"Smackdown on the Hudson" The , the West India Company, and the Founding of Albany

Lesson Procedures

Essential question: How was the colony of ruled by the Dutch West India Company and the ?

Grade 7 Content Understandings, State Standards:

Social Studies Standards This lesson covers European Exploration and Colonization of the Americas and Life in Colonial Communities, focusing on settlement patterns and political life in New Netherland. By studying the conflict between the Petrus Stuyvesant and the Brant van Slichtenhorst, students will consider the sources of historic documents and evaluate their reliability.

Common Core Standards:

Reading Standards By analyzing historic documents, students will develop essential reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. They will read and analyze informational texts and draw inferences from those texts. Students will explain what happened and why based on information from the readings. Additionally, as a class, students will discuss general academic and domain- specific words or phrases relevant to the unit.

Speaking and Listening Standards Students will engage in group and teacher-led collaborative discussions, using textual evidence to pose hypotheses and respond to specific questions. They will also report to the class on their group’s assigned topic, explaining their ideas, analyses, and observations and citing reasons and evidence to support their claims.

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Writing Standards To conclude this lesson, students write a letter to the editor of the Rensselaerwijck Times that draws evidence from informational texts and supports claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.

Historical Context:

In 1614, soon after the founding of the New Netherland Company (predecessor to the West India Company, est. 1621) by Dutch investors, company employees built the first Dutch trading post in North America. Fort Nassau was located on Castle Island, part of present- day Albany, NY. Settlers selected this spot near the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers for its proximity to Indian trade routes. Every spring the island tended to flood; consequently, the fort was abandoned less than three years later. In 1624, West India Company employees erected a new trading post to replace Fort Nassau. Fort Orange was located just north of Castle Island on the west bank of the .

In 1630, residents of the fort welcomed new neighbors. That summer, the first group of farmers and artisans arrived to settle the privately-owned colony (or patroonship) of Rensselaerswijck, which surrounded Fort Orange on both sides of the Hudson River. Kiliaen van Rensselaer—a jewelry merchant and a West India Company director— purchased the land that comprised his patroonship from Mahican Indians. The patroon and his heirs were authorized by the West India Company to administer the colony’s economic and legal affairs. Outside of Rensselaerswijck, the West India Company’s directors and their agents prevailed. The Company also controlled the Dutch colony’s lucrative fur trade.

Rensselaerwijck’s proximity to Fort Orange was intended both to protect the settlers and to provision the fort. But proximity and divided rule eventually led to conflict between the West India Company’s Director-General, Petrus Stuyvesant, and the patroon’s agent, Brant van Slichtenhorst, Director of Renssleaerswijck. Uncompromising by nature, both men fought to uphold what they understood to be their employer’s rights. The result was what historian and novelist Firth Haring Fabend has called the “smackdown on the Hudson,” an event that gave birth to the village of now known as Albany.

In this case, Stuyvesant won the day. The Director-General of New Netherland from 1647 until the colony’s capture by the English in 1664, Stuyvesant was an able administrator and dedicated Company man. He promoted the colony’s growth and oversaw its transformation from a trading post to a commercial hub.

This lesson requires students to analyze the power struggle bewteen Stuyvesant and Slichtenhorst through the study of informational texts and historic documents. (Translations of historic documents and other readings have been shortened and simplified for use by students.) Students will use these to participate in a debate and to write a letter

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to the editor of the Rennselaerswijck Times. Before starting this lesson students should have studied the founding of New Netherland.

Activities:

Reading and Discussion The teacher should hand out an excerpt from Firth Haring Fabend’s New Netherland in a Nutshell: A Concise History of the Dutch Colony on the conflict between Petrus Stuyvesant and Brant van Slichtenhorst. Before students start reading, the teacher should explain that Fort Orange was owned and controlled by the West India Company. However, the property surrounding the fort was owned and governed by the patroon of Rensselaerwijck. Students should understand that the patroonship was a privately owned and administered estate within the colony of New Netherland. The patroon was empowered by the West India Company to set up a system of government within his estate.

The teacher should place students in pairs to read and analyze the Fabend reading. After the students have finished reading and taking notes, the teacher should lead a whole group discussion on the following questions:

Who was Brant van Slichtenhorst? Who was Petrus Stuyvesant? How did each man understand his job? How would you describe each man’s personality and behavior? What was the source of the conflict between the two of them? What do you think would happen to you if you defied a person in authority? Would you have responded like Van Slichtenhorst did to Stuyvesant? Note: The teacher might wish to introduce a contemporary analogy: Your teacher prohibits you from bringing your cellphone to class, but your parents say you must have your phone with you at all times.

The teacher should conclude the discussion by asking students to predict how this conflict between Stuyvesant (the agent of the WIC) and Van Slichtenhorst (the agent of the patroon) would be resolved.

Small Group Document Analysis The teacher should divide students into 6 collaborative work groups. Each group will analyze a set of historic documents and report back to the class on the documents they analyzed. Each group will tell part of the larger story of the conflict between Stuyvesant and Slichtenhorst, and each should address the following questions:

• Who wrote these documents? Whose point of view do they represent? • Who was the intended audience? • What was the purpose of these documents?

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• What is the tone of these documents—pleased, angry, resolute, concerned, matter-of-fact, indignant, etc? • According to your documents, what happened? • Do you think these documents were biased for or against Slichtenhorst or Stuyvesant? If so, what evidence do you have? Use quotes from your documents as evidence of bias. • Based on what you’ve learned from reading these documents, is there anything you would add to Firth Fabend’s narrative and analysis? Is there anything that you would change? Note: This might be an opportunity to lead a discussion about the differences between secondary sources (contemporary historical narratives, such as the Fabend reading) and primary sources (historic documents, such as the Stuyvesant and Slichtenhorst readings).

Whole Group Document Analysis The teacher should hand out copies of the West India Company’s “Proposed Freedoms and Exemptions for New Netherland.” The class should read the document out loud together, stopping to define difficult words. The teacher should then lead a discussion of the following questions:

• What was a patroon? • What did the patroons own? • What rights did patroons enjoy within the borders of their North American estates? • How was the West India Company obliged to assist the patroons? • What were the patroon’s obligations to the Company? • Whose laws—the patroon’s or the Company’s—were supreme within the borders of the patroon’s estate?

This final question will be the focus of the debate that follows.

Debate The teacher will assign students to one of two groups, each taking one side of a debate between Stuyvesant and Slichtenhorst over who rightfully controlled the land surrounding Fort Orange—the West India Company or the patroon. Each of the two groups should contain a roughly equal number of students from each of the small groups. Students should draw on the assigned readings to develop their arguments. Each group will develop and present 5 debate points.

Culminating Activity Students will write a letter to the editor. Teachers should use the following prompt (Worksheet 2):

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After reviewing the debate between Petrus Stuyvesant (the West Indian Company’s representative) and Brant van Slichtenhorst (the Patroon’s agent), who do you think had the stronger case? Write a letter to the editor of the editor of the Rensselaerswijck Times. Explain who you think was at fault, why, and how you think the issue might be resolved. Use at least three quotes from three different historic documents to support your argument.

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