Encounters in New Netherland

By: William A. Starna, Emeritus, State University of New York College at Oneonta; Adjunct Emeritus, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland.
By Donna Merwick (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Pp. viii, 332. $49.95.)

The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley.
By Paul Otto (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2006. Pp. xiii, 225. $75.00.)

Before Albany: An Archaeology of Native-Dutch Relations in the Capital Region 1600–1664.
By James W. Bradley (Albany: New York State Museum Bulletin 509, 2007. Pp. xvii, 230. $34.95.)

Invading Paradise: Esopus Settlers at War With Natives, 1659, 1663.
By Andrew Brink (Philadelphia, Pa.: Xlibris, 2003. Pp. 285. $18.69.)

Included in the celebrations planned for 2009—the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s voyage up the river that bears his name and the beginnings of New Netherland—are several museum exhibits, a documentary film, and three volumes of essays having to do with the Dutch in North America. Over the next two years scholars are expected to turn their attention to questions directly linked to (re)writing the history of New Netherland, which perforce will address the transference and then adaptation of Dutch culture to the New World, the administration and political economy of the colony, military affairs, the surrounding English as well as French colonies, and that single essential reality of the Dutch colonial experience, the trade in furs. Making their presence felt throughout this exercise should be the native people of New Netherland, namely: Iroquoians, in particular the Mohawks; the Mahicans of the upper Hudson Valley; Munsee speakers of the mid-to-lower valley, parts of New Jersey, and western Long Island; and the Algonquian communities of southern New England.1
      The history of Indian-Dutch relations, I have argued, has occupied the position of intellectual underling in the broad context of New World Dutch studies. A large part of the problem is the scarce, fragmented, and scattered primary documentation that survives from the early-to-mid-seventeenth century, which has often led to the taking of considerable historical license. But of greater consequence has been the uncritical reliance by historians on a limited set of secondary sources that purport to describe Indians of the region and by the failure of many of these same historians to employ the full range of primary sources as compared to, and interpreted within, the corpus of authoritative ethnological, ethnohistorical, archaeological, and other related literature.12
      Now, perhaps (unintentionally) anticipating the coming anniversary, have appeared three very recent works that in differing ways revisit or address anew the history of Indian-Dutch relations. A fourth more narrowly focused treatise, published in 2003, is also included in the mix. Slated for publication is Diederik Willem Goedhuys’s translation of the complete text of Adriaen van der Donck’s important A Description of New Netherland (1656).23
      Donna Merwick, in producing the first book under review here, has remained faithful to her avowal of being a writer (p. 332), and an unabashedly postmodernist writer at that. The Shame and Sorrow is an artful, imaginative, though often frustrating intellective rumination allegedly to do with the Dutch-Indian encounter; allegedly in that much is learned about the Dutch, but precious little about the native people with whom they interacted, who occupy little space, literally or figuratively, in Merwick’s narrative. Yet this may have been her intention all along, to subject the Dutch, both at home and abroad, especially those who made their way to New Netherland, to a kind of cultural psychoanalysis of purpose and consequence against but a shadowy backdrop of Indians and their societies. Employing many of the literary, interpretive, and semiotic devices she had brought to bear in Possessing Albany, 1630–1710: The Dutch and English Experiences (Cambridge, 1990), Merwick weaves a complex, multi-faceted story of the national character of the Dutch, exploring why in their colonies they acted as they did, and apparently, at great and excruciating length, contemplated what they had become.4
      We are told that this “history” takes place at the “marge,” situated on “the edge of the sea and the edge of the land.” It was a place of residence, but also a state of mind, and, as Merwick informs us, her book “is about that state of mind” (p. 9). This may explain, in part, why the relatively uncomplicated historical evidence available for the period is given such short shrift or, in a few cases, is so badly mangled. No one should object to the differing theoretical perspectives of historians or their varied methods of approaching and addressing questions about the past, but the mishandling of evidence is quite another matter. Barely into the book is a revealing and confidence-shattering example of the manner in which Merwick practices history.
Once set ablaze, wood was also the cheapest resource Europeans and natives had for killing one another. They themselves told stories about it. In the mid-1630s … a group of natives encountered some Englishmen…. Agitated by some presentiment of danger, a native cried out, “What Englishmen, what cheere … will you cran us?”
5
      ” ‘Cran,’ ” Merwick tells us, “may have been a corruption of the Dutch word kwalm, meaning ‘dense smoke.’ In English, it referred to an iron arm built for cooking over an open fire. Here, it meant, Will you kill us by setting our village ablaze and burning us alive?” (pp. 2–3, 127–29).6
      Everyone enjoys a good story, but what Merwick asks readers to swallow is a bit over the top. There is first the exaggerated and undocumented scenario that in New Netherland (and seemingly elsewhere in the Northeast) there routinely and calculatedly took place all-consuming conflagrations where “Untold numbers of Algonquian-speaking men, women, and children died when Europeans set their villages on fire,” along with “countless New Netherlanders” who, in turn, died in fires set by natives. “The power to torch a village was an extortioner’s tool,” she somehow concludes (p. 3).7
      Then there is the “what cheere” business, which comes from the pen of the infamous English Captain John Underhill, who, along with John Mason, in 1637 attacked and burned the Pequot village at Mystic, Connecticut, killing scores of natives. But Merwick misquotes Underhill, and then compounds the error in a tortured exercise to explain what she had misquoted. In this familiar passage, Underhill was describing his encounter with the local Indians on Connecticut’s Thames River, who had shouted out to him: “what English man, what cheere, what cheere, are you hoggerie, will you cram us.” The word is “cram,” not “cran” as Merwick spells it, which renders “cran” as fireplace hardware or a corruption of the Dutch kwalm, a linguistic improbability in itself, meaningless.3 Making matters worse, it seems as if Merwick stopped reading at this point, for in the very next sentence in Underhill is his gloss of this passage: “That is, are you angry, will you kill us, doe you come to fight.”4 Given his involvement at Mystic, Underhill would have understood if the Indians had mentioned anything about being burned to death.8
      Following from this is Merwick’s larding of her text with Dutch words and phrases that may or not have been in use in the first half of the seventeenth century, which nonetheless suggests her having some expertise in the language (I have none). Still, when it comes to accessible Dutch-language sources, many of which are in translation, Merwick on occasion chooses instead to go to the secondary literature. “The Dutch strangers were winderswaren, traders who came on the sea winds,” she writes (p. 48), citing for winderswaren Patricia Seed’s Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World (Cambridge, 1995, p. 160), who in turn cites the original Dutch-language text from Adriaen van der Donck’s important 1656 Description of New Netherland. But Seed erred. The line in Van der Donck reads: /dat sy aldaer de eerste Christenen ende Vinders | waren/. Vinders was misread by Seed as Winders followed by the preterite plural waren. From this the unattested winderswaren is invented. The line simply translates as: “that they were the first Christians and explorers there.” Seed’s gaffe went undetected by Merwick, who not only failed to check the footnote, but curiously does not list Van der Donck in her bibliography, only Thomas O’Donnell’s reissue of the faulty 1848 translation of Description (Syracuse, 1968).59
      Unfortunately, this is not the only difficulty Merwick has with her sources, both in their selection and application. Why cite Karen Ordahl Kupperman’s essay on Scandinavian colonists for the information that the Minquas were “possibly” the Susquehannocks (they were), or Jill Lepore on King Philip’s War for what Francisco de Vitoria had explained about his own invention, the Doctrine of Discovery (p. 269 n. 11; p. 275 n. 30)? These and numerous other stumbles over sources, in addition to misreportings of historical data, point to an air of indifference to what the published and unpublished primary documents have to say about the Dutch-Indian encounter. This is not to mention Merwick having missed a good number of important relevant works on the period; for example, Janny Venema’s history of Beverwijck, Dean Snow’s reporting on the Mohawks and native demography, Lynn Ceci’s post-dissertation work on wampum, and Charles Gehring’s several volumes of translations of pertinent seventeenth-century Dutch records and correspondence (Merwick cites just one), to name but a few. At times Merwick patronizes, in one instance layering on an odd kind of censorship: “I have not reproduced the Figurative Map of Cornelis Hendricksz (1616),” she instructs readers, “because it is an areal map of New Netherland and, in that respect, too easily read as a representation of territorial dominion and occupation. For the same reason, I have not included the Figurative Map of Adriaen Block (1614)” (p. 269 n. 7).10
      Merwick employs varying styles of writing in constructing her argument, some of which echo those of colonial historians James Axtell and John Demos. Chapter 2, “‘The Island,'” brings immediately to mind the literary device that Russell Shorto used in his popular history of Manhattan, The Island at the Center of the World (Doubleday, 2004). At other times Merwick comes across as a pulp-fiction novelist, using punchy, Mike Hammer-like utterances: “John Underhill is present. Maybe he understands the Dutch words. He has a Dutch wife. A Mohawk has been invited to act as mediator. Perhaps a translator is there for him. Perhaps it doesn’t matter” (p. 149). Or she fancies, absent supporting data, that David de Vries “was feeling that Netherlanders at home should know of a mass murder committed by their countrymen overseas. Maybe he wanted to see justice done,” adding, one hopes, with tongue in cheek, “Maybe he knew the story would enhance sales of the journals he published that year” (p. 171). No matter the style, in most cases the results are not particularly informative or insightful.11
      The Shame and Sorrow is Merwick’s third book on New Netherland, and it reflects what most knowledgeable reviewers have concluded about her previous two: thought-provoking works, laced with captivating metaphors and allusions, but regrettably, couched in questionable historiography.
12
      Historian Paul Otto’s The Dutch-Munsee Encounter is, in large part, his more than decade-old dissertation submitted to the faculty at Indiana University. For this and other reasons, it is a disappointment. Studies explicitly dedicated to the examination and exposition of the Indian-Dutch experience are few and far between, and with only a handful of exceptions, have not raised any substantive challenges to Allen Trelease’s classic Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Cornell, 1960). Seen in this light, Otto’s examination of the Munsee speakers of the lower Hudson Valley and environs, and their engagements with Dutch interlopers, changes little. Despite expanding the dissertation’s introduction and rearranging the format of several of its chapters, Otto nonetheless neglects to reconsider his earlier analyses on the topic, to modify or correct faulty statements, to adequately update his sources, or to provide a necessary and sound ethnological context. The book’s afterword on the Dutch Cape Colony in southern Africa (1487–1713), while interesting, appears more as an afterthought. The Dutch-Munsee Encounter is less a contribution than hoped for.13
      Otto’s introduction is a methodological and theoretical morass of unfortunate proportions. His attempts, for reasons that are not made clear, to define or make operational terms such as history, culture, society, ethnicity, religion, acculturation, accommodation, and others, simply confuse. The justifications that Otto does offer ring hollow and in most cases are straw-man arguments. For instance, Otto asserts that his approach “towards the frontier and the process of acculturation has several advantages,” one of which is his working assumption “that intercultural relations were a process, not a single event in which two static cultures encountered one another and reacted” (p. 10). No one I know of would argue anything other than that cultural relations of whatever kind are a process and that cultures, however defined, are not static entities. But Otto’s unusual statements on social theory do not end here. In a puzzling discussion contrasting ideology and world view, Otto holds that the latter term, which he equates with vague, non-standard concepts such as “cultural outlook, cultural ideals, and societal values,” relates to the “basic notion” that “at the heart of human motivation lies fundamental religious belief,” while “Ideologies are more-or-less uniform collections of ideas with inner-coherence.” These statements are not only dubious on their face, but lack analytical or theoretical significance (p. 7). And there is more: “While culture is dynamic and changing, it cannot be diminished or increased,” whatever that may mean, along with “it is important to distinguish between ethnicity and culture and keep in mind the ever-changing nature of culture,” at which point Otto leaves readers entirely in the dark about what ethnicity is and why, apparently, it remains a constant (p. 11). Then there is Otto’s unessential effort to introduce readers to cultural relativism, which includes this convoluted dictate: “The key to achieving cultural relativism in our study of past peoples is not to avoid any cultural standard whatsoever, but to accept the reality that scholars can never transcend their own culture” (p. 13).14
      But it is Otto’s discussion of frontier, a core concept in his approach to the Dutch-Munsee encounter, that is most disordered and then, in subsequent chapters, employed only as a catchword. Frontiers are imprecisely said to “open,” to “close,” to “conclude,” or to take place in “phases.” The “opening” and “closing” business, it must be said, is from Frederick Jackson Turner’s long debated views on the frontier and its imperialist suppositions. What Otto misses is the complexity behind any formulation of the frontier in a colonial context and its contestable recasting by some historians as “borderlands.” Surprisingly, Otto’s readings on the frontier are limited to just a couple of works by historians; he cites nothing by social theorists, in particular, anthropologists, who have had a good deal to say about frontiers and boundaries.15
      The opening chapter, “First Contact,” is a pedestrian account of early European explorations of the Hudson River, including those of Verrazano and, of course, Henry Hudson’s sailing to the vicinity of present-day Albany. Following this is a chapter on trade. Although Otto adds detail to this generally well-known and often written about activity, he too often goes beyond the sources, presenting wholly speculative accounts of Indian behavior and Indian-Dutch interaction. The discussion on the evolution and use of wampum by native people and in the fur trade contains a number of inaccuracies which might have been avoided had the pertinent chapter in William Fenton’s The Great Law and the Longhouse (Oklahoma, 1998) been examined, a work that is absent from Otto’s bibliography.16
      The chapter on “Trade and Settlement” begins with an unnecessary tossing into the mix Richard White’s construct of the “Middle Ground,” followed by a familiar account on the changing nature of trade. It ends with a discussion of land acquisition and the oft told story of the purchase of Manhattan. Then, amidst a treatment of land tenure and purchases, comes Otto’s suggestion that land transactions with the Dutch “may also have played a role in reinforcing social cohesion between the Munsees and their leaders at a time when trade was increasingly losing its ceremonial significance.” Otto’s reasoning is that “individualistic and commercial trade exchanges” had somehow “undermined traditional tribal leadership,” a trend that allegedly was reversed when these same leaders took to selling land for goods which they then redistributed among “tribal members,” thus, ensuring their allegiance (p. 97). Missing is the evidence.17
      Otto’s final two chapters deal with conflict, warfare, and diplomacy, subjects that have been addressed by a host of historians. Yet it is not as if the years of lethal contests that took place in the Hudson Valley and parts of Long Island and New Jersey could not use a more thoughtful and perhaps original retelling. What was it that initiated and then provoked the fear, acrimony, belligerence, hatred, and then the violence that led to scores of deaths on both sides in the Dutch-Munsee wars of mid-century? Are materialist, read economic, explanations, as most have concluded, sufficient to explain the ensuing brutality? Or could there have been something more? Otto does not tell us.18
      The Dutch-Munsee Encounter is a commonplace, fundamentally derivative history, short on ethnological insight, of New Netherland and its people. Larger questions having to do with not only the Munsees and the Dutch, but also the Mahicans, Mohawks, and other natives, along with the English and French, remain.
19
      James Bradley’s much anticipated Before Albany is a welcome presentation of a wide range of archaeological information having to do with the history of Indian-Dutch relations in the upper Hudson Valley, one that deserves a wide readership. It is also a strikingly handsome work, beautifully produced and richly illustrated, consistent with Bradley’s aim to write a “popular book on the archaeology of the Capital Region” (p. xvi). To be discovered and marveled at between its covers are the paintings and sketches of the well-known historical artist Len Tantillo; fine color plates and black-and-white photographs and pencil drawings of rarely seen American Indian and Dutch artifacts and items of material culture; well-chosen examples of period Dutch paintings and engravings by Boursse, Visscher, Brouwer, and others; a large number of maps and charts, many in color; and much, much more.20
      Bradley’s text begins with a clear statement of goals followed by an on-the-mark and helpful discussion on how archaeology functions to answer questions about adaptation and change when disparate cultures in the past happen to meet. From this stepping-off point, the book’s five chapters go on to describe and offer interpretations on what Bradley holds to have been a “successful” relationship between native people and the Dutch (p. 3), although how success might be judged and whether it had the same or even any meaning for the parties involved, would seem to be a bit tricky to measure.21
      The chapters unfold chronologically and in similar fashion. Each contains titled subsections on Mahican and Mohawk sites to which are appended detailed descriptions of associated settlement patterns and artifact assemblages. The inclusion of artifact assemblages is of critical importance, allowing Bradley to both trace and make sense of native-native and native-European trade networks and the inevitable culture change that the flow of goods through them engendered.22
      Against this large body of data is presented the Dutch side of things. Where chapter one focuses on native people—origins, communities, demography, subsistence, and the like—chapter two explores the Dutch Republic, its role in the fast-evolving global economy, and the efforts of Dutch traders of all stripes to establish themselves in what would come to be called New Netherland. At the same time, and carried over into subsequent chapters, Bradley carefully examines and gauges the responses of the Mohawks and Mahicans to the Dutch presence. Of particular importance is their obviously indispensable participation in the fur trade and how this dynamic affected not only the form and function of their communities, but also their ties to and interactions with surrounding groups.23
      The third chapter considers the formation and growing stability of the Dutch colony beginning with the founding of Fort Orange and New Amsterdam, in addition to a short-lived post on the Connecticut River by the mid-1620s; the assumption of control over the fur trade by the West India Company; and by the end of the decade, the creation of the patroonship of Rensselaerswijck, the extensive land holdings of which—some one million acres—lay on both sides of the river at about Albany. During this period Indian people experienced the full force of contact as their communities for the first time were struck by deadly European-introduced diseases even while their involvement in and reliance on the fur trade, which would also exacerbate hostilities with their native foes, grew deeper. And amidst all of this began the process of land loss, a contributing factor to the warfare that would soon engulf much of the Hudson Valley.24
      Bradley’s chapter four, covering the period from 1640 to 1652, probes the rivalry between Rensselaerswijck and the West India Company; the growth of the colony westward toward the Mohawks, an effort marshaled by Arent van Curler, the founder of Schenectady; and the establishment of Beverwijck, the predecessor settlement to Albany. The final chapter looks not only at the growing importance of Beverwijck, but also the development of nearby Dutch communities. It ends with the English takeover in 1664. In both of these chapters Bradley tracks the attendant restructuring that occurred in Mahican and Mohawk cultural systems, some of which for the latter people stemmed from the Beaver Wars of the 1640s and the demographic shifts that followed.25
      Bradley’s considerable contribution in these final chapters is his expert reporting on excavations carried out over the past three decades at Fort Orange, Beverwijck, colonial Albany, and other sites within the bounds of Rensselaerwijck by the respected historical archaeologist Paul Huey. Supplementing Huey’s pioneering research is that conducted during the process of new building construction in downtown Albany, most notably by Hartgen Archaeological Associates. Bradley’s palpable frustration with the manner in which the preservation of historically important sites has been handled in Albany is understandable and his unease fully justified. “The real test will come the next time investigation of a potential site conflicts with a developer’s plans,” he writes. “Then we will see whether the city’s decision makers view the past as an asset or a liability” (p. 149). An epilogue summarizes the status of native people in the region in terms of the Dutch presence and introduces the “conquest” by the English, which was followed by the imposition of an English administration and its assumption of sovereignty in what had become the colony of New York.26
      In virtually all respects, Before Albany succeeds in ways that no other work on the period and the people—native and Dutch—has done. It brings together a wealth of complex and sometimes difficult to interpret archaeological data, superbly illustrated and charted, within a context properly built on history and ethnology. But there do exist a few, methodological lapses, in addition to the occasional editorial glitch. An editorial for instance: In the organization of the book’s chapters, each of which cover time periods ranging from twelve to no more than sixteen years, where essentially the same topics—the Mohawks, the Mahicans, and the Dutch—are discussed, there is repetition, in one case extending to an illustration (pp. 78, 107). And amid a number of typographical errors, the important figure of Van den Bogaert becomes Van den Bogart.27
      A recognized difficulty in producing a popular book is having to strike the appropriate balance so that the information presented will be attractive to both the specialist and the general reader. Doing so, however, sometimes results in imprecision and oversimplification, which can extend to the quality of sources listed in the bibliography; thus, Bradley does not consistently employ the best sources, nor does he always apply the requisite criticism to the sources. Missing in his bibliography is a number of authoritative works on native people, especially the Iroquois. Present, on the other hand, are several derivative, even questionable sources on Mahican and Mohawk history. Also, in cases where earlier work has been supplanted by recent, creditable scholarship, both are found in the same endnote.28
      A last concern has to do with several related topics: demography, archaeological theory, and the use of sources. In each chapter Bradley presents published population estimates, focusing primarily on the Mohawks, where the archaeological data, also published, are the strongest. He disagrees with these published estimates but offers nothing in support of his opposition. Instead, Bradley simply states that his estimate “seems more reasonable” than those published (p. 17), or that published estimates are “hard to verify and seem out of line” with the overall settlement pattern, concluding: “My sense is that the Mohawk population … remained more stable during this period” (p. 67). One’s “sense” is not the best kind of argument to use against published data. In addition, Bradley makes extensive use of “personal communication,” in nearly twenty instances citing the same person for information on Mohawk archaeology. He also references a 1998 unpublished manuscript written by this person. Then, using both the “personal communication” and the now decade old “unpublished manuscript,” Bradley proceeds to challenge a significant body of published work on Mohawk archaeology, going so far as to cite a portion of one published study “as revised” by the author of the “unpublished manuscript” (p. 195 n. 9) This is inappropriate. Unpublished or otherwise unavailable data should not be a part of the way archaeology is done. They do not allow for the testing of models, hypotheses, or explanations posed surrounding archaeological inquiry, nor can they be subjected to independent scrutiny or confirmation, a hallmark of doing science. It follows that such data should not be used in a challenge to published work.29
      These few matters aside, Before Albany is an exceedingly good and essential read.
30
      Andrew Brink is a retired professor of English literature whose previous scholarly writings have dealt with artistic creativity and psychobiography. Invading Paradise, on the other hand, is an explicitly psychohistorical, psychopathological analysis of some of the Dutch participants in the warfare that erupted with the Indians around present-day Kingston, New York, during the last half of the seventeenth century. Going beyond what he characterizes as “the rather tepid and unsatisfactory historical accounts of settlement and the two Esopus wars,” Brink takes readers into a world he has constructed employing the art of genealogy together, in part, with “modern psycho-social insights” (pp. 12–13). Heavily influenced by Ronald Wright’s strongly partisan Stolen Continents: The Americas Through Indian Eyes Since 1492 (Houghton Mifflin, 1992), and having reflected on the degree to which his own family may have been involved in what, “from our point of view, is colonial exploitation, with genocidal implications,” Brink resolves to seek out the motivations that lay behind the ferocity and ruthlessness of the Esopus wars (p. 12).6 Here is Brink on the substance of his book:31
      The argument of Invading Paradise, if it requires one, is that this oddly assorted group of settlers were inadequate as people to succeed peaceably at the task of resettling Indian agricultural lands. They probably had no right being there in the first place, but having arrived they were too urgent about their business, and too fractious among themselves, to form any kind of lasting accord with their predecessors. Opportunities to learn from, and to integrate with, native inhabitants were lost (pp. 13–14).32
      In doing the research, Brink spent a great amount of time with the genealogical literature, over which he appears to exercise considerable control. The enormous cast of characters in Invading Paradise parallels that of a Tolstoy novel and represents, at minimum, a treasure trove for genealogists. Otherwise, Brink’s sources are largely what one would expect to see in a history of the period, although there are a few ringers. Problematic is Brink’s generally uncritical acceptance of the anecdotal and often flawed local histories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an acceptance that in a few instances extends to more recent studies of the Hudson Valley region. I haven’t quite figured out why it is that several psychological and political studies, along with histories on native issues, are placed in the bibliography under the category “Social Commentary” (p. 272). In the end, Brink’s narrative of native-Dutch relations in the context of the Esopus wars contains soft spots, most of which reflect less than the expected measured presentation of fact and interpretation.33
      Least convincing are the psychological portrayals Brink draws and the significance he imputes to the real and also the perceived behaviors of his characters, primarily the Dutch settlers. Here readers will find a good deal of inference and supposition—a sharp moving away from what the documents have to offer—which at the same time reveals an element in the critique of psychohistory: that there is an absence of direct evidence for past motives. Furthermore, it is not always evident that Brink confronts the core issue of cultural and temporal relativity, a source of longstanding skepticism about the efficacy of psychoanalytical probings of the past. Also worth mention is his frequent use of the term “genocide” in contexts where its relevance—the definition provided by the United Nations notwithstanding—is open to question. I leave it to others to judge whether Brink’s diagnosis from afar that “very likely a certain proportion of settlers suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),” and that the evidence for this assertion “is just as clear as it is for the psychosomatic effects of modern wars and disasters,” has validity or meaning (p. 210).34
      Invading Paradise, a nonetheless intriguing work, should be read with perspective and a critical eye. It may all boil down to what one is prepared to believe.35

1.  William A. Starna, “Assessing American Indian-Dutch Studies: Missed and Missing Opportunities,” New York History 84 (Winter 2003): 5–31.2.  Charles Th. Gehring and William A. Starna, rev. trans. and eds., A Description of New Netherland by Adriaen van der Donck. Translated by Diederik Willem Goedhuys (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming).3.  John Underhill, Newes from America (London, 1638), 9. On the “what cheere” passage in Underhill, see Ives Goddard, “A Further Note on Pidgin English,” International Journal of American Linguistics 44, 1(1978): 73. Goddard, personal communication, 2006, tentatively proposes that “cram” looks like roughneck English cant (cram > [Eng. dial.] crowd > *overrun? > *massacre?). The information on kwalm is from Charles Gehring, New Netherland Project, personal communication, 2006.4.  Underhill, Newes, 9.5.  Charles Gehring, personal communication, 2007. See Gehring and Starna, rev. trans. and eds., Description.6.  For an earlier, though somewhat uncritical treatment of Indian-Dutch warfare in New Netherland, see Evan Haefeli, “Kieft’s War and the Cultures of Violence in Colonial America,” in Michael A. Bellesiles, ed., Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History (New York, 1999), 17–40.

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