In 1621 the Dutch West India Company came upon the scene as the successor of the New Netherland Company. Its charter bade it "to advance the peopling of those fruitful and unsettled parts," and to "do all that the service of those countries and the profit and increase of trade shall require." The corporation was given almost absolute commercial and political power in all Dutch domains between Newfoundland and the Straits of Magellan, the home government reserving only the right to decline confirmation of colonial officers. Three years elapsed before the company attempted to plant a colony. Thirty families of Protestant Walloons--a people of mixed Gallic and Teutonic blood, living in the southern provinces of Holland, whose offer to settle in Virginia had been rejected by the English--were sent over by the Dutch proprietors (1624) to their new possessions. The greater part of the emigrants went to Albany, which they styled Fort Orange; others were sent to the Delaware River colony; a small party went on to the Connecticut; a few settled on Long Island; and eight men stayed on Manhattan. These settlements, relying for their chief support on the fur-trade with the Indians, were quite successful, and the New Netherlands soon became an important group of commercial colonies. 84. Progress within New Netherland (1626-1664). Sidenote: The settlements united. In 1626 Peter Minuit, then director for the company, purchased Manhattan from the Indians, united all the settlements under one system of direction, and founded New Amsterdam (afterwards New York city) as the central trading depot. In every direction the trade of New Netherland grew. Sidenote: The patroon system. As the settlers seemed to be interested in commerce, and agricultural colonization did not flourish, the corporation secured from the States-General a new charter of "freedoms and exemptions" (1629), which they thought better adapted to the fostering of emigration. This document sought to transplant the European feudal system to the American wilds. Members of the Dutch West India Company might purchase tracts of land from the Indians and plant colonies thereon, of which these proprietors were to be the patroons, or patrons. Each patroon thus establishing a colony of fifty persons upwards of fifteen years of age, was granted a tract "as a perpetual inheritance," sixteen miles wide along the river, or eight miles on both sides, "and so far into the country as the situation of the occupiers will permit." The company retained intervening lands; but no one might settle within thirty miles of a patroon colony without consent of the patroon, subject to the order of the company's officials. The patroons were given political and judicial power over their colonists; the latter might take appeals to the New Netherlands council, but the patroons were generally careful to bind the settlers before starting out not to exercise this right. Sidenote: Patroon settlements.