Description
Battery Park & Hudson River
You are now standing near the Dutch-American friendship monument. It commemorates the Dutch establishment of New Amsterdam in 1626 and the purchase of Manhattan from Native Americans by the Director of the colony of New Netherland, Peter Minuit. He did so by trading goods with the Lenape Indians with a value of 60 Dutch guilders. That seems very little, but converted to values of our time it would have meant a considerable amount. The Lenape had a different understanding of this deal; they considered it more as compensation for the temporary use of the territory rather than a sale for eternity. That they would be driven off their land and their peoples decimated by European diseases was certainly not what they had in mind at the time.If you walk around the monument you’ll notice parts of the seal of New York City: two beavers, the wings of a Dutch windmill and barrels of flour.Continuing further into the park you can see the Hudson River glittering in the distance. The river was named after Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). With his ship, the Half Moon, he initially set out to find a new northeastern passage for Dutch ships sailing to Asia. However, when he was in danger of getting stuck in the ice of the North Pole, he changed course and headed for America. Upon entering the Bay of Manhattan and getting a view of a vast waterway running north, he thought he had found a passage right through the North-American continent. He sailed past Manhattan on the west side of the island. By the time he reached what is now Albany he discovered that this wasn’t a passage but rather a river, the river that would later be named for him. He returned to Europe with unfinished business but thanks to his stories, especially those involving the precious beaver skins he traded for with the indigenous people businessmen and the Government of the Dutch Republic saw an opportunity to set up a colony for a profitable beaver trade.Once a Dutch colony was established the river now known as the Hudson River was called the Noord Rivier (North River). Of course it also had its original name of Mah-i-can-tuc, which means ‘river that flows both ways’, a tidal river.As mentioned before, in 1624 the West Indian Company sent the first group of Walloon colonists to New Netherland, which was also know under the name Nova Belgica. At the time The Netherlands and Belgium weren’t yet separate countries.At the edge of Battery Park, north of the Dutch monument, you’ll find a small Belgian monument to commemorate the arrival of the very first colonists.Cross State Street at the crosswalk and walk over to the bottom of the stairs of the Custom House for our next stop.
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