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Dutch New Netherland
A contract recording the sale of land along the Hudson River from Mahican Indians to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 1630.

A contract recording the sale of land along the Hudson River from Mahican Indians to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 1630.

This document includes a typed translation on the second page. This document records the sale of a large piece of land near present-day Albany, New York, by a group of Mahican Native Americans to Kiliaen van Rensselaer. Van Rensselaer was a diamond merchant and leading officer of the West India Company. Van Rensselaer used this land to establish the patroonship of Rensselaerwyck, one of the most successful patroonships, or settlements, in New Netherland. The document was signed by Peter Minuit, director of New Netherland, and other colonial administrators. The original document is in Dutch and the translation was provided by A.J.F. van Laer and Charles Gehring and made available by the New York State Library.

Additional individuals mentioned in this document include Bastiaen Janssen Crol, the commander at Fort Orange, the fur trading fort near present-day Albany; Wolffert Gerritsz, who had been appointed by van Rensselaer to help secure and administer his patroonship; and Gillis Hosset, a West India Company agent who led a short-lived Dutch settlement on the Delaware Bay. The document includes the phrase tanquam actor et procurator in rem suam et propriam, latin for “as an actor and his business manager,” and the word schout, which was a colonial administrative title. Manhattan is referred to as Manhatas.

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Citation Information
“Contract of sale of land along the Hudson River from Mahican Indians to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 6 August 1630,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/66bc190d6db55b59f1562416bbc88e1f.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of New York State Library via Empire State Digital Network.

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Item 5 of 15 in the Primary Source Set Dutch New Netherland

Previous ItemNext Item
An 1858 print depicting the encounter between Henry (Hendrick) Hudson and Native Americans.
A Dutch map depicting North America from present-day Canada to Virginia, circa 1655.
An eighteenth-century wampum belt.
The West India Company’s Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, 1629.
A contract recording the sale of land along the Hudson River from Mahican Indians to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 1630.
A series of drawings for the proposed coat of arms of New Netherland, 1630.
A print depicting the early settlement of New Amsterdam, published in 1651.
A map showing the original land grantees in New Amsterdam, 1897.
A 1660 map of the city of New Amsterdam called the Castello Plan.
An excerpt from A Description of The New Netherlands by Adriaen van der Donck, ca. 1653.
A transcript of the ordinance from the Director and Council of New Netherland granting “half freedom” to a group of enslaved men, 1644.
Excerpts from Voyages of the Slavers St. John and Arms of Amsterdam, 1659, 1663, documenting the Dutch slave trade to New Netherland.
An excerpt from the minutes of the court of Fort Orange and Beverwyck, circa 1652.
An excerpt from the Journal of Jasper Danckaerts on his arrival in New York, formerly New Amsterdam, in 1679.
An excerpt from the Journal of Jasper Danckaerts on his travels in present-day Brooklyn, formerly part of New Netherland, in 1679.

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