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Article: New Netherland and New York
- Article from:
- American Eras
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Gale Research Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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New Netherland and New York
Sources
Fur Trade.
When in 1609 Henry Hudson sailed his eighty-ton, three-masted carrack,
The Half Moon
, into New York Bay and up the river that would bear his name, he and the other eighteen or twenty men with him were looking for the Northwest Passage, a mythical water route through North America to the East Indies. Instead he and his men found a navigable river on whose banks lived native peoples
“
who had an abundance of provisions, skins, and furs, of martens and foxes.
”
Thus the fur trade began early. Until 1621 when the Dutch West India Company was incorporated, the fur trade allowed individuals such as the West Indian mulatto Juan ...