A Description of New Netherland

Notes

 notes All notes are the editors’. Preface . Adriaen van Der Donck, A Description of the New Netherlands, ed. Thomas F. O’Donnell (Syracuse DO: Syracuse University Press, ), xl. . Ada van Gastel, “Van der Donck’s Description of the Indians: Additions and Corrections,” William and Mary Quarterly , no.  (): –. For Van Gastel’s analysis of Van der Donck’s career in the New World, see “Adriaen van der Donck, New Netherland, and America” (PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University , ). The Country . Van der Donck’s “mile” (Dutch, mijl) approximates . statute miles. . In  the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands chartered the voc (Verenigde Oost-indische Compagnie), or United East India Company, to manage the lucrative trade with the Far East. Formed as a joint stock company, it was given the authority to raise its own army and navy in order to maintain control of its trade routes. Moreover, in these endeavors it held the power to make war and peace and also to negotiate treaties with foreign princes. Essentially, the voc represented the privatization of Dutch foreign policy. See note . . In  Sweden chartered the South Company to form a colony in the New World. The first director was Peter Minuit, former  | Notes to page  director of New Netherland. He purchased land in the area of Wilmington, Delaware, and constructed a fort named Christina after Sweden’s reigning monarch. The colony expanded southward in  when a Swedish relief expedition captured Fort Casimir, at present New Castle, Delaware, from the Dutch. Although the Swedes had gained control of the entire river, the colony remained weak because of irregular resupply from the home country. In  Petrus Stuyvesant brought the Swedish colony under Dutch control. . Selected Native oral traditions concerned with the arrival of Europeans are discussed in James Axtell, “Through Another Glass Darkly: Early Indian Views of Europeans,” in After Columbus : Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –. Van der Donck, however, was using the story he alleges the Indians told him to buttress Dutch claims of discovery to New Netherland. These were asserted in the face of competing claims by England and, until , when its colony of New Sweden in the lower Delaware Valley was taken by the Dutch, also Sweden. . Corn and beans are New World domesticates, with corn (Zea mays amylacea and Zea mays indurata) appearing in the Northeast ten centuries or more before the arrival of the Dutch, and beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) about 7: . “Turkish corn,” also Turkish wheat, Welsh corn, Indian wheat, and others, was a term for corn in common use among seventeenth-century Europeans. . The Remonstrance is a lengthy and detailed representation, a protest by aggrieved citizens about conditions in the colony, written by Van der Donck and submitted to the States General in . For the complete text, see E. B. O’Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York; Procured in Holland, England and France, by John Romeyn Brodhead,  vols. (Albany DO: Weed, Parsons, –), :–. For all intents and purposes, the Representation is a first draft of Van der Donck’s A Description of New Netherland, in particular the sections on physical geography, natural history, and also Indian Notes to pages – |  life ways. See note . Modeled on the East India Company, the West India Company was chartered in  to carry on the war with Spain after the expiration of the Twelve Years’ Truce (–). Its area of control was vast, extending from the west coast of Africa westward to the easternmost reaches of the Indonesian archipelago. The M?9’s primary interests were with Africa for its gold, ivory, and slaves; Brazil for its sugar and dyewood; the Caribbean for its salt; and New Netherland for its furs. . The States General was the governing body of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Each of the seven provinces sent representatives to The Hague, where matters of state were decided. The States General is immortalized in many placenames around the world, including New York’s Staten Island. . Early on, Long Island Sound was called the East River. . The reference is to the Swedes of the Delaware Valley who chose to remain and work for the West India Company after the Dutch takeover of New Sweden in . See the report of Augustine Herrman’s embassy to Maryland in  in Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., Delaware Papers (Dutch Period): A Collection of Documents Pertaining to the...