From the Editor

This issue of Early American Studies celebrates the four hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson's adventure on the river that bears his name. Considering the history that followed his exploration, this introduction should probably begin with a description of Hudson's Half Moon, a ship on which no sensible person would cross the Central Park Lake, much less the Atlantic Ocean. Similarly, such a preface would, no doubt, include a few words about the settlement of New Amsterdam, the seesawing domination by the Netherlands and Great Britain, and the eventual transition to English rule. Yet such a prologue would relegate the majestic waterway and its environs to a very distant and impersonal past when, in fact, it has remained a constant presence and feature of urban, suburban, and rural life. If warships once dominated the harbor, cruise ships have conquered them. If ferries were once the exclusive carriers of people from one shore to another, bridges and tunnels have usurped them. And if scholarship concentrates on the symbiotic relationship between adults and the river, such a reading overlooks the charm that the river and its shores hold for children.

Seventeenth-century children surely watched as beaver skins were piled on wind-driven boats, eighteenth-century children skated on the frozen river, and nineteenth-century children were among the many immigrants who took advantage of the new steam-propelled vessels making their way up the Hudson. Young people have fished and gone swimming for centuries. In the mid-twentieth century they pressed their noses against windows to gaze at the river as it reflected the dazzling lights from the Palisades Amusement Park, now long gone. For decades laughter has mingled with echoes as countless children have run through the short tunnels leading from Riverside Drive to the playgrounds along the Hudson's banks. Still others have been dragged to Grant's Tomb when they had no interest in Grant—or his tomb. And there are those who watched the waterway disappear as the blizzard of 1947 dropped the dollops of snow that eerily erased the river from view. All this is part of the Hudson's history: more personal, perhaps, than the standard narrative about the Half Moon, but history nonetheless.

The six essays in this issue amble through three centuries—from Hudson's "discovery" (as described by Robert Juet) through the mid-nineteenth century. They are delightfully eclectic, ranging from a call to give the Dutch founders their due to a study of suburbanization in the Hudson Valley. The articles are deliberately interdisciplinary: history and literature mix with theater and art while urbanization mingles with memory. The essay on New Amsterdam highlights its children; the piece on New York focuses on its culture. And Father Knickerbocker records it all. Take advantage of fall's brilliant colors—pull up a beach chair along the shore somewhere between Lady Liberty and Albany and enjoy the stories of a river and its people.