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Chapter 2 Brothers, Scoundrels, Metal-Makers: Dutch Constructions of Native American Constructions of the Dutch
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Chapter 2 Brothers, Scoundrels, Metal-Makers: Dutch Constructions of Native American Constructions of the Dutch Dutch traders had come to North American shores at almost exactly the same time that English people arrived in Tsenacomoco. In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed up what later became his eponymous stream, which the Dutch simply called in their language the “North River.” By 1614, one hundred and fifty miles upstream on that river at the future site of Albany, European traders were conducting a thriving annual trade. Algonquian‑ speaking Mahicans, along with Iroquoian‑ speaking Mohawks and other people of the Haudeno‑ saunee Iroquois, or Five Nations, mostly peacefully exchanged beaver skins and varied furs for the copper, glass beads, tools, and other items that caused so much contention at Jamestown. Over the next couple of decades, Dutch traders, and a few agricultural colonists from various spots in Europe, con‑ solidated the North River outpost as “Fort Orange,” surrounded by the pa‑ troonship, or proprietary manor, of Rensselaerswyck and by the aptly named town of “Beverwyck.” Others moved into valleys of the “South” (the English called it Delaware) and “Fresh” (Connecticut) rivers and into what one his‑ torian calls “the saltwater frontier” of the perimeters of Long Island Sound. Everywhere the Dutch spread in what they labeled, with various spellings, Nieu Nederlandt, they traded with Native people and embedded themselves in Indian systems of power mediated by exchange.1 Documentary and archaeological sources provide many clues about what Native people did as they traded and contended with New Netherland‑ ers. It is a tricky business, however, to try to fathom what Indians thought about these interactions and about the newcomers. As is often the case, an Brothers, Scoundrels, Metal-Makers 43 indirect and imprecise approach is the best that can be attempted. Although seventeenth‑ century Native ideation may be inaccessible, it is possible to say something about what Dutch people thought Indian people thought, and what those thoughts might tell us about intercultural relations in New Neth‑ erland in particular and eastern North America more generally. The subject, then, is less what Indians may have really believed than how a selected group of Dutch authors tried to make sense of what they heard Indians say about New Netherlanders. In calling the resulting images “constructions,” we re‑ mind ourselves that these authors were not just reporting what was done and said but actively shaping knowledge, building meaning for themselves and their readers as they considered the question of who they— and their Native neighbors—were.2 Willem Blaeu, Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova (1662). Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection, The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. On this map of what the Dutch called New Netherland, the Mohawk (Maquaes) country near the top of the map (westward orientation) is populated by four beavers prized for their fur; two Native villages are illustrated in the upper right corner. 03:19 GMT) 44 Native Power and European Trade * * * Colonists and visitors wrote about the Native people of New Netherland in any number of ways. Explorers, casual visitors, and new residents recorded brief and usually ill‑ informed impressions.3 Court clerks reported Dutch tes‑ timony about Indian plaintiffs and defendants and occasionally translated the words of Indians who appeared before them; other government officials re‑ corded speeches by Native leaders on official embassies.4 Business agents dis‑ cussed the Indians with whom they dealt in communications with contacts in Europe; private letter writers similarly shared their impressions with equally private correspondents across the ocean.5 A small group of authors, however, consciously set out to interpret and communicate hard‑won firsthand knowl‑ edge of Native people, and four of them in particular deserve close attention: Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, Johannes Megapolensis, Jr., Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck, and Jasper Danckaerts.6 Van den Bogaert’s “A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country” is the journal of an expedition by three men whom the Dutch West India Com‑ pany sent to neighboring Iroquois villages during the winter of 1634– 1635 to learn why the number of furs being brought to the Fort Orange market had recently declined. Its author’s primary purpose was to figure out what Indians expected from the fur trade and to make those expectations understandable to his Dutch superiors.7 Megapolensis’s “Account of the Mohawk Indians” (1644) similarly represents a concerted effort to figure out what made Indi‑ ans tick. Its author occupied the...