NEW YORK CITY TIMELINE - 1650-1654

1650

City

Immigrant Jan Aertsen Vanderbilt arrives from der Bilt, Holland. ** The

Jan Jansson map of New Amsterdamn, originally dated at 1655, will be

redated to this year in the late 1990s, by Jan van Bracht and Günter Schilder.

Queens

Burger Jorissen builds a gristmill at he future site of Queens Plaza.

1651

Peter Stuyvesant receives the deed for a bouwerie (farm) previously belonging

to Wouter Von Twiller. ** The approximate date Jan Jansson’s manuscript

map of Belgii Novi (New Netherlands) is created. It has since disappeared.

Mar 21

The directors of the Dutch West India Company complain of the extravagant

land grants made to Wouter van Twiller and direct Stuyvesant not to make

any more grants unless the grantee acknowledged the authority of the company

and gave proof of their own ability to properly cultivate the granted lands.

1652

Jun 30

England declares war against the Netherlands, the First Anglo-Dutch War.

City

Governor Peter Stuyvesant charters Flatbush, on Long Island, and issues a

patent for the Long Island village of Newtown (later Elmhurst), previously

known as Middleburgh. ** Englishman William Hallet, buys 1,500 acres

on Long Island along the East River from Stuyvesant. The Indians are

appeased with a blanket, beads, 7 coats, and 4 kettles. The community

becomes Hallets Cove (later Astoria). ** In an attempt to stimulate

colonization the West India Company reduces the fare from eight stuivers

a day to seven. ** The Dutch erect a timber and earthwork wall across

Manhattan at the settlement's northern boundary, for military protection.

It will provide the name of the future Wall Street.

Brooklyn

The Dutch West India Company’s Cornelius Van Werckhoven, a magistrate

of Utrecht in the Netherlands, purchases land from the Nayack Indians,

agreeing to compensate the tribe with clothing and tools., establishes the town

of New Utrecht, with permission by Stuyvesant. ** Stuyvesant grants a town

patent to Midwout (the future Flatbush). ** The approximate date Pieter

Stuyvesant estate superintenent Pieter Claesen Wykoff builds a house in the future

Flatbush section. It will one day become the oldest surviving house in the state.

Netherlands

The Lords Directors of the Dutch West Indies Company in Amsterdam learn that

New Amsterdam has an abundance of mulberry trees, begin planning for a silk industry.

1653

Peter Stuyvesant incorporates the city of Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam).

January

Manhattan resident Joost Goderis, son of a Dutch painter, is accosted while returning from

a fishing trip to Oyster (later Ellis) Island by Isaack Bedloo (Bedloe), Guliam (Gukyam) d’Wys,

Gyshert van der Donck, Jan Vinje, Pieter Werckhoen Harmanus Hartoogh, Cornelius Melyn

and Jacob Buys and taunted with being cuckolded by Allard Antony, supposedly loud enough

to be hard back on the Battery. Subsequently Goderis shows up at Bedloo’s house and slaps him.

Bedloo cuts Goderis on the neck.

Feb 10

The new government meets in Fort Amsterdam. Joost Goderis appears and accuses Bedloo

of last month’s taunting and wounding. A number of witnesses – including Antony - brought

in, refuse to testify against Bedloe.

March

Those who Goderis has accused are ordered to remain under house arrest and report back on

March 8th. The case will drag out for weeks, finally dropped by Goderis for insufficient evidence.

July

Word arrives in the colonies that England and Holland have signed a peace treaty.

Dec 10

Representatives from four Dutch and four English towns meet in New Amsterdam, to protest

against New Netherland's arbitrary government.

Dec 14

Stuyvesant convenes the colony’s first representative assembly, defies the opinions of “a few

ignorant subjects”.

City

The city acquires a city council and a town government, in protest to Stuyvesant's rule. **

The Dutch West Indies Company's tavern at Pearl Street and Coentes Alley is ceded to

the city for a city hall. The colony builds a wall across the island to the north, as a protection

against English colonies and Indians, from that direction. ** Merchant Jacob Krip is

appointed first city clerk of New Amsterdam. ** Immigrant builder Frederick

Philipse arrives. ** Politician and poet Nicasius de Sille arrives from Holland after his ship

battles with English vessels three times. ** Carpenter Claes Hendricksen exchanges his

homestead just to the north of the new wall, with Polish-born tavern keeper Daniel Litsche.

It will later be condemned by authorities as being too near the fortifications.

Brooklyn

This year or next the New Utrecht Reformed Dutch Church Cemetery is begun. A church will

not be built on the site until 1700.

1654

May 18

The directors of the East India Company write to governor Pieter Stuyvesant, informing him of a

New Amsterdam city seal to be forwarded.

Jun 8

New Amsterdam settler Teunis Tomasen sues Michael Paulisen for payment on a chimney Tomasen

had built for Paulisen. Tomasen wins his suit.

Jun 20

New England recruits setting out to attack New Amsterdam learn that the English and the Dutch have

made peace.

Jul 4

Manhattan's Dominies Hook, on the North (Hudson) River between Duane and Canal streets, is acquired

by ground brief from Peter Stuyvesant.

Jul 17

The approximate date (possibly the 18th) the Dutch ship Peartree sails from Holland with the

New Amsterdam city seal.

Aug 22

Jacob Barsimon becomes one of the first Jews to settle in New Amsterdam, having arrived on the

Peartree. Solomon Pietersen may have come in the same vessel.

Sep 7

23 Sephardic Jews, including Moses Ambrosius (Lumbroso), Judicq de Mereda, Abraham Israel,

David Israel and Rycke Nounes, refugees from Brazil, arrive in New Amsterdam aboard the French

armed vessel St. Charles (the Jewish Mayflower). The ship’s captain claims he’s owed 1600 guilders

for the trip.

Oct 5

Manhattan tavern keeper Wolfert Webber is called before the Magistrates’ Court on charges his

dogs attacked several pigs – owned by Judith Verleth and a Mrs Stillen - that wandered on his

lands. Webber claims the hogs were damaging his seeds, but did not harm the pigs. He also

claims he’s been threatened with a beating by Mrs. Verleth. The court tells him to mend his

ways and make a complaint of his own if he’s threatened again.

Nov 14

English physicist Thomas Pell purchases over 9,000 acres in the Bronx from the local

Siwanoy Indians.

Dec 8

Stuyvesant presents the city seal and accompanying signet to burgomeister Martin Crigier.

Bronx

The Dutch settle Oostdorp (East Village), the future Parkchester neighborhood.

Brooklyn

A wooden structure, the town’s first Dutch Reformed Church, is built in Flatbush,

under the direction of Peter Stuyvesant.

© 2011 David Minor / Eagles Byte

INFERNAL DIN ?

Script No. 244

November 17, 2001

The pipa and the Han Dynasty of China grew up together. When a king calling himself Shi Huangdi or First Emperor came to power around 221 B. C. he feared barbarian hordes from the north and began a crash building program, erecting a series of protective walls that would soon merge to form the Great Wall. Needless to say, he did none of the labor himself, leaving the grunt work to the peasants. A later Chinese scholar would write, “When the people suffered from being forced to build the Great Wall, they played the instrument to express their resentment". Looking somewhat like the Western lute, the pipa has a shallow, pear-shaped body and a long neck supporting 3 or 4 strings. It’s played with a wooden plectrum, or pick, with the “pi” sound made on the downstroke and the “pa” on the return. Sort of like the “plink-plunk” sound we make vocally today to simulate a banjo. The instrument grew in popularity, with various rival schools established around China to further develop both instrument and repertoire. It’s outlasted all succeeding dynasties and in descendent forms remains probably the most popular instrument in the country today.

Speaking of succeeding dynasties, you know what they say about the best laid plans. While the emperor was guarding the front door against the barbarians, with his enormous public works project, younger rivals sneaked in the back door. A series of battles ensued, with a rebel named Liu Pang coming out on top around 202 B. C., and establishing the Han Dynasty.

Some of the earliest pieces written for the pipa have survived and are still being played. One of these, the martial “Ambushed on Ten Sides”, mimics the progress of one of the early battles. The names of the segment suggests the intensity of the piece - Setting up Camp, Beating Drums, Sounding Horns, Firing Cannon, Calling the Rosters, Manoeuvering Troops, Laying Ambush, The Skirmish, The Major Battle, Farewell to Concubine Yu, The Suicide, and The Rout. A critic from the Tang Dynasty describes it, "... as if thousands of warriors and horses are roaring on the battle field, as if the earth is torn and the sky is falling". A contemporary describes how, "... The thicker strings rattled like splatters of sudden rain, the thinner ones hummed like a hushed whisper. Together they shaped strands of melody, like larger and smaller pearls falling on a jade plate."

Listeners here in the West have often had trouble getting used to Chinese music, with its five-tone scale that makes the melodic line secondary to the quality of individual notes. When a San Francisco newspaper editor went to a Chinese concert in November of 1869, if he heard a band version of something like “Ambushed on Ten Sides” he would have agreed that the music was originally written to express resentment. He may never been in battle but he drew head pictures of his own. He wrote, “Imagine yourself in a boiler manufactory when four hundred men are putting in rivets, a mammoth tin–shop next door on one side, and a forty-stamp quartz mill upon the other, with a drunken charivari party with six hundred instruments in front, four thousand enraged cats on the roof, and a faint idea will be conveyed of the performance of a first-class Chinese band of music."

© 2001 David Minor / Eagles Byte

Today, eight-plus years after the above was written, I was reading Dee Brown's WONDROUS TIMES ON THE FRONTIER, when I came across the following in the chapter GREASEPAINT IN THE WILDERNESS. As reported by actress Miriam Follin Leslie - wife of the New York City newspaper editor Frank Leslie - during her 1877 railroad tour the western U. S.:

"Then these grotesque and phantom-like figures began a series of the strangest evolutions . . . to the accompaniment of that frightful discord of barbaric sound, until it all seemed more like a feverish dream, the fancy of a lunatic, or the vision of an opium eater than an actual stage peopled with human beings."

Speaking of that latter audience type: Around the same time Cincinnati Commercial reporter J. H. Beadle wrote: . . . the whole crowded with Celestial [Orientals] and noisome with the smokey fumes of some weed I can't recognize . . ."

Perhaps Miriam Leslie would enlighten Beadle at some future point.

Oswego Nights

© 2009 David Minor / Eagles Byte

NEW YORK CITY TIMELINE - 1645-1649

1645

Jul 25

Jan Evertse Bout is granted land in Brooklyn.

Aug 30

The Dutch and the Indians sign the peace treaty at New Amsterdam. Only 100 whites are left in the city.

Oct 10

New York's governor Willem Kieft issues letters of patent to English immigrants Thomas Applegate, Lawrence Dutch, Thomas Farrington, Robert Field, Robert Firmin, John Hicks, John Lawrence, William Lawrence, John Marsten, Thomas Saul, Henry Sawtell, Thomas Stiles, William Thorne, John Townsend, William Widgeon and Michael Willard, for the Long Island settlement of Flushing. The patent grants the settlers the same rights to religious freedom as their countrymen back home.

City

Quakers under patentee John Hicks found Vlissingen (Flushing) on Long Island. ** Hoping to form a buffer between New Amsterdam and the Long Island tribes, Dutch officials encourage a group of New England religious dissenters led by Lady Deborah Moody to establish a colony at Gravesend, near Coney Island, in the future Brooklyn. ** Adrien Jansen van Olfendam opens a school, charges two beaver skins. ** Dirck Volkertsen, called The Norman, is given a patent for the Greenpoint area of Brooklyn and builds the first house, on Bushwick Creek. ** Dominie Johannes Megapolensis writes home to the Netherlands, contrasting the welcome diverse scenery of the New World with the flatness of Holland. ** Kieft's (Wappinger's) War ends after five years of strife between the Dutch and the local Indians. At least 1600 Munsee Indians have been killed during the war. ** Kieft is fired by the Dutch West India Company’s Board of Directors by year’s end and replaced by Peter Stuyvesant.

State

Close to 10,000 pelts are transported to New Amsterdam by way of Fort Orange (Albany).

1646

Jul 28

Kieft is ordered to give up his post.

Nov 26

The Dutch West India Company declares the Village of Breuckelen a municipality, the first in present-day New York State.

Dec 17

Former New Amsterdam schoolmaster Adam Roelantsen, often in trouble with the law and now reduced to taking in laundry, attacks Wyntje Theunis, wife of Herk Syboltsen, and is sentenced to be publicly flogged and banished. The sentence will be suspended because of his four motherless children.

City

Lawyer and sheriff Adriaen van der Donck moves down from Rensselaerwyck, bringing 50 families to his estate in the Bronx. The settlement will be wiped out by Indians. ** Farmer Jan Jansen Damen shoots bears in his orchard on lower Broadway, between Pine and Cedar streets, where the Equitable Building will one day rise.

1647

May 11

Peter Stuyvesant arrives in Nieuw Amsterdam as Director General, to replace Willem Kieft. Also aboard is William Beekman. Eighteen of the passengers aboard the ship died on the voyage.

Jul 4

Stuyvesant calls for the building of a commercial wharf.

Sep 24

Stuyvesant forms a Board of Nine Men to help him govern New York.

Sep 27

Having sailed for Holland with ore samples from the colony aboard the Princess, Governor Willem Kieft drowns when the ship is wrecked in the Britain’s Bristol Channel. Also lost are Dominie Bogardus and other officials.

December

Stuyvesant, his colony nearly bankrupt, jails Adrian van der Donck, leader of the Board of Nine Men, who are seeking stronger power.

City

Stuyvesant requires all Manhattan lots to be built on. ** Provisions are made to protect the populace against ship-borne diseases. ** The approximate date Jacob Lendersten Van Der Grift and his brother Paulus arrive from Amsterdam.

1648

July

During a brawl at at Creiger’s tavern Joannes Rodenburgh (Rodenburch) kills Gerrit Jansen Clamp. Rodenburgh pleads guilty and is arrested.

Jul 23

Creiger’s tavern is shut down.

Aug 19

Rodenburgh (Rodenburch) is released on bail when no one appears to accuse him after three (court) days notice.

City

New Amsterdam's first pier is built, in the East River at Schreyer's Hook. ** A law calling for pigs to be penned is ignored. ** Adriaen van der Donck, Auguste Heerrnan, Arnoldus van Hardenburgh, Govert Loockermans, Oloff Stevensen van Cortlandt, Hendrick Hendricksen Kip, Michael Jansen, Elbert Elbertsen (Stoothof), and Jacob Wolfertsen van Cowenhoven are named to this year's Board of Nine Men. ** Early in the year settlers under Adriaen van der Donck begin preparing a Remonstrance, or protest against the management of the Dutch West India Company, to send to the Staats-General in the Netherlands. A map prepared for the report has since been lost. ** Jan Stevenson opens a second school. ** Flushing’s English-born Presbyterian cleric Francis Doughty leaves for “the English Virginias” (Maryland), where his brother-in-law William Stone is governor.

1649

Jan 27

The West India Company directors write to Peter Stuyvesant, questioning the need for him to build large warehouse.

March

Stuyvesant has Van der Donck jailed for libel and removed from New Amsterdam's Board of Nine Men, seizing drafts of the Remonstrance.

July

New York merchants join to demand government permission to sell, buy and trade timber, grain and other merchandise with the same freedom as government traders.    

Jul 28

The Remonstrance of New Netherland is signed. It will be published in Holland later in the year.

Jul 29

The Nine Men inform the Dutch States-General they are sending three delegates to the Netherlands bearing A Petition of the Delegates, a Petition of the Commonality of New Netherland, and The Remonstrance of New Netherland, with charges against Stuyvesant’s rule.

Nov 7

Talks are held in Connecticut concerning the possible union of the colony with that of Maidstone (Southampton) on Long Island. Nothing will come of the idea until 1658.

City

The city applies for designation as a municipality. ** When citizens criticize the Dutch West India Company for enslaving the children of free Christian mothers the company backs off, requiring that they be made to perform only occasional labor. ** Manhattan has 17 taphouses.

© 2012 David Minor / Eagles Byte

Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas

© 1997 David Minor / Eagles Byte

It’s as far west as the salties can go. For those of you unfamiliar with Great Lakes lingo, a salty is a saltwater ship, and you won’t find one west of Duluth-Superior. To those of us who live at the eastern end of the Great Lakes, the western end may be relatively unknown. Every so often we’ll explore the shores of these five glacial souvenirs, and get acquainted.

Most lakes have fairly rounded contours. Lake Superior comes to a sharp point at its western end, where Wisconsin snuggles cozily into the lower curve of eastern Minnesota. That geography has shaped the history of two towns; made them first rivals, and then partners.

Superior, Wisconsin, was the first. England’s Hudson’s Bay Company had an outpost there as early as 1820, although an even earlier trading post at nearby Fond du Lac, Minnesota, 67 years earlier, would one day become a depot of the rival American Fur Company. Superior, formally settled in 1853, under the tutelage of a bevy of eastern capitalists and politicians, a consortium including Washington banker William Wilson Corcoran, Senator Stephen A. Douglas and Congressman John C. Breckinridge, stepped out ahead. Momentum increased when a military road to St. Paul, Minnesota, was constructed in 1856. Meanwhile, a rival had sprung up across the bay. Duluth, near Fond du Lac, was also settled in 1853 but, with no friends in high places, had only a population of eighty, seven years later. That changed when Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke became interested in Duluth as a lake port for the shipment of grain from nearby midwestern wheatfields to eastern markets. He was one of the sponsors of a bill in Congress to make harbor improvements at Duluth.

And improvements were necessary. Minnesota Point, an eight-mile long spit of sand, fifty feet in height, not only protected Duluth’s harbor, but made Superior closer to open water and therefore to shipping. When, in 1870, the bill failed in Congress, Cooke founded the Minnesota Canal and Harbor Improvement Company and began construction of a channel to sever Minnesota Point, opening the Port of Duluth directly to Lake Superior. The town of Superior, learning of the threat from their rival, sent representatives to Leavenworth, Kansas, the nearest Federal presence, to obtain an injunction against the project. The emissaries were successful and set off for home, galloping across the landscape, injunction in hand. But they underestimated the citizens of Duluth. Word of the legal prohibition raced ahead of them. Every able-bodied man in Duluth grabbed a shovel or a pick, rushed out onto the point, and completed the construction of the channel, hours before the injunction was scheduled to take effect.

NEW YORK CITY TIMELINE - 1640-1644

1640

May 10

A militia is formed in New Amsterdam.

July

The directors of the West India Company grant the remainder of Staten Island to Cornelius Melyn. He will attempt to start a patroonship and plant a colony.

City

A Dutch church is erected inside the stockade. ** Staten Island’s David Pietersz De Vries leases out the island when his plantation there fails to attract settlers. ** A few pigs disappear on Staten Island. Kieft sends 100 armed men to the island where they kill several Raritan Indians, including a sachem. The Raritan burn a farm and kill four Dutch workmen - the Pig War (also known as Kieft's or the Wappinger War). ** A colony of Massachusetts Quakers settles at Gravesend, Brooklyn, under the protection of the Dutch government.

1641

Aug 29

Family heads in New Amsterdam select a representative government, the Board of Twelve Men.

City

Scandinavian sea captain Jonas Bronck buys 500 acres north of Manhattan to farm tobacco. ** Overseer Jacob Stoffelson has city slaves removing dead hogs from the streets. ** In a double wedding Anthony van Angola and Catalina van Angola, and Lucie d’Angola and Laurens vam Angola, all slaves, are married in the Dutch Reformed Church. ** Eight slaves are accused of murdering a ninth, Jan Premero. One slave, Manuel (the Giant), belonging to Gerrit de Reus, is chosen by lot to hang. The rope breaks and spectators successfully plead for his life. The others - Big Manuel, Little Manuel, Paulo d’Angola, Simon Congo, and Anthony Portuguese - are pardoned. ** The Dutch West India Company builds the Stadt Herbergh (City Tavern) at Coentes and Pearl. ** Governor Kieft opens the city's first annual cattle fair, outside the fort on the Marktveldt. ** David Pietersz De Vries’ Staten Island settlement at the Watering Place (later Tompkinsville) is wiped out by Indians.

1642

Jan 20

New Amsterdam director Kieft convenes The Twelve Men to plan a campaign against the Algonquin.

Feb 8

Kieft dismisses The Twelve Men when they begin considering a permanent place in the government.

Feb 25

Kieft consents to the massacre of a band of innocent Algonquin Indians, forced into his area by hostile tribes in the Albany area.

March

Kieft’s campaign against the Algonquin proves ineffective.

November

Adriaen van der Donck, is sent to Manhattan by his employer, patroon Kiliaen Van Rennselaer, to bring back a runaway female indentured servant. Discovering she’s about to give birth, he allows her to remain until the infant’s old enough to travel. Van Rensselaer is displeased.

City

The approximate date the Dutch West India Company builds Philip Geraerdy’s Tavern at Stone and Whitehall. ** Twelve languages are spoken in the settlement. ** The daughter of minister Everardus Bogardus is married. Director Kieft takes advantage of the tippling guests by successfully soliciting subscriptions for a new stone church inside the fort. Construction begins. ** The Dutch engage in hostilities with New Jersey's Hackensack Indians over whiskey. ** Plymouth colonists led by Reverend Francis Doughty settle on Long Island along Newtown Creek, near the Indian village of Mespaetches, the future site of Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood. The ensuing Maspeth will be the first European community in Queens. Governor Kieft offers no objections. Quakers led by Reverend John Throgmorton settle at Throg's Neck. ** Cornelius Dircksen inaugurates the first ferry service (by rowboat) to connect Brooklyn, near today’s Old Fulton Street, with Manhattan. ** A small section of a lower Manhattan street is named Broadway.

Bronx

British settler John Throckmorton settles on the Long Island Sound peninsula that will become known (after his name) as Throgs Neck.

1643

Feb 8

Tobacco planter and Netherlands emigrant Jan Cornelissen is killed in the Indian wars, on the north bank of the Batten Kill on Staten Island, at about the age of 70.

Feb 25

New Amsterdam’s Director General Kieft makes war on Indian refugees from the Mohawks at Corlaer’s Hook and Pavonia, precipitating a war that lasts over the next two years. 120 Indians seeking refuge are slaughtered by the settlers, many of them as they slept.

April

Staten Island farmer David De Vries convinces 18 Metoac sachems to signed a treaty of truce with Kieft. Envoys are sent to the Hackensack and Tappan urging them also to sign.

September

Siwanoy Indians under sachem Wampage murder Anne Hutchinson and her family in Eastchester.

Sep 13

Kieft seeks counsel from a new body, The Eight.

Oct 7

Dutch merchant, land speculator and Dutch West India Company founder-director Kiliaen van Rensselaer - never having seen his New World lands - and having died recently in Amsterdam in his late forties (exact dates unknown) is buried on this date.

City

Population: 400. 18 languages are spoken. ** French Jesuit priest Father Isaac Jogues visits the city. ** Bronx landowner Jonas Jonasson Bronck, 43, and most of his settlers are killed during an Indian raid. ** Wecquaesgeek Indians resist demands for tribute by the Mahicans. Several are killed and many women and children captured. The Wecquaesgeek flee south to Manhattan, expecting protection from the Dutch, who are supplying guns for the Mahicans. When they cross the river to New Jersey, Kieft becomes convinced an attack is imminent and attacks their villages, massacring 110 (the Pavonia Massacre). The Wappinger War (Governor Kieft's War) begins, lasts until 1645. Mespaetches Indians burn the settlement on Brooklyn's Newtown Creek. ** Fort Amsterdam is built at the southern tip of the island. ** Kieft creates a burgher guard, the first recorded police force for the colony. ** Lady Deborah Moody establishes the Brooklyn settlement at Gravesend, on land donated by William Kieft, becoming the first woman to found a colony. It’s the oldest town on Long Island. ** Kieft, tired of entertaining visitors in his own home, opens a tavern – the Staat’s Herberg (State’s Lodging) - on Pearl Street for the West India Company, leases it for 300 guilders to Philip Giraerdy (Gerritsen). Only company liquors are to be sold. It’s the settlement’s first tavern. ** Martin Krigier (Creiger) opens a second tavern, on Bowling Green (today's 9-11 Broadway.

1644

Feb 25

A number of black slaves, including Big Manuel, Little Manuel, Paulo d’Angola, Simon Congo, and Anthony Portuguese, are awarded half-freedom. They are free on a bond, payable in labor, while their children remained slaves.

March

Kieft declares a day of thanksgiving after his forces kill 500 Indians.

Jun 18

The Eight, New Amsterdam Kieft’s council, meets. Kieft tells the members the colony is out of money because of the recent Indian war and will have to tax beaver pelts and beer. The meeting breaks up in disarray.

August

Dutch wheelwright/schout (sheriff) Claes Swits is beheaded by a Wickquasgeck Indian he’s invited into his home on the Rensselaerwyck lands. Fifteen years before the Indian, then twelve-years-old, was the sole survivor of a massacre of fellow tribesmen by Europeans.

Oct 28

The Eight send a third petition to the Dutch government, without Kieft’s knowledge, seeking the director's dismissal.

November

A jury of twelve men is assembled in New Amsterdam to consider avenging the murder of Swits. When the jury cannot agree on a course of action they are dismissed. Director Kieft will launch a war on the Wesquecqueck on his own next year.

Immigrants

Claes Martin van Roosevelt arrives in New Amsterdam.

© 2011 David Mnor / Eagles Byte

APPOINTMENT AT TARAWERA

©2004 David Minor / Eagles Byte dminor@eznet.net

As young Makereti Thom learned of her Maori past she would have been told of how her ancestor, the great navigator Ngatoroirangi, trapped the sorcerer Tama-o-Hoi deep in the interior of the sacred mountain Tarawera. When the tourists began trickling in during the 1860s they climbed to the base of Tarawera to view the lake there and experience the thermal pools of the Pink Terrace and the seven-acre White Terrace on the hillsides above the water. (Later on the nearby region would attract "Lord of the Rings" film director Peter Jackson, who used it as stand-in for the land of Mordor). The tourists brought their pounds sterling and a local cadre of native guides sprang up, many of them women. But the cash brought its own problems, particularly alcoholism. Tuhoto Ariki, a local tohunga, or priest, became fearful for his fellow Maori. One night, at the end of May, 1886, a phantom canoe was spotted out on Lake Rotomahana. The Maori began taking the tohunga more seriously.

Sometime between June 9th and June 10th, tourist Edwin Bainbridge of Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, would write, "This is the most awful moment of my life. I cannot tell when I may be called upon to meet my God. I am thankful that I find His strength sufficient for me. We are under heavy falls of Volcanoe." A short while earlier the trapped sorcerer Tama-o-Hoi made his bid for freedom. The triple-peaked Tarawera erupted and began shooting flames and smoke thousands of feet up into the cold, clear night sky. Then the lava barged through an underground fissure beneath Lake Rotomahana, hit the hydrothermal pools below, causing the lake bed to blow out. William Bird, another visitor described how, "Dominating all, hung the great cloud-curtain, gloomy and dark above, saffron and orange on its under-surface. From the cloud, great balls of flaming rock dropped from time to time, descending with a splash into the waters of the lake."

By the time accompanying strong winds had calmed and Tarawera had settled down, the villages of Te Ariki and Moura had vanished beneath the lava. Both terraces had vanished. Nearly 120 people died; local schoolmaster Charles Haszard lost five members of his family. And Edwin Bainbridge was called upon to meet his God, as the veranda roof of the Rotomahana Hotel collapsed over his head.

Among the well-known guides that survived the eruptions was Sophia Hinerangi, one of Margaret's aunts. She and several other guides were resettled further north, to the thermal valley at (F)Whaka-rewa-rewa, a living village museum today just outside Rotorua. It was there that Margaret Thom, fresh out of the Hukarere Native Girls' School decided she could best gain her independence by earning a living as a guide. Under the tutelage of Sophia Hinerangi, she took to the routine quickly and her knowledge of her twin heritages, as well as her beauty and her skills as a storyteller soon made Margaret Thom a much sought-after guide. A younger sister, Bella, followed in her footsteps.

One day, while leading a group of tourists, someone asked Margaret if she had a Maori name in addition to her Anglo name. Mentally searching for a plausible sounding name she suddenly thought of nearby geyser, and told the tourist, "My name is Papakura. Maggie Papakura." The name stuck, and soon other family members had adopted the new surname.