Space and Geography

Although the men and women enslaved by the company lived in different areas of New Netherland, most of them resided in New Amsterdam and its environs. During the early decades of colonization, the majority of the colony’s enslaved population belonged to the company, but as the settler population grew, so did the number of free individuals who either hired or purchased enslaved people. While such enslavers lived across the colony, the majority of them resided in the lower Hudson region. Thus, most of New Netherland’s enslaved men, women, and children lived in or close to New Amsterdam, where they regularly interacted with each other.

Many of the people enslaved by the company lived in close proximity to each other, often sharing close quarters. When in January of 1641 several enslaved men admitted to the murder of Jan Premero, the court records detailed that they had killed Premero in the woods by their houses (int bos omtrent haer huijsen).⁶ Their testimony suggests that they lived in several houses in a relatively isolated area, surrounded by forest. They likely lived north of the main settlement at the time as indicated on the Johannes Vingboons 1639 map of Manhattan that placed their houses northeast of the main settlement, in the area of today’s East 74th Street (see Figure 2.1).⁷

If the company’s enslaved workers lived at this location—about five and a half miles from New Amsterdam—in the 1630s, the company must have relocated them to New Amsterdam by the early 1640s. The murder of Premero may have motivated the company to move them to the main settlement, where they could be watched more closely. On August 8, 1642, Adam Roelants, the first schoolmaster in town, sold a house inhabited by the company’s enslaved workers. This sale forced the women, men, and children who lived there to relocate, and it may have been at this time that they moved to the plot that a year later, in June of 1643, was identified as the “lot of the Negroes,” which likely remained home to the company’s enslaved workers for the next two decades. Both Evert Duyckingh and Touchyn Briel purchased land that bordered this property.⁸ Enslaved people still lived there in 1654, when Adriaen Dircksen Coen purchased the grounds around their home.⁹ The house remained their residence until at least 1657 when, according to I. N. Phelps Stokes, Coen sold the land around the building to Jacob van Couwenhoven.¹⁰ Deeds sometimes referred to this plot of land on the Slijcksteeg as belonging to the company slaves, but the enslaved men and women who lived there did not own the land. When they eventually moved out of this house remains unclear, but they no longer resided there when it was sold in 1662.

Very little is known about the size and quality of these homes, but records provide some information that helps reconstruct the circumstances in which these enslaved men, women, and children lived. When Roelants sold the house they inhabited, the deed referred to it as a huijsken, meaning small house. Their home on the Slijcksteeg must have been bigger: the 1654 deed that detailed the size of the lot excluding the house indicates that the building measured about 1,080 square feet at most. No surviving documents describe the quality of the home in the 1640s and 1650s, but when the house was demolished in 1662, it was reportedly in very poor condition.¹¹

It is difficult to estimate accurately how many people resided in this home.¹² Manuel de Gerrit de Reus and the other men who received their conditional freedom in 1644 likely lived at the Slijcksteeg together with their wives and children. By the 1660s, the seven or eight people still enslaved by the company in New Amsterdam may have inhabited this building as well.¹³ Although this certainly was not a small home, if most of the people enslaved by the company lived here, which was likely the case considering that it was referred to as the house of the company slaves, it housed multiple families, thus leaving little privacy and space to each of them.

Importantly, not all of the people enslaved by the company lived in these homes at the same time. Some of them would have stayed at the bouwerijen, boweries or farms, where they worked. In 1641, for instance, Thomas Hall signed a five-year lease of a company farm at Sapokanikan, which included two enslaved laborers. When the company sold a bowery to Petrus Stuyvesant in 1651, it consisted of “a dwelling house, barn, hayrick, land, six cows, two horses and two young Negroes.”¹⁴ Other men and women enslaved by the company lived with individuals who rented their labor, and in rare cases they may have resided with free Black men or women. For instance, Jan, who was enslaved by the company, lived with Catryn, a free Black woman.¹⁵

Although the company house on the Slijcksteeg was situated in New Amsterdam, it was initially located in a sparsely populated part of the town also referred to as the company’s marshes, a swampy area during the early years of settlement (see Figure 2.2).¹⁶ As more colonists began to settle and cultivate this land, the home became more central to the town’s layout. On the one hand, their residence in the colonial town made them part of the community. They could more easily attend church services, access the courts, and visit local taverns. In fact, one tavern was located on the corner of the Slijcksteeg, only steps from their home.¹⁷ On the other hand, they lost some of the privacy they had when they lived in the woods, north of the colonial town.

The men and women who had obtained freedom from the company received land outside of New Amsterdam by the wagon road, where they founded the region’s first free Black community. As early as July 1643, Domingo Antonij and Catelina Antonij acquired farmland in this part of Manhattan, located in the area of today’s Greenwich Village.¹⁸ Manuel de Gerrit de Reus and the other freedmen soon followed when they obtained land in this area in 1644. By 1660, the company had granted land in this area to several freedmen, including Christopher Santome, Salomon Pieters, Assento, Francisco Cartagena, Willem Antonij, Groot Manuel, Claes de Neger, and Pieter Tambour.¹⁹ Some free Black people had property within New Amsterdam itself. Susanna Anthonij Robberts, for example, owned a piece of land on Prince Straet, not too far from the company’s home on the Slijcksteeg.²⁰ The women and men who resided just north of New Amsterdam lived close enough to the town to maintain relations with its population, both free and enslaved.

Enslaved persons who were held in bondage by individuals usually lived on the land of their enslaver. For instance, Swan Loange, who was enslaved by Govert Loockermans, likely lived at one of Loockermans’s properties on Perel Straet or Pearl Street. Although they would have fewer opportunities to interact with other enslaved people, records reveal that they were nevertheless able to meet with other enslaved men and women in the streets, markets, church, and taverns. Undoubtedly, it was easier for New Amsterdam’s enslaved men and women to do so because they lived in close proximity to each other.

Interactions in the Public Space

Enslaved and freed Africans had a significant presence in New Amsterdam. When traveling through the town’s streets, European settlers would pass enslaved Africans working in their garden plots or on the colony’s farms. Africans and Europeans lived on properties that bordered each other, frequented the same taverns, and shared common pasturage lands. The men and women who were enslaved by individual settlers often lived and worked on their enslaver’s property. Their daily interactions in these spaces made these enslaved men and women a familiar and integral part of daily life in New Amsterdam.

The town’s many drinking establishments provided an important space where freed and enslaved Africans met with each other and with the town’s European settlers. With her business located on the corner of the Slijcksteeg and Heerengracht, Madaleen Vincent’s tavern was closest to the home where most of the people enslaved by the company lived, but Jan Rutgersen, whose establishment was located just around the corner on the Heerengracht, was apparently more popular among the town’s enslaved Africans.²¹ Another meeting place they frequented was Andries Joghemsen’s tavern, which was located on Perel Straet or Pearl Street, at the edge of town.²²

Although there were no restrictions in place that kept enslaved people from visiting taverns or from drinking alcohol, New Netherland’s colonial council prohibited the serving of alcohol on the Sabbath and other religious holidays.²³ Nevertheless, New Amsterdam’s tapsters were regularly caught serving alcohol to enslaved men on these days. In 1662, for instance, the court of New Amsterdam accused Andries Joghemsen of “irregular tapping on the Sabbath to Negroes.”²⁴ Such was the case when Mattheu, Swan, and Frans—who were enslaved by Cornelis Steenwijck, Govert Loockermans, and Thomas Hall—met for drinks on a Sunday at Joghemsen’s tavern. According to their court testimonies, Mattheu started imbibing at the tavern when church was still in service. That afternoon, Frans picked up Swan to join Mattheu at Joghemsen’s, where they enjoyed brandy together.²⁵ It is probably no coincidence that they chose to congregate at Joghemsen’s tavern. Not only did Swan likely live near this tavern at one of Loockermans’s properties, this establishment was also located relatively far away from the town’s church, and so their illicit consumption of alcohol on the Sabbath would have been less obvious to the town’s churchgoing residents.²⁶

Such daily interactions between the town’s free and enslaved residents did not erase the violence and trauma inherent to slavery, which was certainly evident in New Amsterdam’s public spaces. For instance, some enslaved Africans who were working on the roads and fortifications would have done so in chains supervised by an overseer. At times, such work gangs of enslaved workers included chained prisoners who were sentenced to work alongside these men.²⁷ Plus, every now and then there would have been public sales where men, women, and children of all ages were sold to the highest bidder. As early as 1656, individuals sold people they enslaved at a public auction in the town, and during the 1660s, the West India Company organized several such sales.²⁸ These auctions may have taken place inside the fort, but it is not unlikely that at least some of these sales happened at the stoop of City Hall where auctions often took place. There, anyone could witness these inhumane exchanges at which men, women, and children were sold to the highest bidder.²⁹ Some of them had just arrived from their African homelands after a traumatizing journey across the Atlantic, while others were transported from American colonies such as Curaçao in often similarly horrifying circumstances. And while enslaved women and nursing children, or sucklings, were usually sold together, children who no longer nursed were regularly separated from their mothers.³⁰ These auctions would have been chilling reminders of the violence inherent in the system.

African Participation in the Dutch Reformed Church

New Amsterdam’s enslaved families became active participants in the town’s Dutch Reformed church. They attended church services, married in the church, and had their children baptized there. Certainly, they did not achieve equality within the church. For instance, it is not clear how many of them were admitted as full members, and none of them would have been able to become an elder in the church. Yet, New Amsterdam’s church did not exclude them from participating in this space, and thus a significant number of enslaved men and women accessed the church.

Enslaved men and women likely attended church for various reasons. Just like Maijken van Angola, many of them came from West Central Africa where Catholicism had spread widely throughout the sixteenth century. Consequently, by the early seventeenth century, many West Central Africans were Catholic Christians, and thus the enslaved New Netherlanders who originated in West Central Africa were often Christian before they were brought to the Dutch colony. While they would have been Catholic, they likely attended the Dutch Reformed Church because this was their only opportunity to access Christian religious practices, including the sacraments of baptism and communion. They also realized that their participation in the Dutch Reformed Church proved crucial in improving their circumstances in this Dutch colonial society, which may have provided additional motivation to attend the church. Importantly, however, it was because they had not been restricted from participating in these spaces and often lived in close proximity to the church that they were actually able to attend service, marry, and have their children baptized there.

Their involvement in this denomination has received significant scholarly attention.³¹ Yet, this scholarship has not taken into consideration the significance of geography and space when it was in fact their close proximity to the town’s church buildings that allowed a significant number of these enslaved men and women to participate in the church. Thus, they frequented the often-small church spaces where they attended church services together with white settlers and shared important life events such as marriage and the baptism of their children.

New Amsterdam’s surviving church records frequently mention enslaved Africans. About a year and half after the first recorded marriage intention between Egbert van Borsum and Annetje Hendricks, church records listed the marriage intentions of an African couple—Anthonie van Angola and Lúcie d’Angool—on May 5, 1641. They were probably not the first Africans to marry in the church; in fact, both Anthonie and Lucie were widowed at the time of their marriage and since the record mentioned their previous marriages these had likely also taken place in the town’s Dutch Reformed Church.³² Soon after they joined in holy matrimony, Jan Fort-Orangien married Marie Grande, and in 1642 four more African couples tied the knot.³³ African women and men continued to marry in the church throughout the seventeenth century.³⁴

These enslaved Africans also baptized their children in the church. As early as 1639, Pieter St. Anthonij had his son Barent Jan baptized in New Amsterdam’s church, and several fellow Africans followed. In 1640, the children of Samuel Angola, Emanuel d’Angole, Jan Fort-Orangien, Johan Françisco, and Emanuel van Angola were all baptized. Their baptisms made up almost 15 percent of the total baptisms that took place that year.³⁵ At least thirty-seven children of African descent received baptism in the church from 1639 through 1647, which was about 11 percent of New Amsterdam baptisms.³⁶ Importantly, African marriages in the church decreased between 1653 and 1664, when such unions accounted for only 3.8 percent of New Amsterdam’s Dutch Reformed Church marriages. Baptisms of Black children also dropped midcentury, and it appears that most, if not all, of the African descendants who were baptized in New Amsterdam’s church after 1647 were the children of free people. A change in clergy that served New Amsterdam’s population closely coincided with these changes, thus suggesting that they played an important role in enslaved Africans’ access to baptism and marriage.³⁷ Yet, it was enslaved people’s close proximity to the church that allowed for their everyday participation in this denomination.

New Amsterdam’s enslaved population could reach the church within a short walk. Congregants first created a space for church services in 1626, when François Molemacker constructed a mill that included a room for worship in the attic. Services in this space were held by the ziekentrooster (comforter of the sick) Sebastiaen Jansen Krol until Domine Jonas Michaëlius arrived in the colony in 1628.³⁸ When Everardus Bogardus became minister in 1633, a small wooden church was built outside the fort on Perel Straet or Pearl Street, also referred to as Op ‘t Water. Finally, in 1642, a brick church was erected inside the fort.³⁹ New Amsterdam’s enslaved residents would have lived in walking distance of all of these meeting spaces.

Though it is not clear if any African men and women attended services in the room above the mill, they were certainly present in the wooden church on Pearl Street. It was in this church that Anthonie and Lúcie joined in holy matrimony, and that Pieter St. Anthonij had his son Barent Jan baptized. In fact, most of the African men and women who married and baptized their children in New Amsterdam’s church would have done so in this building. And though this church must have been more spacious than the mill’s attic, European and African church attendants still shared an intimate space.

Surviving church records do not reveal if the African men and women who attended church were restricted to a separate area of these buildings, but their marriage intentions and baptisms appear in the church records alongside those of Europeans. These intentions, including those of African couples, would have been repeated during the town’s church service three Sundays in a row for all men, women, and children present in the church to hear. If no one objected to the planned marriage, the couple could go ahead and join in matrimony. Thus, on February 26, 1642, Dominie Bogardus entered the marriage intentions for European settlers Oloft Stephenszen van Wijck and Anneken Loockermans Van Turnhout, as well as for the enslaved Francisco van Angola and Palassa van Angola. Later that year, Bogardus entered Anthonij Ferdinand Van Cascalis in Portugal and Maria van Angola’s intention to marry on the same day that Henricus Sibelszen van Langendijck and Marritje Theunis van Naerden expressed their intention to join in matrimony.⁴⁰ These intentions of enslaved and free couples were announced on Sundays in front of all congregants.

Africans and Europeans also frequently baptized their children on the same day: Pieter St. Anthonij and Claes Janszen, for example, both baptized their children on October 2, 1639; the next year, on July 1, Emanuel D’Angole and Gerrit Janszen van Aldenburgh had their daughters Pernante and Anneken baptized; Jan van ’t Fort Orangien—or Jan de Fort Orange—and Hans Noorman had their daughters baptized on July 22, 1640. All of these baptisms would have occurred in the relatively small and intimate wooden church at Pearl Street. Both European and African witnesses took part in these baptisms, thus making these socially and ethnically diverse events. At the baptism of Jan van ’t Fort Orangien’s daughter Maria, for instance, Simon Congo and Isabel D’Angola served as witnesses, while at the same time Hans Noorman had Governor Willem Kieft and Teuntje Jeurgien witness the baptism of his daughter Anneken.⁴¹ Such diverse baptisms continued to take place throughout much of the Dutch colonial period.

Church participation helped strengthen the African community and their bonds with white residents as they shared this religious experience and space. Witnesses at the aforementioned baptisms, for instance, became forever linked to these children in ways that resembled the role of godparents in the Catholic Church. In various places in the Americas, enslaved and freed Africans used these ceremonies to create guardian-child ties. According to the Moravian missionary Christian Oldendorp, for example, enslaved men and women in what was then the Danish colony St. Thomas would serve as witnesses at baptisms to forge family relationships that many of them did not have in this colony.⁴² Enslaved men and women established similar relationships in New Netherland. In fact, in several cases, these witnesses took over the care of the child when their parents no longer could. Anthonij, son of Cleijn Antonij, for example, came to rely on his godmother, Dorethea Angola, after his mother and stepmother passed away.⁴³ As Susanah Shaw Romney has demonstrated in her work on New Netherland, enslaved Africans selected men and women whom they considered reliable and respected members of the community to serve as witnesses at their children’s baptisms. Consequently, well-respected men and women like Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, Maijken van Angola, and Bastiaen, “Captain of the Negroes,” appeared regularly as witnesses for the baptisms of Black children.⁴⁴ Because such witnesses played an important role in the child’s life, the parents of the baptized child would choose these witnesses carefully.

These baptisms show how New Amsterdam’s African population forged close connections with each other, but they also reveal their relations with the town’s European population. When Pieter St. Anthonij had his son Barent Jan baptized in Manhattan’s church, three fellow Africans—Dominco Anthonij, Jan Françoijs, and Susanna D’Angola—stood witness, as did recent Dutch settler Trijntje van Camp.⁴⁵ Samuel Angola had only white men and women—Theunis Craeij, Jan Jacobszen, and Claertje Gerrits—witness the baptism of his son Laurens on January 6, 1640.⁴⁶ Jan de Vries witnessed the baptism of several Black children, and when he had his son Jan, whose mother was a Black woman enslaved by De Vries, baptized, both white and Black witnesses attended. Together with three Africans, Domine Bogardus stood witness at the baptism of Phillipe Swartinne’s daughter Anna, and Paulus Heijmans, overseer of the company slaves, served as a witness at the baptism of Anthonij, son of Anthonij Ferdinandus.⁴⁷ Whatever the circumstances were, their witnessing of these baptisms connected the African and European populations in significant ways.

It would be incorrect, however, to suggest that these enslaved people attended the church only because it strengthened their community and opportunities of freedom. Many of the colony’s enslaved Africans who attended church came from West Central Africa, where Catholicism had spread since the King of Kongo, Nzinga Knuwu (or João I), requested baptism in 1491. Although Kongo elites were the first ones to embrace Christianity, over time the religion expanded to the rest of the population, particularly after João’s son Afonso I made Catholicism the kingdom’s state church. As European descriptions of the area demonstrate, by the late seventeenth century, Christianity had penetrated most of Kongo.⁴⁸ The Dutch trader Ferdinand van Capelle described the strong influence Christianity had on the region when he wrote that “in the city Congo there are many churches, where Portuguese papists conduct daily services and other Roman ceremonies”; moreover, he claimed, “every noble has in his village his own church and crosses.”⁴⁹ Missionaries in Central Africa noted that people in the region were willing to travel long distances to be baptized or to have their children baptized. Capuchin missionary Dionigi Carli, who visited Kongo in the 1660s, pointed out “the poor people coming many leagues to us” for baptism.⁵⁰ In the sixteenth century, Christianity also spread in the neighboring kingdoms of Angola, Loango, and Ndongo, and by the seventeenth century, most West Central Africans would at the very least have been exposed to Christianity and many of them would have been Catholic.⁵¹ In New Amsterdam, they continued part of their Christian traditions in the only accepted religious institution: the Dutch Reformed Church.

New Amsterdam’s African women and men used their close proximity to the town’s Dutch Reformed Church to attend services and marry and baptize in the church. They combined their religious beliefs and practices with the Dutch Reformed religion, while they also forged a common experience with each other and with European settlers. Their participation in the Dutch Reformed Church proved a crucial step toward societal inclusion, and through their marriages and baptisms in the church, they helped legitimize their community and family ties. Importantly, they were able to participate in the church because they had not been excluded from these churches and they lived in close proximity to them.

Family and Community

When Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, Paulo Angola, Groot Manuel, Cleijn Manuel, Simon Congo, Antonij Portugies, Gracia, Piter Santomee, Jan Francisco, Cleijn Antonij, and Jan Fort Orange petitioned the company for their freedom in early 1644, they argued that they required freedom in order to better provide for their wives and children as they had been “accustomed to in the past.” The company granted the men and their wives a conditional freedom, and it provided them with farmland north of New Amsterdam.⁵² In doing so, the council acknowledged these African families and the responsibilities of these husbands and fathers. At the same time, however, it determined that the children of these men should remain company property, thus continuing its control over these families.⁵³ These circumstances became typical for Black family life in New Amsterdam. Due to their close proximity to each other, enslaved men and women in this settlement were able to establish close connections and build strong family relationships that were mostly recognized by the company, council, and individual settlers. Yet, the company and individual enslavers often continued to hold sway over these relationships.

Over the years, New Amsterdam’s enslaved people were able to build a strong Black community. As the colonial records reveal, the town’s Black men and women supported one another when needed, in part by taking care of one another’s children.⁵⁴ After some of these men and women obtained conditional freedom and settled just north of New Amsterdam, they continued to build on these strong relations. Their close-knit communities had largely been strengthened by their ethnic backgrounds, their common experiences, and the strong family bonds they created through their marriages and baptisms in the Dutch Reformed Church. Just as their participation in the Dutch Reformed Church had become a possibility because they lived close to the church, their community thrived because they lived close to each other.

Because the company and colonial council recognized marital and parental responsibilities, enslaved Africans could use these family ties to improve their circumstances and those of their dependents. When Dorethea Angola’s husband pleaded to the council to free her godchild Anthonij, he emphasized that his wife had cared for Anthonij as a mother.⁵⁵ Some wed Africans used their marriage to avoid separation. Dutch authorities and settlers not only acknowledged these marriages but at least in some cases also made efforts to keep married couples together, very likely at the urging of these couples and their families. Thus, when in 1664 Jeremias van Rensselaer purchased an enslaved man whom he planned to take to the upriver settlement of Rensselaerswijck, Stuyvesant convinced Van Rensselaer to also purchase the man’s wife.⁵⁶ Similarly, Dutch settler Govert Loockermans apparently helped keep a couple together when he purchased the freedom of Christina Emanuels so that she could marry Swan Loange, who was enslaved by Loockermans.⁵⁷

Importantly, however, when enslaved and freed Africans established family and community, they never fully controlled their lives, nor could they protect the people they loved. Even the men who obtained their freedom in the 1640s could not do the same for their children, and by keeping these children in bondage, the company continued to have power over the people they had freed conditionally. Although most of the children of the half-free men and women grew up with their (extended) family, the fact that they could be taken away always loomed.

At times, daily contact fostered intimate relations between Black and white New Netherlanders. Although they may have been frowned upon, such interracial relations were not prohibited in the colony. In 1638, New Netherland’s colonial council proclaimed that everyone should refrain “from adulterous intercourse with heathens, blacks, or other persons.”⁵⁸ Some scholars have interpreted the colonial ordinance as a ban on interracial relationships, but it focused rather on adulterous intercourse, which was prohibited regardless of ethnic origin.⁵⁹ No laws forbade interracial marriages, and not once did the Dutch colonial council punish people for having interracial relationships, which appeared practice in other Dutch colonies as well. Instructions by Jacob Pietersen Tolck concerning interracial marriages in Curaçao, for instance, noted that marriages with indigenous and Black women would be accepted when these women were educated, baptized, and part of the Christian community.⁶⁰ Evidently, Protestant conviction proved more important than racial or ethnic background.⁶¹

Indeed, some Black and white New Netherlanders joined in matrimony. Harmen Hanszen from Hessen, a German immigrant, married Maria Malaet from Angola in New Amsterdam’s church in 1650. In 1663, Jan, “the negro,” married Annetie Abrahams, likely the same as Annetje Abrahams who had left Amsterdam on March 29, 1660 aboard the Vergulde Bever (Gilded Beaver).⁶² One of the colony’s most notorious couples were Anthony Jansen van Salee, also known as Anthony Jansen de Turck, Anthony Jansen van Vaes, or Anthony Jansen the Mulatto, a settler of Dutch and African descent, and his Dutch wife, Grietje Reyniers.⁶³ The various names used to refer to Van Salee point not only to his skin color but also to his Islamic faith.

Although such interracial unions were not prohibited in the colony, they were likely frowned upon. Anthony Jansen van Salee and Grietje Reyniers dealt with frequent accusations of ill-behavior, as is evident from the numerous slander, abuse, and debt-related cases in which they appeared. In a 1638 court case, Remmer Jansen testified that Hendrick Jansen had called Anthony Jansen van Salee a “Turck, a rascal and horned beast.”⁶⁴ Other charges filed against van Salee concerned physical abuse or unpaid wages. Reyniers, on the other hand, had been accused of pulling “the shirts of some sailors out of their breeches” and having “measured the male member of three sailors on a broomstick.” Moreover, she reportedly had screamed in New Amsterdam’s fort, “I have long been the whore of the nobility, now I want to be the rabble’s whore.” Adding to her troubled reputation, her midwife claimed that shortly after Reyniers gave birth to one of her children she asked the midwife if the child looked like her husband or Andries Hudde, suggesting she did not know who the child’s father was.⁶⁵ These and other accusations led the fiscal in 1639 to request that van Salee and his wife be banned from New Amsterdam so that “the few people here in New Netherland may live together in peace.”⁶⁶ Van Salee and Reyniers moved to Long Island, but their relocation did not bring an end to their conflicts with authorities and other settlers.⁶⁷ And even though none of the charges against them referred to their mixed marriage, it likely contributed to their troubled reputation.⁶⁸

Importantly, not all of the colony’s interracial relationships were consensual. Sexual relations between free and enslaved people could never be separated from coercion and struggles for power or autonomy. Thus, when Captain Jan de Vries had a son with a woman he held in bondage known as Elaria but sometimes referred to in the records simply as Swartinne (Black woman), her bound condition prohibited her from giving consent to the man who claimed to own her.⁶⁹ Enslaved men also fell victim to sexual aggression, as was evident in 1648 when Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert was accused of sodomizing Tobias, an enslaved boy, at Fort Orange.⁷⁰ The records rarely reveal the more specific circumstances of sexual encounters between enslaved and free people. On Monday, March 27, 1656, Jan Gerritsen, brewer, complained in New Amsterdam’s court that Elias Silva had delayed or detained (opgehouden) an enslaved woman who belonged to Gerritsen and had “carnal conversation with her.” Silva claimed that he had done no such thing, and it appears the case was dismissed. The records suggest that authorities never questioned the enslaved woman who was the subject of these accusations.⁷¹ Within a system of human bondage, enslaved men and women had few opportunities to protect themselves and their loved ones from sexual aggression.

Close proximity to each other and to the town’s white population proved both useful and challenging. Because they lived close to each other, New Amsterdam’s enslaved men and women were able to forge close relationships, start families, and build a strong Black community. Still, the company and individual enslavers often asserted their control over these relationships, even in their supposed benevolent acts to keep these families together.

The Court

On September 4, 1664, eight “half-slaves” petitioned New Netherland’s colonial council to grant them full freedom. At the time of their request, Ascento Angola, Christopher Santome, Peter Petersen Criolie, Anthonij Criolie, Lewis Guinea, Jan Guinea, Solomon Peterson Criolie, and Basje Pietersen held this conditional legal status unique to the Dutch colony. Earlier that year, the Dutch West India Company had granted them freedom under the condition that they would regularly return to perform work for the company.⁷² In their 1664 petition, they argued that because New Amsterdam’s fort was close to being finished and “this summer two ships with a large number of negroes have arrived,” they, humble servants who had served the company faithfully, should receive their full freedom. Not coincidentally, they submitted their petitions on the same day that the English demanded the Dutch surrender of the colony after four English warships had been stationed off the coast of Manhattan since August 28. In fact, these men directly linked the urgency of their petition to the “arrival of the English ships and soldiers.”⁷³ They feared that if they were surrendered in their current conditionally freed status, the English might reenslave them. Certainly, while freed Africans could be found throughout the early modern Atlantic, including the English colonies, the conditional freedom that became known as half-freedom was a de facto legal status particular to the Dutch colony.

These freedmen had used their access to the colony’s judicial system to obtain this conditional freedom, and now they petitioned the colony’s council to grant them full freedom. Clearly, these men had access to the colony’s courts. The Dutch colony had no laws that barred enslaved people from participating in the legal system, and New Amsterdam’s enslaved population lived close enough to the council and court to actually bring cases or submit petitions. Much has been written about New Netherland’s enslaved men and women navigating the colony’s legal system to protect their property, fight for unpaid wages, and even secure their freedom, but scholars have not yet sufficiently addressed the importance of proximity to these courts.⁷⁴

Except for the patroonship Rensselaerswijck—the Rensselaer family patroonship in the Upper Hudson area—the Dutch West India Company controlled New Netherland’s judicial system.⁷⁵ By 1664, sixteen inferior courts operated in the colony.⁷⁶ While inferior courts handled minor offenses, major crimes such as prostitution, adultery, murder, sodomy, and smuggling required consideration by the colonial council in New Amsterdam. Initially, the council, in addition to being the High Court responsible for the colony’s executive decisions, also considered local civil and criminal cases. When New Amsterdam obtained a town charter in 1653, the city magistrates took over local criminal cases, and the council now served as a high court for all but one of the colony’s local courts. A similar move had come into effect for civil cases only a few years earlier.⁷⁷ Schepenen, municipal court of justice members, and a schout, a local official also responsible for law enforcement, ran the local courts. High cases were brought before the director and council, where the fiscael served as prosecutor.⁷⁸ Unlike courts in the English colonies, New Netherland’s judicial system did not use a jury. The courts often met weekly, which secured immediate attention to various cases and petitions. Petitioning could be used to bring about changes in government or to solve certain problems.⁷⁹

New Netherland’s legal system did not grant enslaved people access to New Netherland’s courts or consider them legally equal to their free counterparts; instead, equal treatment of enslaved and free people in the colony’s judicial system resulted from the lack of laws concerning slavery and slaves’ legal status.⁸⁰ Thus, enslaved men and women had not yet been restricted from these spaces, and they assumed equality before the law by using the absence of such restrictions. In fact, through their participation in the colony’s courts, enslaved men and women forced the courts to consider issues concerning slavery; in doing so, they inadvertently helped shape the colony’s legal system.

Due to the absence of restrictions and their close proximity to the courthouse, New Amsterdam’s Black population, both free and enslaved, could participate in the colony’s judicial system, and they often did so successfully. In 1638, for example, the court sided with Antonij Portugies when he demanded compensation from Anthoniy Jansen van Salee for the damages he had done to Portugies’s hog.⁸¹ Manuel de Gerrit de Reus appeared in the court as early as 1639 when he won a court case against Dutch settler Henric Fredericksen van Bunninck for the fifteen guilders he had earned but not yet received.⁸² Four years later, De Reus appeared in the colony’s court again, this time to testify on behalf of Cleijn Manuel, whose cow had been struck by Jan Celes, an English colonist.⁸³ The court resolved that Celes pay Cleijn Manuel, an enslaved man, for the damages he had done; in addition, the council threatened Celes with banishment if he ever did anything like that again.⁸⁴ These and additional cases show how De Reus and other enslaved men successfully used the colony’s courts to protect their property or wages.

Not coincidentally, Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, Cleijn Manuel, and Antonij Portugies lived close to each other, close to the colony’s council, and close to New Amsterdam’s courthouse. Some scholars have pointed out that their uses of the courts would have been informed by their cultural background, but their intimate relations with each other and their close proximity to the courts would have played an equally or maybe even more important role. Many of these enslaved Africans lived only blocks away from the colony’s council, which was located inside the fort. Similarly, New Amsterdam’s municipal court, located at City Hall on Pearl Street, was in walking distance from where these enslaved men and women lived. Moreover, records reveal that the enslaved men and women who were enslaved by the company and thus often shared close quarters were most active in the colony’s judicial system. Through these interpersonal connections, they were able to share information on how to improve their circumstances, including effective ways to navigate the courts.

Enslaved Africans’ participation in courts throughout the early modern Atlantic demonstrates that many of them knew how to work these judicial systems to their advantage.⁸⁵ Among others, the men and women whom Ira Berlin has called “Atlantic Creoles” had been exposed to European cultures and institutions in Africa or the Atlantic, and they used these experiences to navigate colonial legal systems.⁸⁶ West Central African societies generally had structured judicial systems that often resembled European legal systems.⁸⁷ Not surprisingly, enslaved West Central Africans, such as Maijken van Angola and Manuel de Gerrit de Reus van Angola, were among the most active participants in the courts. Similarly, enslaved men and women who came from the Iberian Peninsula or who had been born in the Americas played an active role in the colony’s legal system. Yet, while their background helped them navigate colonial courts, it was their close proximity to these courtrooms and to each other that allowed them to actively apply their judicial knowledge.

Living a Life in Bondage Outside of New Amsterdam

In 1652, Claesje, one of the few enslaved women who lived in Rensselaerswijck, appeared before the local court for accusations of theft.⁸⁸ She declared that she had in fact stolen certain goods from her enslaver, Sander Leendersz, including candles, blankets, clothes, butter, and combs, which she then sold to Jan Michielsz and Jacob Luyersz. Upon admission to the theft, she claimed that in exchange for the stolen goods she had received, among others, “an old undershirt” from Jacob Luyersz and Jan Michielsz. More importantly, however, Claesje testified that she had stolen these goods because Jacob Luyersz had promised her he would take her to New Amsterdam where “she would then get a husband.”⁸⁹ Evidently, Claesje longed for such an intimate relationship and the opportunity of starting a family, and she understood that she might have a better chance of doing so in New Amsterdam.

Although many enslaved men and women in New Amsterdam were able to establish family and community, forging such intimate relations proved challenging and often nearly impossible for enslaved people who lived elsewhere in the colony. Many of them struggled to establish family and community because they lived in remote locations where they had only few opportunities to interact with fellow Africans. The company and individual enslavers frequently rented out or sold the men and women they claimed to own, which greatly complicated these enslaved people’s efforts to take part in an African community or establish intimate relations.⁹⁰ For individuals like Claesje, isolation and frequent relocation made it especially challenging to sustain any personal relations, let alone a family life.

Church participation also proved much more challenging for enslaved men and women who did not live in New Amsterdam or its vicinity. Even though several congregations organized in other parts of the colony, including Flatbush, Rensselaerswijck, Beverwijck, and Esopus, it would have been difficult for enslaved Africans who lived in the colony’s more rural areas to attend church services regularly.⁹¹ Stuyvesant understood this challenge and so, in an effort to ensure that his workers would have access to religious services and teachings, he directed the building of a chapel for the people who labored on his bowery, including the enslaved workers.⁹² From 1660 to 1664, while a minister at Long Island, Selijns officiated at Sunday evening services in Stuyvesant’s chapel, weather permitting, and he actively catechized at the bowery on days that there were no services.⁹³ In most cases, however, enslaved Africans in more remote locations would have had to travel long distances to attend church service or receive catechism.

Enslaved men and women who were located in more remote areas of the colony also had few opportunities to access the colony’s courts. During the 1650s, for instance, enslaved Africans in Pavonia and Staten Island would have had to travel to New Amsterdam because these territories fell under New Amsterdam’s jurisdiction. Enslaved men and women in Wiltwijck and neighboring settlements had to use the court of Fort Orange until Wiltwijck received its own court in 1661.⁹⁴ The absence of local courts in these settlements rendered it difficult or nearly impossible for an enslaved population with little control over their mobility to have reliable access to the colony’s judicial system. Not only did travel to the colony’s courts require time and means, enslaved men and women also needed cooperation from their enslavers to be able do so. Consequently, only a few Africans appear in the surviving court records of local courts outside of New Amsterdam, and only a few of these enslaved people appeared before the colony’s council. When they did appear in the courts, they were mostly there because they had been accused of crimes, as was the case with Claesje.

Whereas New Amsterdam’s enslaved population had been able to take advantage of their close proximity to, among others, the town’s church, court, taverns, and each other, enslaved men and women who lived in more rural and often isolated areas of the colony did not have these opportunities available to them. Without much time or means to travel to the colony’s courts or churches and with few other enslaved people close by, it proved incredibly challenging to access these institutions or build a community in the ways many of New Amsterdam’s enslaved women and men had been able to do.

When Maijken van Angola obtained her freedom in 1664, a substantial community of free Black people lived by the wagon road, just north of New Amsterdam. This community originated in New Amsterdam’s earliest enslaved population, most of whom were held in bondage by the Dutch West India Company. While still enslaved, many of these men and women shared close quarters in this colonial town, which allowed them to build strong relationships. Equally important, they lived in close proximity to the various institutions they accessed, such as the church and the court. They had been able to take advantage of the fact that the Dutch colony had no legislation in place that restricted them from accessing the court, the church, and public spaces. In doing so, they not only became a familiar part of the town’s daily life, they also were able to improve their circumstances, unlike their counterparts in the more rural parts of the colony where they often lived in socially isolated conditions and at too great of a distance to access churches and courtrooms. Indeed, spatial proximity and geography played a crucial role in the opportunities the colony’s enslaved people were able to create for themselves and their families.

New Netherland’s legislators and European settlers did not impose clear spatial restrictions on the Black population; consequently, their interactions in the various colonial spaces were often spatially intimate and relatively friendly. Enslaved men and women like Maijken used these circumstances to expand the limits of their bondage. In doing so, they were able to own and protect property, participate in the church, create strong connections with other enslaved men, women, and children, and eventually obtain their freedom. As Domingo Angola, Maijken’s husband, would soon discover, however, such interactions and opportunities would become increasingly rare when European settlers progressively began to limit spatial access for free and enslaved Black men and women in the late seventeenth century.