Dutch and French Colonial Ambitions and Their Rivalries

US History Summary Historical Themes (HST 200) Dutch and French Colonial Ambitions and Their Rivalries In contrast to Spain's vast worldwide empire, the French and Dutch possessions in North America throughout the seventeenth century were small. Neither New France nor New Holland attracted a wave of immigrants; instead, they remained little trading hubs centered on the fur trade. The Hudson River Valley, Manhattan Island, Long Island, and what would eventually become New Jersey were the only areas in which the Dutch in New Netherland conducted business. Along preexisting native trade networks, Dutch trade commodities were extensively distributed among the local native populations and even made their way deep into the heart of the continent. Along the St. Lawrence River, French inhabitants, or farmer-settlers, struggled to make a living. On the other hand, French missionaries and fur merchants ventured far into North America's interior, traveling as far as the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. These settlers gave France erroneous imperial claims to regions that were still strongly ruled by indigenous peoples. IN THE NEW NETHERLANDS: FUR TRADE In the 1600s, the Dutch Republic became an important hub for trade. As other Dutch ships traveled to the Far East and returned with valuable spices like pepper to be sold in the busy ports back home, particularly Amsterdam, its fleets roamed the seas of the Atlantic. Manhattan Island was where Dutch merchants first settled in North America. Peter Stuyvesant was a Dutch directorgeneral of the North American colonization who held this position from 1647 to 1664. He extended the nascent colony of New England to the east, including what is now Long Island, and northward along the Hudson River for many miles. As a consequence, the colony grew longer and was mostly used as a fur trading station. All trade was regulated by the influential Dutch West India Company. New Amsterdam, a burgeoning metropolis, was guarded by Fort Amsterdam, which was located near the southern point of Manhattan Island. Stuyvesant conquered the little settlement of New Sweden in 1655, which was located along the Delaware River in what is now Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Additionally, he ordered African slaves to construct a defensive wall on the northeastern edge of the city, which gave modern-day Wall Street its name, in order to safeguard New Amsterdam from Native American raids. Only nine thousand Dutch colonists had settled in New Netherland by 1664, as the region failed to draw in large numbers of immigrants. Many migrants found the Dutch colony unattractive due to conflicts with Native Americans and discontent with the commercial operations of the Dutch West India Company. Due to a severe labor shortage brought on by the tiny population, the Dutch West India Company took around 450 Africans into slavery between 1626 and 1664 in order to finish the labor-intensive duties of early colonization. (The business had been significantly engaged in the slave traffic; in 1637, it managed to take Elmina, a slave-trading post on Africa's west coast, from the Portuguese.) Due to a labor crisis, New Netherland also accepted Protestant immigrants from Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and England as well as non-Dutch immigrants. It also adopted a tolerant attitude toward other religions, allowing Jewish immigrants to settle there starting in the 1650s. As a result, New Holland was home to a diverse population from the beginning. In fact, according to one observer, one could hear eighteen distinct languages in New Amsterdam. The colony of New Netherland expanded farther to the west and north as more people came. The Dutch West India Company considered the colonization of New Holland to be a costly venture. Dutch merchants who made significant investments in it were given patroonships, or huge areas of land with the authority to manage the tenants, in order to share some of the expenses. The shareholder who was granted patroonship agreed to pay for the colony's population to arrive, at least thirty Dutch farmers in all. One of the directors of the Dutch West India Company, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, was given one of the biggest patroonships, which included much of the modern counties of Albany and Rensselaer. The tenants, who paid rent, and the affluent patroons separated by a wide margin due to this pattern of settlement. Native Americans congregated at trading stations like the Dutch settlement at Beverwijck (modern-day Albany) during the summer trading season to trade furs for blankets, firearms, and wine. Furs would be sent to New Amsterdam along the Hudson River, with beaver pelts in particular going to the rich European millinery market. Workers or enslaved slaves would load them onto ships that were headed for Amsterdam from there. BUSINESS AND TRANSFORMATION IN NEW FRANCE It wasn't until Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec as a French fur-trading colony in the early 1600s that France shown any interest in establishing permanent colonies in North America after Jacques Cartier's exploratory expeditions in the 1530s. Less than four hundred French immigrants had settled in Canada by 1640 despite the country's abundance of fur trade, which they saw as an uninhabitable freezing wasteland. Because of the limited French presence, colonists were dependent on the Algonquian natives of the area; without them, the French would have been exterminated. Numerous interactions were had by French explorers, fisherman, and fur merchants with the Algonquian people. Because the colonists provided them with weapons for their long conflict with the Iroquois, the Algonquian people tolerated the French. Consequently, the French were forced to intensify indigenous conflicts and back the Algonquians in their struggle against the Iroquois, who were armed by their Dutch trade allies. The Beaver Wars got their name from the lucrative beaver pelt trade that drove these battles in the seventeenth century. Rival native peoples engaged in combat throughout these conflicts, which swept over the Great Lakes area. A few French Jesuit missionaries also traveled to Canada with the intention of converting the indigenous population to Catholicism. The Society of Jesus, an exclusive religious order established in the 1540s to promote Catholicism and impede the growth of Protestantism, included the Jesuits as members. The Jesuits brought their first priests to Quebec in the 1620s, and for the following hundred years, their numbers remained below forty. In the colony known as New France, the Jesuits toiled to convert the aboriginal peoples to Catholicism, just as the Spanish Franciscan missionaries did. Every year, they produced comprehensive reports outlining their achievements in converting the Algonquian people and, starting in the 1660s, the Iroquois people to the religion. The Jesuit Relations (Figure 3.7) texts are a valuable resource for understanding the Jesuit perspective on Native Americans as well as the Native American reaction to the colonists. A Mohawk lady called Kateri Tekakwitha, a Native American who converted to Catholicism, so impressed the priests with her devotion that a Jesuit named Claude Chauchetière tried to have her declared a saint in the Church. But when Church officials objected to giving such a high position to a "savage," the attempt to canonize Tekakwitha failed; she was finally declared a saint in 2012. Native Americans in New France were forced to convert by French colonists, who seldom ever regarded them as equals. On Native Healing Traditions, a Jesuit Priest The Jesuit Relations provide a wealth of information on Native American culture. For instance, the Catholic priest Jean de Brébeuf's 1636 version discusses the devastation caused by sickness and the measures taken to prevent it from affecting Native Americans. Let's go back to the feasts now. The Aoutaerohi is a medicine that is exclusively effective for a certain kind of ailment. It is also known by the name of a little demon the size of a fist that is said to be present in the sick man's body, particularly in the area that hurts. Through a dream or the help of a sorcerer, they discover that they are ill with this illness.... The first two games—straw, dish, and crosse [lacrosse], which are particularly popular among these Peoples—are said to be the most restorative. Does this not merit sympathy? A sad Sorcerer will arrange a game of crosswords for a sick man who is near death and has a fever as a cooling treatment. Sometimes the sick man himself will have dreamed that he will not survive unless the entire nation plays crossword puzzles for his health. In such a case, you will witness, regardless of his merit, villages competing against each other in a lovely field to see who can play crossword puzzle the best and wagering on Beaver robes and Porcelain collars in an attempt to pique curiosity. How, in this story, did Native Americans try to heal illness? For what reason did they recommend playing lacrosse? What potential health advantages may these games offer?