A History of New York

by Washington Irving

  I shall not occupy my time by discussing the huge mass of additional suppositions, conjectures and probabilities respecting the first discovery of this country, with which unhappy historians overload themselves, in their endeavours to satisfy the doubts of an incredulous world. It is painful to see these laborious wights panting and toiling, and sweating under an enormous burthen, at the very outset of their works, which on being opened, turns out to be nothing but a mighty bundle of straw. As, however, by unwearied assiduity, they seem to have established the fact, to the satisfaction of all the world, that this country has been discovered, I shall avail myself of their useful labours to be extremely brief upon this point.

  I shall not therefore stop to enquire, whether America was first discovered by a wandering vessel of that celebrated Phœnecian fleet, which, according to Herodotus, circumnavigated Africa; or by that Carthagenian expedition, which Pliny, the naturalist, informs us, discovered the Canary Islands; or whether it was settled by a temporary colony from Tyre, as hinted by Aristotle and Seneca. I shall neither enquire whether it was first discovered by the Chinese, as Vossius with great shrewdness advances, nor by the Norwegians in 1002, under Biorn; nor by Behem, the German navigator, as Mr. Otto has endeavoured to prove to the Sçavans of the learned city of Philadelphia.

  Nor shall I investigate the more modern claims of the Welsh, founded on the voyage of Prince Madoc in the eleventh century, who having never returned, it has since been wisely concluded that he must have gone to America, and that for a plain reason—if he did not go there, where else could he have gone?—a question which most Socratically shuts out all further dispute.

  Laying aside, therefore, all the conjectures above mentioned, with a multitude of others, equally satisfactory, I shall take for granted, the vulgar opinion that America was discovered on the 12th of October, 1492, by Christovallo Colon, a Genoese, who has been clumsily nick-named Columbus, but for what reason I cannot discern. Of the voyages and adventures of this Colon, I shall say nothing, seeing that they are already sufficiently known. Nor shall I undertake to prove that this country should have been called Colonia, after his name, that being notoriously self evident.

  Having thus happily got my readers on this side of the Atlantic, I picture them to myself, all impatience to enter upon the enjoyment of the land of promise, and in full expectation that I will immediately deliver it into their possession. But if I do, may I ever forfeit the reputation of a regular bred historian. No—no—most curious and thrice learned readers, (for thrice learned ye are if ye have read all that goes before, and nine times learned shall ye be, if ye read all that comes after) we have yet a world of work before us. Think you the first discoverers of this fair quarter of the globe, had nothing to do but go on shore and find a country ready laid out and cultivated like a garden, wherein they might revel at their ease? No such thing—they had forests to cut down, underwood to grub up, marshes to drain, and savages to exterminate.

  In like manner, I have sundry doubts to clear away, questions to resolve, and paradoxes to explain, before I permit you to range at random; but these difficulties, once overcome, we shall be enabled to jog on right merrily through the rest of our history. Thus my work shall, in a manner, echo the nature of the subject, in the same manner as the sound of poetry has been found by certain shrewd critics, to echo the sense—this being an improvement in history, which I claim the merit of having invented.

  CHAPTER IV

  Shewing the great toil and contention which Philosophers

  have had in peopling America.—And how the Aborigines

  came to be begotten by accident—to the great

  satisfaction and relief of the author.

  Bless us!—what a hard life we historians have of it, who undertake to satisfy the doubts of the world!—Here have I been toiling and moiling through three pestiferous chapters, and my readers toiling and moiling at my heels; up early and to bed late, poring over worm-eaten, obsolete, good-for-nothing books, and cultivating the acquaintance of a thousand learned authors, both ancient and modern, who, to tell the honest truth, are the stupidest companions in the world—and after all, what have we got by it?—Truly the mighty valuable conclusion, that this country does actually exist, and has been discovered; a self-evident fact not worth a hap’worth of gingerbread. And what is worse, we seem just as far off from the city of New York now, as we were at first. Now for myself, I would not care the value of a brass button, being used to this dull and learned company; but I feel for my unhappy readers, who seem most woefully jaded and fatigued.

  Still, however, we have formidable difficulties to encounter, since it yet remains, if possible, to show how this country was originally peopled—a point fruitful of incredible embarrassment, to us scrupulous historians, but absolutely indispensable to our works. For unless we prove that the Aborigines did absolutely come from some where, it will be immediately asserted in this age of scepticism, that they did not come at all; and if they did not come at all, then was this country never populated—a conclusion perfectly agreeable to the rules of logic, but wholly irreconcilable to every feeling of humanity, inasmuch as it must syllogistically prove fatal to the innumerable Aborigines of this populous region.

  To avert so dire a sophism, and to rescue from logical annihilation so many millions of fellow creatures, how many wings of geese have been plundered! what oceans of ink have been benevolently drained! and how many capacious heads of learned historians have been addled and forever confounded! I pause with reverential awe, when I contemplate the ponderous tomes in different languages, with which they have endeavoured to solve this question, so important to the happiness of society, but so involved in clouds of impenetrable obscurity. Historian after historian has engaged in the endless circle of hypothetical argument, and after leading us a weary chace through octavos, quartos, and folios, has let us out at the end of his work, just as wise as we were at the beginning. It was doubtless some philosophical wild goose chace of the kind, that made the old poet Macrobius rail in such a passion at curiosity, which he anathematizes most heartily, as “an irksome agonizing care, a superstitious industry about unprofitable things, an itching humour to see what is not to be seen, and to be doing what signifies nothing when it is done.”

  But come my lusty readers, let us address ourselves to our task and fall vigorously to work upon the remaining rubbish that lies in our way; but I warrant, had master Hercules, in addition to his seven labours, been given as an eighth to write a genuine American history, he would have been fain to abandon the undertaking, before he got over the threshold of his work.

  Of the claims of the children of Noah to the original population of this country I shall say nothing, as they have already been touched upon in my last chapter. The claimants next in celebrity, are the decendants of Abraham. Thus Christoval Colon (vulgarly called Columbus) when he first discovered the gold mines of Hispaniola immediately concluded, with a shrewdness that would have done honour to a philosopher, that he had found the ancient Ophir, from whence Solomon procured the gold for embellishing the temple at Jerusalem; nay Colon even imagined that he saw the remains of furnaces of veritable Hebraic construction, employed in refining the precious ore.

  So golden a conjecture, tinctured with such fascinating extravagance, was too tempting not to be immediately snapped at by the gudgeons of learning, and accordingly, there were a host of profound writers, ready to swear to its correctness, and to bring in their usual load of authorities, and wise surmises, wherewithal to prop it up. Vetablus and Robertus Stephens declared nothing could be more clear—Arius Montanus without the least hesitation asserts that Mexico was the true Ophir, and the Jews the early settlers of the country. While Possevin, Becan, and a host of other sagacious writers, lug in a supposed prophecy of the fourth book of Esdras, which being inserted in the mighty hypothesis, like the key stone of an arch, gives it, in their opinion, perpetual durability.

  Scarce however, have they completed their goodly superstructure, than in
trudges a phalanx of opposite authors, with Hans de Laet the great Dutchman at their head, and at one blow, tumbles the whole fabric about their ears. Hans in fact, contradicts outright all the Israelitish claims to the first settlement of this country, attributing all those equivocal symptoms, and traces of Christianity and Judaism, which have been said to be found in divers provinces of the new world, to the Devil, who has always affected to counterfeit the worship of the true Deity. “A remark,” says the knowing old Padre d’Acosta, “made by all good authors who have spoken of the religion of nations newly discovered, and founded besides on the authority of the fathers of the church.”

  Some writers again, among whom it is with great regret I am compelled to mention Lopez de Gomara, and Juan de Leri, insinuate that the Canaanites, being driven from the land of promise by the Jews, were seized with such a panic, that they fled without looking behind them, until stopping to take breath they found themselves safe in America. As they brought neither their national language, manners nor features, with them, it is supposed they left them behind in the hurry of their flight—I cannot give my faith to this opinion.

  I pass over the supposition of the learned Grotius, who being both an ambassador and a Dutchman to boot, is entitled to great respect; that North America, was peopled by a strolling company of Norwegians, and that Peru was founded by a colony from China—Manco or Mungo Capac, the first Incas, being himself a Chinese. Nor shall I more than barely mention that father Kircher, ascribes the settlement of America to the Egyptians, Rudbeck to the Scandinavians, Charron to the Gauls, Juffredus Petri to a skaiting party from Friesland, Milius to the Celtæ, Marinocus the Sicilian to the Romans, Le Compte to the Phœnicians, Postel to the Moors, Martyn d’Angleria to the Abyssinians, together with the sage surmise of De Laet, that England, Ireland and the Orcades may contend for that honour.

  Nor will I bestow any more attention or credit to the idea that America is the fairy region of Zipangri, described by that dreaming traveller Marco Polo the Venetian; or that it comprizes the visionary island of Atlantis, described by Plato. Neither will I stop to investigate the heathenish assertion of Paracelsus, that each hemisphere of the globe was originally furnished with an Adam and Eve. Or the more flattering opinion of Dr. Romayne supported by many nameless authorities, that Adam was of the Indian race—or the startling conjecture of Buffon, Helvetius, and Darwin, so highly honourable to mankind, and peculiarly complimentary to the French nation, that the whole human species are accidentally descended from a remarkable family of monkies!

  This last conjecture, I must own, came upon me very suddenly and very ungraciously. I have often beheld the clown in a pantomime, while gazing in stupid wonder at the extravagant gambols of a harlequin, all at once electrified by a sudden stroke of the wooden sword across his shoulders. Little did I think at such times, that it would ever fall to my lot to be treated with equal discourtesy, and that while I was quietly beholding these grave philosophers, emulating the excentric transformations of the particoloured hero of pantomime, they would on a sudden turn upon me and my readers, and with one flourish of their conjectural wand, metamorphose us into beasts! I determined from that moment not to burn my fingers with any more of their theories, but content myself with detailing the different methods by which they transported the descendants of these ancient and respectable monkeys, to this great field of theoretical warfare.

  This was done either by migrations by land or transmigrations by water. Thus Padre Joseph D’Acosta enumerates three passages by land, first by the north of Europe, secondly by the north of Asia and thirdly by regions southward of the straits of Magellan. The learned Grotius marches his Norwegians by a pleasant route across frozen rivers and arms of the sea, through Iceland, Greenland, Estotiland and Naremberga. And various writers, among whom are Angleria, De Hornn and Buffon, anxious for the accommodation of these travellers, have fastened the two continents together by a strong chain of deductions—by which means they could pass over dry shod. But should even this fail, Pinkerton, that industrious old gentleman, who compiles books and manufactures Geographies, and who erst flung away his wig and cane, frolicked like a naughty boy, and committed a thousand etourderies, among the petites filles of Paris17—he I say, has constructed a natural bridge of ice, from continent to continent, at the distance of four or five miles from Behring’s straits—for which he is entitled to the grateful thanks of all the wandering aborigines who ever did, or ever will pass over it.

  It is an evil much to be lamented, that none of the worthy writers above quoted, could ever commence his work, without immediately declaring hostilities against every writer who had treated of the same subject. In this particular, authors may be compared to a certain sagacious bird, which in building its nest, is sure to pull to pieces the nests of all the birds in its neighbourhood. This unhappy propensity tends grievously to impede the progress of sound knowledge. Theories are at best but brittle productions, and when once committed to the stream, they should take care that like the notable pots which were fellow voyagers, they do not crack each other. But this literary animosity is almost unconquerable. Even I, who am of all men the most candid and liberal, when I sat down to write this authentic history, did all at once conceive an absolute, bitter and unutterable contempt, a strange and unimaginable disbelief, a wondrous and most ineffable scoffing of the spirit, for the theories of the numerous literati, who have treated before me, of this country. I called them jolter heads, numsculls, dunderpates, dom cops, bottericks, domme jordans, and a thousand other equally indignant appellations. But when I came to consider the matter coolly and dispassionately, my opinion was altogether changed. When I beheld these sages gravely accounting for unaccountable things, and discoursing thus wisely about matters forever hidden from their eyes, like a blind man describing the glories of light, and the beauty and harmony of colours, I fell back in astonishment at the amazing extent of human ingenuity.

  If—cried I to myself, these learned men can weave whole systems out of nothing, what would be their productions were they furnished with substantial materials—if they can argue and dispute thus ingeniously about subjects beyond their knowledge, what would be the profundity of their observations, did they but know what they were talking about! Should old Radamanthus, when he comes to decide upon their conduct while on earth, have the least idea of the usefulness of their labours, he will undoubtedly class them with those notorious wise men of Gotham, who milked a bull, twisted a rope of sand, and wove a velvet purse from a sow’s ear.

  My chief surprise is, that among the many writers I have noticed, no one has attempted to prove that this country was peopled from the moon—or that the first inhabitants floated hither on islands of ice, as white bears cruize about the northern oceans—or that they were conveyed here by balloons, as modern æreonauts pass from Dover to Calais—or by witchcraft, as Simon Magus posted among the stars—or after the manner of the renowned Scythian Abaris, who like the New England witches on full-blooded broomsticks, made most unheard of journeys on the back of a golden arrow, given him by the Hyperborean Apollo.

  But there is still one mode left by which this country could have been peopled, which I have reserved for the last, because I consider it worth all the rest, it is—by accident! Speaking of the islands of Solomon, New Guinea, and New Holland, the profound father Charlevoix observes, “in fine, all these countries are peopled, and it is possible, some have been so by accident. Now if it could have happened in that manner, why might it not have been at the same time, and by the same means, with the other parts of the globe?” This ingenious mode of deducing certain conclusions from possible premises, is an improvement in syllogistic skill, and proves the good father superior even to Archimedes, for he can turn the world without any thing to rest his lever upon. It is only surpassed by the dexterity with which the sturdy old Jesuit, in another place, demolishes the gordian knot—“Nothing” says he, “is more easy. The inhabitants of both hemispheres are certainly the descendants of the same father. Th
e common father of mankind, received an express order from Heaven, to people the world, and accordingly it has been peopled. To bring this about, it was necessary to overcome all difficulties in the way, and they have also been overcome!” Pious Logician! How does he put all the herd of laborious theorists to the blush, by explaining in fair words, what it has cost them volumes to prove they knew nothing about!

  They have long been picking at the lock, and fretting at the latch, but the honest father at once unlocks the door by bursting it open, and when he has it once a-jar, he is at full liberty to pour in as many nations as he pleases. This proves to a demonstration that a little piety is better than a cart-load of philosophy, and is a practical illustration of that scriptural promise—“By faith ye shall move mountains.”

  From all the authorities here quoted, and a variety of others which I have consulted, but which are omitted through fear of fatiguing the unlearned reader—I can only draw the following conclusions, which luckily however, are sufficient for my purpose—First, That this part of the world has actually been peopled (Q. E. D.) to support which, we have living proofs in the numerous tribes of Indians that inhabit it. Secondly, That it has been peopled in five hundred different ways, as proved by a cloud of authors, who from the positiveness of their assertions seem to have been eye witnesses to the fact—Thirdly, That the people of this country had a variety of fathers, which as it may not be thought much to their credit by the common run of readers, the less we say on the subject the better. The question therefore, I trust, is forever at rest.