By Howard Vernon

State University College, New Paltz, New York

Although the Dutch commercial expire existed in North America throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch development of the fur trade was hardly as extensive or successful as that of the French to the north, or the fur trade of the English in later periods of colonial history. A brief resume of the Dutch fur trade in the Hudson Valley and various factors which retarded its development form the substance of this paper. Forces which deterred the growth of the trade lie in the intermittent Indian hostilities prevalent from 1626 to 1660 in the Upper Hudson Valley, in trade goods the Dutch introduced to the Iroquois, and Dutch views toward permanent settlement, agriculture, farming, the licensing and control of individual traders, and, finally, Dutch views toward the New Netherland as a purely commercial enterprise.

Table of Contents:
Growth of the Dutch Their Trade
Beaver Supplies Depleted
Indian Hostilities Renewed
Impact of Dutch Trade Goods
Impact of Dutch weapons
Dutch View of Settlement
The Private Trader
Dutch View of commerce
Conclusions
Notes
References Cited

Growth of the Dutch Fur Trade

Dutch interest in the fur trade first developed in connection with the cod fisheries on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, where they found the French monopolizing the fur trade as early as 1602. The first French company was organized in that year, and private Dutch traders shortly challenged this, when the Jan Munter Company was formed, and traded in New France before and after 1605. The following year, Amsterdam merchants sent the "Witte Leeuw" to New France on a buccaneering expedition, and the French monarch complained to the States-General because the Dutch had traded for furs with the Indian (Condon 1968:7-8). Four years later, Henry Hudson found the coast of New France a good place for cod fishing and also "for traffic in good skins and furs," obtainable there at a very low price (Jameson 1909:7). On his third voyage, anchored near present-day Albany, Hudson recorded that "many brought us bevers skinnes and otters skinnes, which we bought for beades, knives, brandy, and hatchets" (Jameson 1909:15-22). These he had traded with the Mahican of the area, and thus it was that the Dutch noted at an early date the value of the North (Hudson) River for the fur trade. Dutch merchants petitioned for trading rights in 1611, and this was granted in 1614 by the States-General. Five Dutch ships were given the right to explore and trade in the North River area.

Four years later (1618) the Dutch and Iroquois concluded a treaty on the banks of the Norman's Kill, near Albany, to offset the French-Algonkin tie to the north; thereby the Dutch acquired control of the Indian trade on the Upper Hudson, at this time, principally with the Mahican (O'Callaghan 1856:I, 17-80). Four years earlier, the Dutch captain, Hendrick Christiaensen, had built a trading pest (Ft. Nassau) on the site of Albany, where beaver, otter and deer were plentiful, and where the Mahican proved to be a valuable source of furs. At this time, the Mohawk probably had little contact with early traders. Lands surrounding Albany had been explored by Christiaensen, and as a result of this, Dutch ship owners had been granted a charter to form the New Netherlands Company. The charter gave them the exclusive rights to trade in New Netherland, and the right to four voyages within a 3-year period, beginning in January, 1615 (Trelease 1960:30-31).

In the meantime, Dutch captains stopped at coastal harbors, picking up peltry wherever offered by the Indians, but when this supply declined, ships went up the Hudson, Connecticut, and Delaware Rivers. On the upper Hudson ships arrived in the spring, to await furs brought in by the Indians, and for this reason, a post and warehouse were desirable to stockpile furs. The first location, which had been on Castle Island, proved to be impracticable, however, and in 1624 a new pest (Ft. Orange) was established on the west bank of the Hudson by the West India Company, chartered in 1621.

The new company followed a restrictive fur trade policy: no one not under the company's jurisdiction could trade in furs, and a strict decree of 1625 stated that colonists

could trade in the interior to catch the animals with the skins, but they must deliver up the said skins.. . to the Company at the price for which we obtain them at the trading place from the Indians (Trelease 1960:42).

From this time until 1629, the West India Company had a virtual monopoly on the fur trade, but this was relaxed somewhat in the latter year to allow anyone to trade with Indians where the Company had no agent. Skins so obtained were subject to a duty of one guilder levied by the Company at Manhattan Island.

The earlier years of Dutch fur trade at Fort Orange were marked, however, by hostilities between the Mahican and Mohawk which flared into open warfare between 1616 and 1619. At the end of this period, the Mohawk had subjugated the Mahican, who moved from the west bank of the Hudson eastward into the (Connecticut Valley abandoning all claims to land west of the Hudson River in 1631. Henceforth, it was the Mohawk with whom the Dutch principally dealt, and upon whom they depended for furs. Mohawk fear that the Dutch might eventually divert Algonkin-French furs from the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Valleys to Fort Orange was strong at this time, and seems to explain the Mohawk determination to extirpate the Mahican, traditional friends of northern Algonkin tribes. By so doing, the Mohawk saw themselves not only as playing a larger part in trade with the Dutch, but acting as well, as middlemen in Dutch trade with remoter tribes west and north (Trigger 1971:277-81). It seems evident that any given tribe wanted no other tribe to trade with the same European power they did; conversely, however, it was advantageous for European traders to be friendly with as many separate tribes as possible, in order to trade competitively with them (Trigger 1971:285).

Although Mohawk supremacy at Fort Orange was not established and Indian hostilities subsided, the West India Company continued to be troubled by individual fur traders around the post; they remained a continuing problem until the States-General opened the fur trade to all in 1639 (O'Callaghan 1856:1, 119-21). From this date forward, transients entered the upper Hudson region to compete with the inhabitants, and a law of 1648 attempted, with no success, to limit the fur trade to inhabitants only. Indeed, private traders were so numerous at Fort Orange after 1640 that the Company closed its trading house there in 1644, yet it remained a Company outpost (Trelease 1960:60-61, 112).

Beaver Supplies Depleted

By 1640, the Iroquois beaver supply had become exhausted, which forced them to grasp for a share of the western tribes' supplies. While both Dutch and the Indians viewed the beaver as commercially useful, no efforts were made to forestall its extinction within a specific hunting area. The historian Wilbur Jacobs trenchantly observes that the contrary view prevails in the United States today. Unless an animal is regarded as commercially useful, efforts are made to insure its survival, which accounts for bounty systems with regard to "bad", ferocious, and predatory animals, particularly in the western states (Jacobs 1972:20).

Depletion of the beaver as a source of both furs and wealth is evident from an examination of the fragmentary figures for the years 1624-1635, (2) a period during which the price per skin rose from 5.77 to 8.21 guilders, and a beaver coat cost 25 florins ($10.00) (O'Callaghan 1846:1, 477-8). While one recent historian J. C. McManus avers that the average cost of hunting beaver will have risen as a result of depletion, he also challenges the traditional view of fur trade historians who state that beaver populations were sharply reduced after the introduction of the fur trade in an area (McManus 1972:36-38). To the contrary, anthropological studies show that certain tribes established exclusive hunting territories, held by individual families through successive generations. It is McManus' belief that the two views appear

...Inconsistent, within the context of the behavior postulates of economic analysis, because the Indians' depletion of his beaver resources is not consistent with wealth maximization given that individual hunters had the exclusive rights to exploit the resources of a defined hunting ground (McManus 1972:40).

Recent studies verify, however, that individual Indians had the right to exclude others from taking furs or meat from their territories for purposes of sale, but they did not have the right to exclude others from killing animals for consumption. He concludes that, in general, rights to use for consumption were common, while rights to use for exchange were exclusive (McManus 1972:48). These conclusions should seem to support, conversely, the generally held belief that much seventeenth century forest warfare was caused by the beaver's extermination within a given tribe' s hunting area, leading that tribe to encroach upon another' s preserves (Jacobs 1972:10). American Indian beaver hunting methods contributed much to early depletion. The Indians killed all of each animal type when found, and few if any beaver in one house were saved. Beavers were most easily hunted in winter, when ice proved easier to deal with than water, and the beaver's fur was in its prime. Groups of hunters demolished lodges and cut dams with stone axes, in a war waged against these animals not alone for food, but increasingly for profit (Martin 1974:3-11).

Indian Hostilities Renewed

Such was the situation in which the Mohawk found themselves some ten years after defeating the Mahican, and they now felt obliged to fight distant tribes to maintain wide beaver hunting grounds, and also to keep their position as middlemen between the Dutch and the Great Lakes' Indians. Consequently, the tenuous peace the Mohawk had made with northern Algonkins about 1634 was weakened, and the desultory hostilities resumed. While the French should have welcomed the Iroquois as partners, the latter were disinclined to cooperate, for the Mohawk realized furs taken from the Hurons could be sold at profit at Fort Orange. Despite the fact that peace was believed to be a prime requisite for profitable trade by both the Dutch and Indians, the Mohawk launched attacks on the Huron in the Ottawa Valley; in the summer of 1644, only one out of four Huron fur fleets escaped capture, and by the mid-1650's, the Iroquois had destroyed the Huron, the Neutral on the Niagara River, and the Erie, whom they decimated in a war lasting from 1653 to 1656 (Trelease 1960:118-21).

At the same time, the Mohawk were not completely happy with the Dutch. In September, 1659, they complained that:

The Dutch say we are brothers, and joined together with chains, but that lasts only as long as we have beavers; after that no attention is paid to us (O'Callaghan 1856:
XIII, 109).

The Mohawk strongly wished that the Dutch would act as the French did toward their Indian allies, and "help us in repairing our castles" (O'Callaghan 1856: XIII, 190. Thus, after one-half century of Dutch-Indian relations involving the fur trade, their relationship retained tenuous. In the same fifty-year period, the Dutch had encountered insuperable problems that were inherent in the fur trade itself. Depletion of beaver in Indian hunting grounds and resultant intertribal warfare was only one of these problems. Two additional ones were the impact of European trade goods and foodstuffs on the Indians, with inevitable acculturation, and the views and conduct of the Dutch themselves relating to the Indian, the land, and the fur trade.

Impact of Dutch Trade Goods

Because furs were a source of wealth to both Indian and Dutch, the latter early engaged in the giving of presents as a means of obtaining beaver, otter, and marten skins. Hudson is reputed to have given the Mahican biscuit and rum, and the Dutch riverine traders of the early seventeenth century exchanged for beaver, otter, marten, and moose skins, a variety of European goods. Among these were tobacco, liquor, peas, biscuit, flour, brass kettles, hunting tools, and in later years, powder, shot, muskets, and wampum. Because Long Island was the chief source of wampum, the Dutch used this to advantage to provide Indians with this highly prized and much sought after article which was much in demand by both Iroquois and Algonkin (Martin 1974:22). Assortments of clothing included one variety particularly preferred by Upper Hudson Valley tribes: duffels cloth. This material was usually 2½ feet long and 9½ feet wide, red or blue in color, which the Indian found more suitable than beaver to ward off rain (Jameson 1909:217; 301). Previously, beaver fur had been worn turned inside in winter aid outside for summer. Indian experience with duffels later led than to prefer subdued colors--blue or gray--in order not to frighten animals during the hunt. It has been estimated that this article of clothing outstripped rum, brandy, and firearms in quantity as an article of trade (Trelease 1960:48). In impact, if not in amounts, liquor and firearms deserve greater attention.

The harmful effects of alcohol on the Indian are well known to students of colonial America, (3) and the Dutch, to less than the French and English, used brandy and rum as an article of trade, the effects of which were generally and continually devastating. It was in 1634 that the Dutch first mentioned beer and brandy as trade articles for furs. As Jacobs points out, "...the Indians knew the danger of liquor, but they were unable to resist it" (Jacobs 1972:33). While liquor vitiated the life of the Indian, firearms altered his life as well, and brought fundamental changes in his ways of hunting and methods of warfare.

Impact of Dutch Weapons

The Indian trading gun, made for the Indian by the English, was exchanged by the Dutch for furs, contributing as early as 1640 to an ecological catastrophe. Now the Iroquois scoured the woods for more furs, in order to obtain more guns, hatchets, and rum from the Dutch. This quest, as we have noted, resulted in a serious depletion of fur-bearing animals, particularly the beaver. It resulted as well in great changes in the Indian ecosystems: an unrestrained slaughter of certain game ensued, and systematic overkill became the rule.

The Indian, now equipped with European technology, and urged on by the Dutch traders, became deprived of a sense of responsibility for the land (Martin 1974:23-24). At the same time, the Indian depended less and less on the resources of his local ecosystem; improved hunting equipment--muskets, axes, knives, iron-tipped arrows and spears--brought a heavy depletion of local food resources and increased dependence on the availability of European foodstuffs. An additional result, less obvious perhaps, came from combining firearms with liquor, which often caused a debauched and violent Indian to carry his senseless violence into the Dutch community Most importantly, the fur trade and accompanying technology altered the relationship of the Indian to his land, and the Indian was transformed from conservator to exploiter within his ecosystem. The intense exploitation of some game animals and the virtual extermination of others was the result. This was true of the Iroquois during the Dutch regime; it was also a pattern to be repeated many times along the Indian-White frontier (Martin 1974:24-25).

As might be surmised, guns and other weapons as trade goods also revolutionized Indian warfare in the early seventeenth century. In the early 1640 's the Jesuits related how the Senecas, living near the Dutch, were armed with 300 arquebuses obtained from Dutch traders, and how these Iroquois ambushed Hurons along the St. Lawrence to carry off the peltry "which they go and sell to the Dutch" (Jesuit Relations, 1610-1791:XXIV, 271). In 1644, the Dutch Board of Accounts stated that free traders and colonists were selling firearms to the Mohawk for furs, and that ". . . full 400 men" had also received not only muskets, but powder and lead (O'Callaghan 1856:1, 150). Because these arms were refused to other tribes, the hatred of these toward both Dutch and Mohawk was engendered. Although a restriction on the sale of arms was considered by the Dutch through fear of harm from the Mohawk, this was never enforced, despite some Mohawk hostility toward the Dutch by 1640. At this time and later, the Mohawk were also paying the English 20 beavers for a musket, and the Dutch wished to share in the profitable trade (O'Callaghan 1846:1, 224). One Dutch resolution of February, 1654 was passed to provide the Mohawk with "a moderate amount of powder and lead, lest they apply therfor to the English." Because the Mohawk were regarded as friends of the Dutch, the latter should supply it lest the Indians

look for it among our neighbors, from whom they can also get a large quantity of wampum for their beavers; (they) have already received large gifts and presents from the English (O'Callaghan 1856:XIII, 35).

It is not surprising then that the Mohawk, armed with European weapons, reached a peak in their military activities about this time, and embarked on the subjugation of the Huron, Ottawa, and other tribes to the north arid west. As previously noted, Indian hostilities interfered with fur gathering, and deprived the Dutch of the furs for which they had so freely traded muskets.

Dutch View of Settlement

To these problems were added additional ones--the views and attitudes of the Dutch themselves toward colonization and commercial enterprise. Although Dutch views on these matters do not differ in all respects from those of the French and English, enough difference exists to merit exinimation of these problems were added additional ones--the views and attitudes of the Dutch themselves toward colonization and commercial enterprise. Although Dutch views on these matters do not differ in all respects from those of the French and English, enough difference exists to merit examination.

Like all commercial companies in the New World in the seventeenth century, the West India Company did not prove to be a success; New Netherland had been a financial burden from beginning to end. Dutch dispersion of interests handicapped the colony, for the Company was involved in the African slave trade, in founding colonies in Latin America, and in raiding Spanish and Portuguese trade ships for booty. These interests retarded the building of trading posts and the establishment of forts; and although the patroon system, established in 1629, permitted the founding of farm-estates (bouweries) with fifty adults, the only one of note to succeed in the Fort Orange area was that of Van Rensselaer. If agriculture did indeed develop, it was looked upon more as a means of reducing the overhead expense involved in fur trade expansion, bit few imigrants to the Upper Hudson Valley engaged in fanning. As late as 1638, it agricultural, settlers had established themselves in the area. Most settlers did rot regard themselves as founding a permanent community in the wilderness, and planned to remain only a few years (Condon 1968 :77, 105). Nor were immigrants to New Netherland a homogenous group: the early arrivals in the colony were not only Dutch, but French, Walloon, German, Scandinavian, and English. These diverse groups were devoted to pursuing their own interests, regarding the trading post around which they lived as a commercial enterprise. Permanent settlements and a new society grew slowly over a period of many years, and had hardly reached stability before the end of the Dutch regime.

The Private Trader

The unstable nature of the colony was increased when private traders were allowed more freedoms after 1629, and when all restrictions on private trade were lifted in 1640. The strength of the colony was reduced because individual fur traders went abroad among the Indians and formed a fluctuating element in the population. These sundry people in the fur trade tried to intercept Indians before they reached Fort Orange, and were given the name bosloper (bushloper) by the Dutch. This is perhaps the closest equivalent to the coureurs de bois, so numerous an element in New France. The Company and the patroons tried to outlaw boslopers in an ordinance of 1642, but the latter ignored this and subsequent enactments passed in 1645, 1648, and 1655 (O'Callaghan 1856:XIII, 39; XIV, 84). They continued to intercept Indians near the post at Fort Orange, and frequently cajoled, threatened, and used violence to separate the Indian from his furs. It should be noted, however, that the Dutch bosloper usually lived at or around Fort Orange, and rarely travelled further afield than Schenectady. The French coureur, on the other hand, usually passed winters along the Indians in the distant wilderness, and traded with remote tribes in their own territories (Trelease 1960:131-32). By 1652, Dutch traders were forbidden to go into the Mohawk country to trade at Indian villages, but control of such activities proved difficult. In desperation, the practice of employing Indians as brokers in the fur trade began in 1657, and brokerage fees paid Indians averaged 50,000 guilders ($325) a year, which continued until 1664. Yet it remained impossible to eliminate the old abuses; traders went into the woods to meet the Indian brokers, and the brokerage experiment proved to be a failure.

Dutch View of Commerce

The weak policy of settlement and the untrammeled activities of individual fur traders as well as Dutch attitudes toward commerce and the Indian prevented the establishment of a strong fur emnpire in New Netherland. Furs in quantity was the aim of Dutch Indian policy. This too, one might argue, was the policy of the French in New France. Both depended on the Indian to bring furs to the posts or to rendezvous for trade, but the French Indians lived primarily by hunting and fishing, while those in the upper Hudson Valley, both Iroquois and those with Algonkin ties, were semi-agricultural in their way of life. While the French looked north and west for furs, and were nearer larger supplies, the Dutch were preoccupied with river and coastwide trade, and never used canoes to penetrate the interior, but preferred yachts and sloops to ply the Hudson and other rivers. The dangers of Dutch travel during the 1640's into the Indian war zone north of Fort Orange may have been one reason for their reluctance to penetrate the interior. And navigation on the Hudson was not difficult, in contrast to difficult upstream travel, involving many rapids, which the French encountered (Murray 1938: 365-68).

Trading methods were much the same among both Dutch and French, yet the latter appear to have been more active in developing trade. They not only gave the Indians gifts, but young French coureurs de bois lived among distant tribes, often informally married an Indian, took part in intertribal wars, and French missionaries established both missions and schools. Thus the Indian may have felt more obligation to barter annually, which brought the French rich hauls of furs. The Dutch, on the other hand, distributed fewer gifts, less systamatically, and did not send young men to winter with the natives. Nor were the Dutch as interested in missionary activities and kept strictly out of Indian quarrels. Their attention centered more on Indian tastes in trade goods, and had not the Mohawk barred northern tribes from trade with the Dutch, the latter might have lured the Algonkin furs south to Fort Orange by supplying wampum, the sources of which they largely controlled. Finally, in the private trade struggle for furs, the French seemed to have suffered more from excessive competition than the Dutch. As noted above, relatively few Dutch traders were attracted to the Hudson, for the Dutch viewed the Baltic and East Indian trade as better fields for investhent than the fur trade of the New Netherland. The West India Company, moreover, had never been expected to colonize New Netherlandi, and the Company regarded the colony as "trifling" in trade, as compared to the wealth found in African ivory, gold, slaves, and profiteering (Murray 1938:371). The short period the Dutch occupied New Netherland, the sparseness of population, the failure to develop agriculture, and the inability of the Dutch West India Company officials to control and/or compete with private traders all ultimately contributed to the failure and loss of the colony in general and the Dutch fur trade in particular.

After 1650, the dislike of New Englanders for the Dutch increased, and the English ardently desired the lands held by the Dutch-Long Island and the Hudson Valley-to ease the westward expansion of Connecticut. With the surrender of New Amsterdam to the English in September, 1664, New Netherland was renamed New York, and Dutch frontier settlements were soon brought under English control, at which time Fort Orange was renamed Fort Albany. Yet the loss of New Netherland represented the loss of only one colony to the West India Company, and because it had been a financial drain throughout its history, its loss could hardly be regretted. One student of this period of colonial history suggests that the West India Company had never approached the founding of New Netherland with a view to permanent settlment; settlement arose out of commercial expansion and experimentation. The Company had not tried to transplant Dutch society to the New World, but had undertaken settlement to make its investment pay off. As population slowly grew, social, economic, and political problems arose with which neither the Company nor the inhabitants were prepared to deal (Condon 1968:176-69). When the English acquired the colony, Dutch fur traders remained within the area, but Dutch fur traders dealing directly with Holland had all but disappeared by 1700.

Conclusions

The Dutch in New Netherland, particularly in the Hudson Valley, had founded a fur trade empire under the aegis of the West India Company, but their efforts to make out of it a consistently profitable commercial enterprise failed for a variety of reasons. Both Dutch and Indians realized that absence of Indian hostilities was a sina qua non in a profitable fur trade development. Yet Indian warfare, first between the Upper Hudson tribes and later between theMohawk and the Hurons and Ottawa, hampered and deterred such fur trading activities. This was particularly true when depletion of beaver supplies led the Mohawk to go farther afield to obtain pelts, and in so doing, incurred the hostility of northern Algonkin tribes. Further and continued woodland warfare throughout most of the Dutch regime was the result. The introduction of European trade goods in return for furs had further deleterious effects: it not only altered the Indian culture, but changed the nature of the environment and the ecosystem in which the Indian had lived for centuries. These alterations created further complications for the development of a satisfactory fur trade.

Dutch views of the New Netherland concerning settlement, agriculture and farming, the unbridled activity of the individual private fur trader, and attitudes toward conanercial activity further hobbled the development of the fur trade within the colony. Because of these drawbacks, the New Netherland, powerless to develop and defend itself and unable to build a consistently large and profitable trade in furs, gave way in 1664, and the Dutch surrendered the colony to the English. (4)

References Cited

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Jacobs, Wilbur R.
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Martin, C.
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McManus, J.C.
1972 An Economic Analysis of Indian Behavior in the North American Fur Trade. Journal of Economic History, vol. 32.

Murry, Jean E.
1938 The Early Fur Trade in New France and New Netherlard. Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 52.

O'Callaghan, Edward B., ed.
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1856 Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York. 14 vols., Albany, Weed, Parsons.

Thwaites, Reuben
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Trelease, Allen W.
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Trigger, Bruce G.
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