I think I’ve been obsessed with Adriaen van der Donck for quite some time now. First of all, he has a really cool name, and second, I had always heard that he was the first prosecutor in North America, and I was intrigued. While others may be finding their escape in fictional fantasy somewhere on the beach, I decided to crack open Russell Shorto’s book The Island at the Center of the World at the airport the other day as I was waiting for my plane to arrive. Shorto did his research and spoke to many scholars that have spent their careers toiling away in archive rooms reviewing merchant papers, maps, court cases, deeds, wills, etc. from the seventeeth century and translating them from old Dutch to today’s English. I’ve often thought about what it would be like to spend my days in a dusty, old part of a library looking through early American trial transcripts and seeing what might unfold – or am I romanticizing what it felt like the first time I saw the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives in Washington DC? But I digress…
I expected to learn that van der Donck traveled from the Netherlands to the New World and went around hearing others’ problems, filing formal complaints, and going to court (perhaps a judge sitting in a log cabin waiting for van der Donck to come in with the latest warrants that needed to be signed or at least waiting for the local bar to open (apparently there were many bars in New Netherland) ). But what I learned was much more. Let me start from the beginning (in case you are like me and knew nothing about the colonies other than the English colonies and their impact on our legal foundation).
Henry Hudson, a very famous explorer and navigator, quit working for the English for a time and was financially backed by the Dutch West India Company to find a northern passage to Asia. In 1609, Hudson journeyed across the Atlantic, hit Canada, and sailed down the east coast searching for the fabled “Northwest Passage” and found a large river in present day New York. It didn’t cross the continent, but Hudson reported back to his Dutch employers that it was a perfect site for colonization: filled with animals, natural resources, fertile soil, and friendly native people. Within fifteen years, the Dutch established a colony there (collectively called New Netherland). The Dutch West India Company encouraged people to seek land that they considered widely available for Dutch citizens to purchase from the indigenous people. New Netherland was essentially a private business venture to exploit the North American fur trade. By the 1650s, the colony had experienced dramatic growth and become a major port for trade in the North Atlantic. At its height, about 9,000 people lived in the colony of New Netherland.
I had no idea New Netherland comprised most of what became New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. But what interests me most is that the Dutch Republic in the 1600s was the most progressive and culturally diverse society in Europe. And compared to the English colonies that were primarily founded by Puritans escaping England to practice their faith without persecution, the colony of New Netherland was everything but a monoculture. The residents of New Netherland were diverse: Norweigans, Germans, Italians, Jews, Africans (slaves and free), Walloons (foreigners), Bohemians, Munsees, Montauks, Mohawks and others. This colony was full of pirates, prostitutes, smugglers, and merchants. As Shorto explains, “This island city would become the first multiethnic, upwardly mobile society on America’s shores, a prototype of the kind of society that would be duplicated throughout the country and around the world.” And Adriaen van der Donck, as one of the only lawyers on the island, had a huge impact on how this island city operated.
Van der Donck (yes, I’m going to use this name often) attended the University of Leiden, which was the premier learning institution in Netherlands and highly respected in Europe. He learned from Dutch jurist Hugo de Groot (Hugo Grotius) who is considered the father of international law. De Groot apparently created the principle of international waters and laid down principles on which war was justified and how it ought to be conducted.
At 21, the adventurer set sail for New Netherland after accepting a job as a “schout,” which combines the role of a sheriff and a prosecutor (attorney-general). The English would later call it a “scout.” He worked for a settlement owned by Amsterdam diamond merchant Kiliaen van Rensselaer which covered several hundred thousand acres along both sides of the Hudson River. Van Rensselaer was considered the “patroon.”
{Sidebar about the “patroon” system: the Dutch West India Company would give a colonist who organized fifty + people to come to New Netherland a special grant of land and, within four years, be given special privileges as the owner and “patroon” of the land. The patroon provided land, buildings, tools, a school, and church for his tenant farmers. Tenant farmers paid no taxes for ten years but were required to pay the patroon rent and a percentage of that which they harvested. No farmer could sell any product without first offering it to the patroon. Once the manor became a profitable enterprise, the patroon was expected to share the profits with the tenants, and the patroon was expected to give a duty on exports to the West India Company. Some tenants were actually “bonded” to their patroons and could not move to a different estate or town. This effectively gave the patroon “feudal” rights over the colonists. You can see how this patroon system might have encouraged people to come to the New World but was not popular among those living within the feudal system.]
Van der Donck found himself having to deal with tenant farmers that sold their harvests independently and refused to pay the patroon what he was due. So for most of his time as a “schout,” he was dealing with thefts and tenant farmers who had signed on for a specific period of years to the patroon and then fled. What I like about van der Donck is how he did his job. He wasn’t simply the mouthpiece of van Rensselaer, in fact, van Rensselaer complained van der Donck “acted too independently.” He was fair and empathetic in his dealings with the tenant farmers. When he traveled to New Amsterdam looking for a woman who had skipped out on her service contract at Rensselaerswyck, he found her, discovered she was pregnant, and struck a deal that she could stay there until she delivered her baby, and the baby was old enough to travel back to the settlement (our first U.S. plea deal).
Van der Donck didn’t define his job just as a law enforcement officer (yes, he cracked down on the black market grain trade, hunted for those who broke their service contract, and prosecuted those who sold beaver pelts on the sly), but he also added a brickyard to the settlement, improved the sawmill and gristmill, and refused to carry out van Rensselaer’s wishes to collect late payments when he saw tenants simply had no money to give. This prosecutor lived in the community, worked with the community, and prosecuted so-called crimes against the patroon within the community with discretion and care.
Not only was van der Donck good at his job, he felt it was his duty to help those throughout the colony of New Netherland petition the Director General, the West India Company, and the Dutch government to advocate for a form of representative government for the colony. A successive line of Director Generals left in charge of the colony had repeatedly stirred up trouble for the colonists, starting wars with native Americans (which resulted in many deaths of men, women, and children and the burning of homes and lands), and taxing colonists without representation (sound familiar?), and making unilateral decisions for the colony without consulting community members.
Van der Donck repeatedly pushed back against authority when he thought it was unjust and repeatedly sent a series of legal petitions to the West India Company and the States General in the Hague to secure the political foundations of the colony. At one point, van der Donck was arrested by the Director General and charged with high treason. After much wrangling by community members, van der Donck was released and banished and left for the Netherlands to state his case.
After several years litigating the issue in the Hague, in April 1650, van der Donck got his win. Members of the committee of the States General assigned to deal with the colony stated that they “cannot, and ought not any longer approve of the perverse administration of the privileges and benefits granted by charter to the stockholders of the West India Company [while] neglecting or opposing the good plans and offers submitted for the security of the boundaries and the increase of the population of that country.” The city of New Amsterdam was to create a “municipal government” with “a bench of justice formed as much as possible on the laws of this city,” and the current Director General was to return home and report. (Shorto at 229, 243).
Unfortunately, the win was short-lived. England began a series of wars (three in total) with the Dutch over trade and control of colonies in the Americas. The States General completely reversed its rulings, and van der Donck was considered too dangerous (labeled a “notorious ringleader” and a “lawless and mutinous rabble”) to return to the land he loved. (Shorto at 251).
Van der Donck was finally permitted to return in 1653 but forbidden from engaging in public life or practicing law in the colony. He died in 1655 at the age of 35 when native Americans attacked the settlement in retaliation for the Dutch attacking their neighbors and trading partners, the Swedes.
I’ve finally learned more about this first-ever American prosecutor. He cared about the people in his jurisdiction, he complied with the law but also showed mercy, and he used his law degree for good. He wasn’t afraid to stand up against those in power and use his talents to put his community members’ grievances into legal pleadings. Van der Donck never got to see his dreams realized, but he is certainly not forgotten.