Pelts and palisades: The story of fur and the rivalry for pelts in early America — John Shaqi
Pelts and palisades: The story of fur and the rivalry for pelts in early AmericaHale, Nathaniel C. (Nathaniel Claiborne)
History
Pelts and palisades: The story of fur and the rivalry for pelts in early America
Hale, Nathaniel C. (Nathaniel Claiborne)
Fur trade -- Canada; Fur trade -- United States; United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
“We espied two French shallops full of the Countrey people come into
the Harbour,” his clerk wrote, “but they offered us no wrong, seeing we
stood upon our guard. They brought many Beaver skinnes, and other fine
Furres, which they would have changed for redde Gownes. For the French
trade with them for red Cassockes, Knives, Hatchets, Copper, Kettles,
Trevits, Beades and other trifles.... We kept good watch for feare
of being betrayed by the people, and perceived where they layd their
shallops.... In the morning we manned our Scute with foure Muskets, and
sixe men and tooke one of their Shallops and brought it aboard. Then we
manned our Boat and Scute with twelve men and Muskets, and two stone
Pieces or Murderers, and drove the Salvages from their Houses, and
tooke the spoyle of them, as they would have done of us. Then we set
sail....”
If the Dutchmen left hurriedly it was probably in fear of revenge.
Maybe the Indians showed signs of retaliating. After all, the natives
of this coast must have been getting annoyed by the ways of white men,
considering that this sort of thing had been going on, sporadically,
since the first Norsemen invaded their land some six hundred years
earlier.
The _Half Moon_ sailed on south to Cape Cod, which the crew noted had
been “discovered by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602.” Here, the
sailors made sport of an Indian they brought aboard, getting the savage
so drunk that “he leapt and danced.” After that Captain Hudson put out
to sea once more, to arrive off the Capes of Virginia about the middle
of August.
He nosed into the Chesapeake, possibly with the intention of visiting
his friend Smith, but caution seems to have won out over the risk of
exposing his Dutch-owned vessel to agents of the rival London Company.
Being an Englishman himself, Henry Hudson knew only too well that the
merchants of his native country made little distinction between a
foreign competitor and a foreign enemy, especially when they had guns
like those at Jamestown. He might risk disobeying his Dutch employers
but not losing their ship--not before he’d made his grand discovery of
a passage to the Orient. Perhaps, too, he turned a little sensitive
about sailing under a Dutch flag with information furnished by a fellow
Englishman.
So, a convenient “storm” blew the _Half Moon_ back out to sea, and
Hudson made his way northward, first to penetrate the Delaware River to
shoal water, and then on to explore the river that now bears his name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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