New York, state, United States: French and Dutch Claims

French and Dutch Claims

Europeans first approached New York from both the sea and from Canada. Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine in the service of France, visited (1524) the excellent harbor of New York Bay but did little exploring. In 1609, Samuel de Champlain, a Frenchman, traveled S on Lake Champlain from Canada, and Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch, sailed the Hudson nearly to Albany. The French, who had allied themselves with the Hurons of Ontario, continued to push into N and W New York from Canada, but met with resistance from the Iroquois Confederacy, which dominated W New York.

The Dutch early claimed the Hudson region, and the Dutch West India Company (chartered in 1621, organized in 1623) planted (1624) their colony of New Netherland, with its chief settlements at New Amsterdam on the lower tip of present-day Manhattan island (purchased in 1626 from the Canarsie tribe for goods worth about 60 Dutch guilders) and at Fort Nassau, later called Fort Orange (present-day Albany). To increase the slow pace of colonization the Dutch set up the patroon system in 1629, thus establishing the landholding aristocracy that became the hallmark of colonial New York. The last and most able of the Dutch administrators, Peter Stuyvesant (in office 1647–64), captured New Sweden for the Dutch in 1655.

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