May 19, 2012

Unit 8 - The Dutch

Unit Eight – The Dutch

WHILE Captain John Smith was in Virginia he felt that he should be able to find a way to the Pacific Ocean if he just searched a little more to the north of the Virginia Colony.

He may have got this idea from some old maps, or from misunderstanding something that the Indians told him while he was exploring the Chesapeake Bay.

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Projects 1

Unit 19 - Spirit of Liberty

Unit 18 - Governments

Unit 17 - Canada Falls

Unit 16 - France & Spain

So, he sent to his old friend Henry Hudson, in England, a letter and a map, which showed a way to go by sea into the Pacific Ocean, a little to the north of Virginia.

Henry Hudson was an Englishman already known as a bold explorer. In 1609, soon after getting John Smith's letter and map, Hudson went to Holland and took a job with Dutch East India Company. This company sent him out with a little yacht, called the Half-Moon, manned by twenty sailors, to find a passage to China, by going around the north coast of Europe.

He soon found the sea in that direction so full of ice that he was obliged to give up the attempt to get to China in that way. So, remembering John Smith's map, he set sail for America.

Hudson sailed as far to the south as the entrance to the Chesapeake, and then explored the coast to the northward. He went into Delaware Bay, and afterward into New York Harbor.

In hope of finding a way to the East Indies, he kept on up the river, which we now call Hudson River, for eleven days. But when he had gone nearly as far as to the place where Albany is now, Hudson became satisfied that the road to China did not lie there, and so he sailed down and returned to Europe.

Though Hudson was an Englishman, he made this voyage for the Dutch, and the very next year the Dutch merchants began a fur trade with the Indians on this river that Hudson had discovered.

In the year that followed (1611) they explored the coast northeastward beyond Boston Harbor, and to the southward they sailed into the Delaware River, claiming all this country, which was then without any inhabitants but Indians.

They called this territory New Netherland. The Netherlands is another name for Holland.

The Dutch had built a trading post, called a "fort" at what is now Albany, and perhaps others like it elsewhere, but they did not send out a colony until 1623. Then two principal settlements were made, the one at Albany, the other at Wallabout, which is now part of Brooklyn.

But the island of Manhattan, on which New York now stands, had been the center of their trade, and it soon became the little capital of the colony.

The town which grew about the fort that stood at the south end of what is now New York City, was called by the Dutch, New Amsterdam, after the capitol city of Holland.

The Dutch also had settlements on the Connecticut River and on the Delaware River. But on the Connecticut River they got into trouble with the English settlers, who claimed that country for themselves.

On the Delaware River the Dutch had trouble with some Swedes who had planted a colony there in 1638. This colony the Swedes called New Sweden, just as the Dutch called theirs New Netherland, and as the English called their northern colonies New England, while the French named their settlements in Canada, New France.

Henry Hudson

After a great deal of quarreling between the Swedes and Dutch, the Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, in 1655, got together a little fleet with six or seven hundred men, and sailed up the Delaware River to captured New Sweden.

But the English at this time claimed that all the territory between Virginia and New England belonged to England. They said that the coast had been discovered by John Cabot for Henry VII more than a century and a half before.

In 1664, in time of peace, four English ships appeared in the harbor of New Amsterdam and demanded its surrender. Stout old Peter Stuyvesant, the lame governor who had ruled in the Dutch colonies for many years, resolved to fight. But the city was weak and without fortifications, and the people, seeing the uselessness of contending against the ships, persuaded Stuyvesant to surrender.

The name New Amsterdam was immediately changed to New York because the whole province having been granted to the Duke of York.

At the time of the surrender, New York City had but fifteen hundred people, most of them speaking the Dutch language. Today New York City is one of the largest in the entire world and many millions of the People of New York and other States have descended from the first Dutch settlers and bear the old Dutch names.