Hudson Explores New York Area
In 1609, the English navigator Henry Hudson, working for the Dutch East India Company, sailed into the waters around present-day New York and ascended the river that now bears his name. He did not find the sought-after passage to Asia, but his voyage gave the Dutch a claim to a region rich in furs, and it set in motion the colonization of New Netherland, the foundation of what would become New York City.
The background lay in the search for a shorter route to the spice and silk markets of East Asia. The Dutch Republic, newly prosperous and still fighting for recognition of its independence from Spain, had founded the Dutch East India Company in 1602 to dominate trade with Asia. The usual routes around Africa were long and contested by Portuguese and English rivals, so merchants hoped for a northern passage. Hudson, an experienced English captain who had already made voyages for English merchants toward the Arctic, was hired by the Dutch to try again in the spring of 1609.
Hudson sailed in a small ship called the Halve Maen, or Half Moon, with a mixed Dutch and English crew. Ice and bad weather in the far north reportedly unsettled the crew, and Hudson turned west instead, possibly encouraged by reports and maps suggesting a passage lay farther south along the North American coast. He explored the coast from Nova Scotia southward, then entered New York Bay in early September. Over the following weeks he sailed up the river, probably as far as the vicinity of present-day Albany, where shallowing water showed that it was no strait to the Pacific. Along the way the crew traded with Native peoples, including Algonquian-speaking groups, and relations included both barter and violent clashes.
On his return, Hudson put in at an English port, and the English authorities detained him, so his reports reached the Dutch through other channels. Hudson made one more voyage in 1610–1611, this time for English backers, exploring the bay later named for him. After a bitter winter, his crew mutinied and set him adrift with a few others; he was never seen again.
The consequences of the 1609 voyage were lasting. Dutch merchants quickly sent ships to trade for beaver pelts, and by the 1620s the Dutch West India Company had established settlements, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan. The Dutch period ended when the English took the colony in 1664. For the Native peoples of the region, the arrival of Europeans began profound disruption through trade, disease, and competition for land.