Gateway to the West

By Don Rittner

The Capital District region - the center of Dutch-founded 17th-century New Netherland - has been getting some favorable scholarly and popular press over the last year or two. Finally, our region is getting the attention deserved for being one of the oldest continually settled regions in America. New Netherland was the area of the Northeast that includes New York, with parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Delaware.

The contributions of New Amsterdam (NYC) and Beverwijck (Albany) have recently been revealed through the books of Russell Shorto, Island at the Center of the World (Doubleday, 2004), and Janny Venema, Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652-1664 (Verloren, 2003). Dr. Susan Staffa has now added the contributions of Schenectady in her new book, Schenectady Genesis: How a Dutch Colonial Village Became an American City, ca. 1661-1774. This is volume one of two, entitled The Colonial Crucible, ca. 1661-1774.

Most New Yorkers are ignorant of the contributions of early New Netherlanders, which included Dutch, English, French, Swedish, German, and many other nationalities. In fact, Shorto points out in his book that more than a dozen languages were being spoken in New Netherland during the 17th century and this was the basis for the birth of American pluralism.

However, we all know the old proverb, “To the Victor Go the Spoils.” Historians and history books have ignored the contributions of early New Netherland, since history has been written from the English point of view after their conquest of the region in 1664. That has all changed.

In her research, Staffa has brought together anthropological, sociological, documentary, and archaeological evidence to explore the evolution and social interactions of New Netherland’s furthest frontier settlement. Dr. Staffa uses many primary and secondary sources throughout fourteen chapters to prove that Schenectady is a template for the development of the true “American city.”

She also provides - for the first time - a statistical look into the distribution of wealth, based on tax assessments, for both the early settlers of Schenectady and later arrivals, and explores how this wealth was used or abused.

The first town settled in the Mohawk Valley west of Albany, and the furthest western settlement of New Netherland at the time, these early Schenectadians were a determined group. To the east, sixteen miles between Schenectady, and the fire-prone Pine Bush, was Beverwijck, already a well-established trading center of the Dutch West India Company. To the west they had to deal with the mighty Iroquois Confederacy. Schenectadians played a careful balancing act between their own kind at Beverwijck, who didn’t want competition for the fur trade from their new sister settlement, and the Native Americans, who on one hand welcomed the new arrivals as business partners, neighbors, and friends, but on the other hand could also view them as a threat.

Staffa’s book brings to life this pioneering group of settlers led by Arent van Curler, the great-nephew of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, the “Great Patroon” of Rensselaerswijck Manor (most of modern-day Albany and Rensselaer Counties, and parts of Columbia and Greene). Van Curler came to America in 1637 at the age of eighteen to work as a trading agent for his great-uncle. Staffa explores Van Curler’s personality as he deals with his great-uncle, Adriaen van der Donck, Schout ("sheriff," and father of American democracy), Domine Megapolensis, and the families he later brings to settle on the “Great Flat,” the “most beautiful land on the Maquas Kil that eye ever saw,” the fertile flood plain of the Mohawk River. Van Curler never lived long enough to see his vision finalized as he drowned under mysterious conditions in 1667 in Lake Champlain.

Staffa’s 423-page, large-format book is less than $30 and you can purchase it directly from her at 374-1165, or through your normal bookstore channels. It’s a must read for anyone interested in the history of the region.

For the record, it was William L. Marcy who coined the phrase "to the victor belong the spoils." Marcy was a lawyer from Troy, and later Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court (1829-1831) and United States Senator from March 4, 1831 to 1833, when he became New York Governor. During a Congressional debate in 1831, he used the phrase "to the victor belong the spoils," to describe the spoils system of appointing government workers. Each time a new administration came into power, thousands of public servants were fired, and members of the victorious political party took over their jobs. Marcy’s original quote is: "They (Democrats) see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy." The usage “to the victor go the spoils” is a common derivation.