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Accord-ing to Greek legend, the Goddess of Wisdom emerged fully formed from thehead of Zeus.But history does not work that way.In the Dutch New Nether-land colony there is a gradual definition of the status of Africans out of uncer-tain legal beginnings, a codification that is not completed until after the Britishseizure of power.At least at the start of European settlement in North Amer-ica, people with African ancestry could be (though they usually were not) ac-cepted as free and contributing members of the community (Horton &Horton, 2005, pp.28 30; Moore, 2005, pp.38 48).The fourth issue has to do with the lingering effect of cultural institutionsand beliefs.Once slavery became associated with race and took on a permanentdimension, it became increasingly difficult for Africans in America to secureany rights or to challenge White domination.A Brief History of Dutch New AmsterdamAs part of this post-Columbian global economic expansion, the Dutch, whowere much better at establishing trading posts than permanent settlements,founded the colony of New Netherland along a river valley in North America.Its main trading post, New Amsterdam, was built on an island in a protectedharbor where the river flowed into the Atlantic Ocean.The first documented European visitor to what would become New Yorkharbor was probably Giovanni da Verrazano.An Italian navigator, he arrived in1524 while exploring the North American coast for France (Ellis, 1966, p.11).The bridge that vessels pass under today as they enter the harbor bears his nameand honors his voyage.It is one of the longest and most elegant suspensionbridges in the world.Once a year in the spring it is briefly closed to vehiculartraffic and bicyclists can peddle across and savor its panoramic views.The next European explorer who is believed to have arrived in New Yorkharbor was not even European.In 1525, Estéban Gómez, who was of at leastpartial African ancestry, arrived in the service of Portugal.He was one of manypeople of African and mixed African and European backgrounds involved in theAtlantic naval trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, a period beforethe final institutionalization of race-based chattel slavery (Moore, 2005, p.33).The first two European-sponsored voyages to the New York area leftnothing behind and, as a result, are of limited historical importance.It wasSettlement 43more than eighty years later that the arrival of an English ship s captain, sailingfor the Dutch in search of a northwest water route from Europe to Asia, led topermanent European settlement in the region.In 1609, African seamen might have been among the sailors who helpedHenry Hudson navigate the Half Moon, a sixty-three-foot-long galliot (flat-bottomed boat), into New York s bay (Ellis, 1966, p.15).The historical recorddoes not identify who these men were.However, we do know that Africansoften served on these voyages.Matthieu da Costa, a free Black man who trans-lated for French traders in Canada, was later hired by the Dutch and may havevisited the New York area with one of the early expeditions (Moore, 2005,p.33; Katz, 1997, p.1).The first Dutch agent of African ancestry who can be documented in theNew York region was Jan Rodriguez.In either 1612 or 1613, a Dutch ship scaptain named Thijs Mossel built a temporary wooden trading post on Man-hattan Island.When Mossel returned to the Netherlands, Rodriguez remainedbehind to trade with local natives as the region s first merchant and nonnativeresident (Katz, 1997, p.2; Moore, 2005, p.34).The permanent European settlement on the site of what would becomeNew York City began in 1625 when the Dutch West India Company (WIC)established the village of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.The colonywas set up by WIC as a business whose main goal was to profit from sellingbeaver furs and other American goods in Europe.From the start, the Dutchsettlement suffered from a labor shortage.The solution, to merchants whowere already engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, was to employ enslavedAfricans to clear land, plant and harvest crops, and to build houses, roads,bridges, and fortifications (Burrows & Wallace, 1999, p.21).In 1626, a WIC ship brought eleven enslaved male Africans to the colony.Based on some of their names Paul d Angola, Simon Congo, Anthony Por-tuguese, and John Francisco they were probably Africans from the southwestcoast of Africa who were captured or purchased from the Portuguese.Twoyears later, three enslaved Angolan women arrived.At the time, New Amster-dam was a small village with about thirty wooden houses and fewer than twohundred people (Katz, 1997, p.2).In 1629, in order to attract European settlers to the New Netherland colony,WIC promised them that they would be able to purchase African slaves.Thecompany later promised that each  patroon would be allotted twelve Black menand women and allowed its North American colonists to sell food to Dutch-controlled Brazil in exchange for enslaved Africans.In July, 1646, instructionsfrom the Dutch West India Company office in Amsterdam to the Director Gen-eral and Council in New Netherlands recognized that  the promotion of agricul-ture required  the conveyance thither of as many Negroes as they [patroons,colonists, and other farmers] are willing to purchase at a fair price. In 1648,WIC suggested that under certain restrictions the colony might even be able totrade for slaves directly with Angola (Donnan, 1932/1969, p.411) [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]