Customer Reviews

A Journey Into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 1634-1635: The Journal of Harmen Meyndertsz Van Den Bogaert (Iroquois & Their Neighbors)

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This text is rather sparse, so would probably not be of much interest to the general reader. But then, the general reader would probably not even be looking at this title. If, like me, you find yourself fascinated with first person accounts of early European contacts with Native Americans, this is valuable simply because there are so few surviving accounts from the New Netherlands era. This is the diary of a mid-winter journey through the upper Mohawk Valley. Well footnoted and with a large glossary of Mohawk words.

This brief diary gives one man's account of his rare winter venture into Mohawk Iroquois country from what is now Albany, NY (then Beverwijck - Beaver Village). He went to resolve trade issues with the native peoples and reported intimately on lifestyle and ceremony. Van Den Bogaert's trek was prompted by the need to find tribal authorities and make a better deal than French traders had offered. This is a fascinating glimpse into a culture and time no longer available to us for observation. Because of tribal rivalries, the Mohawks preferred doing business with the Dutch anyway and they got a better price out of their agreement with Albany through Van Den Bogaert. This little book includes about eight pages of the author's dictionary of Mohawk and Dutch languages, brought into English by Charles T. Gehring and William Starna. Thanks to Gehring's thirty-some years of translating, new insights are available to historians as well as popular readers. These glimpses help to make more realistic and balanced our romantic impressions of the first people. An important companion work is Adriaen Van Der Donck's "A Description of New Netherland" that has its focus on the development of Manhattan and the trading relationships of the 1600s. Lovely reading. Another important companion is Russell Shorto's "Island at the Center of the Earth," which gives a great overview of the entire adventure from Amsterdam and Leiden to this abundant new world.

This is the translation of a short journal by Dutch agents of the West India Company who traveled among the Mohawk Indians in upstate New York in the early 1600's. Their mission was commercial - to understand the Indian's fur trading situation and how the Dutch might capture the beaver pelt market in competition with the French. And it was all driven by the fashion of the time for hats in Europe.

The text is interesting because of the early date. Here are the Indians of northeast America before their lives were forever destroyed by the white man. One reads that even at this early date they were definitely in touch with the French, English and Dutch, seeing them as customers for pelts but also sources of firearms and other technology. Here was a paleolithic society suddenly in contact with early modern Europe. Smallpox was the one factor they could not deal with.

On the level of daily life, we read how difficult was survival in winter in update New York in 1635. Hunger and warmth were daily challenges, and the Dutch explorers' relations with the Mohawks were matters of life and death. Many small vignettes are written here; the day the Dutchmen's food supply was eaten by Indian dogs and they were reduced to imploring their hosts for bear and salmon meat. How the Indian's loved the Dutch to shoot off their firearms, just for the loud bang. Observations of shamanistic healing practices. The internal politics and warfare among Iroquois nations, who were distributed over a vast tract of the northeast from the present Manhatten into Quebec, western New York to Cape Cod. Fascinating.