is a re-draft, drawn in 1916, of the Castello Plan of New Amsterdam of 1660. New Yorkers familiar with the downtown area will notice that it actually has not changed that much. The main lateral avenue seen below is Broadway, beginning at Fort Amsterdam and running North (right as seen below) through the defensive rampart at Wall St. Wall Street runs down (East) to the water where it intersects with Pearl Street, which is where the slave market stood and where Captain Kidd had his house. We’ll take you by all these locations on our tour of Lower Manhattan.

The street with the canal running through it is Broad Street. The Canal branches out at Beaver Street, running West towards Bowling Green and North where it almost reaches Exchange Place. The first bridge over the canal became Bridge Street, and the stubby peninsula to the lower left of the Fort represents Whitehall, where Governor Peter Stuyvesant carried out Manhattan’s first reclamation project upon which to build his governor’s mansion. It is now home to the Whitehall Ferry.

(from: http://www.racontours.com/archive/castello.php)

“In September 1609 Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company, sailed up the river that would bear his name.  This marked the beginning, exactly 400 years ago, of the Dutch era (1609-1664) of New York City.

“New Amsterdam: The Island at the Center of the World, the Exhibition uses original maps, charts, watercolors, and documents to illustrate the political, commercial, and cultural development of the Dutch West India Company’s trade outpost known as New Amsterdam.  Some of the works featured in this exhibition are:

·         The Schaghen Letter, the “Birth Certificate of New York,” which is the only documentation of the “purchase” of Manhattan from the Lenape,

·         The Castello Plan, the only surviving contemporary layout of New Amsterdam, identifying where individual buildings and plots were in the colony,

·         Adriaen Block’s hand-drawn map of the area, including the island named after him (Block Island),

·         Papers documenting the 1609 contract between Henry Hudson and the Dutch East India Company for his voyage to find a new passage to Asia,

·         The commission for Peter Stuyvesant to become the director-general of New Netherland,

·         The letters of complaint about Peter Stuyvesant’s rule from Adriaen van der Donck and the Board of Nine,

·         The charter for the Dutch West India Company,

·         Numerous watercolors by Johannes Vingboons showing Dutch settlements around the world, and

·         The Treaty of Breda, which ended the war between the Dutch Republic and England and allowed for the handover of the colony to the British.

New Amsterdam: The Island at the Center of the World, the Exhibition is a collaboration of the Nationaal Archief (National Archives of the Netherlands) and the South Street Seaport Museum.  This exhibition is a unique opportunity to see these documents, many of which have never been to the United States, and some that have never been displayed anywhere.  Throughout the exhibition are personal stories of New Amsterdammers whose diversity, vision, passion, and grit set the foundation for this Island at the Center of the World.

On view September 13, 2009 – January 3, 2010.” “

from: http://www.southstreetseaportmuseum.org/index1.aspx?BD=9622