illustration from George O'Connor's Journey into Mohawk Country
New Netherlands, during the six decades of its existence in the 17th century, was generally more tolerant than the neighboring English Puritan settlement in Massachusetts, and had a commercial focus that has persisted through the centuries in New York. Here in the Hudson Valley our Calvinists were of a gentler strain than their co-religionists over in Salem and we experienced no frenzied pursuit of witches. And although the Dutch settlers had inherited laws from the old country making same sex relations a capital offense, the severest penalty appears to have been applied only twice, and then only when a child was abused. In 1646 “Jan Creoli, a Negro, was choked to death, and then burnt to ashes," while his ten year old victim, Manuel Congo, was merely flogged. In 1660, a soldier named Jan Quisthout was “tied in a sack and cast into the river and drowned until dead." Once again, his victim, a boy named Harmen Harmensen was whipped, but this time “privately.”
Harmen Meyndertz van den Bogaert, a nearly forgotten figure now, was the only prosperous and influential member of the New Netherlands colony known to have come into conflict with the ancient law. He was an explorer, a leading physician, a prosperous business man, and holder of high government office. And yet he was accused of the same crime as Creoli and Qusithout, and although he cheated the executioner, he also paid with his life.
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