They felled small trees with their sharp front teeth and built dams made of branches and mud to stop water from flowing This created rich wetland habitats for other plants and animals Once almost 60 million beavers lived on and around the island’s waterways
In 1609 an Englishman named Henry Hudson sailed his ship the Half Moon upriver past the island He was looking for a way to get to China But when he saw the deep harbor tall trees and boundless wildlife he told his Dutch employer back home about the island’s riches The island was about to change Meanwhile back in Europe warm hats made from beaver pelts were the height of fashion The business of trapping beavers in the New World grew quickly They were soon overhunted and completely gone from the island by the 1800s
house north 1664 1625 Dutch New Amsterdam Governor's to Fort Amsterdam Bowling Heere Wegh Straet Green Beaver Gracht Markvelt Straet white Hall Whitehall Street Pearle Straet Brugh Straet Brouwer Straet Prince Straet Styck Straet Heere Gracht Stadt Huys Public Dock City Tavern The Dutch claimed the island's tiny southern point as their own and built a town for trading furs They brought eleven enslaved African people to do the heavy labor of carving canals through the land and building a fort and a wall for protection Immigrants from around the world came to live and work since few Dutch citizens wanted to leave the comforts of home in the Netherlands for an outpost in the middle of nowhere It was said that eighteen different languages were spoken on the island at that time But in just forty years the island would change hands again
river Smee Hudson River bouweries farms road to New Haarlem Broadway to the Kalch freshwater pond Broad St. Het cingle As the story goes Peter Minuit the director general of New Amsterdam working for the Dutch West India Company bought the island from the Lenape in 1626 for approximately 24 worth of wampum beads and trinkets MA Tuyn Straet the wall Wall Street For Native people the idea of someone owning the land was as crazy as owning the air we breathe More likely the Lenape thought they were only agreeing to share the island with the Dutch Stroet Bahhi Bahh American Indians had traded with Europeans in the years before Hudson's arrival but conflicts arose once a permanent settlement was established After years of broken treaties and brutal massacres the Lenape were forced off the island by the end of the seventeenth century ferry to Breukelen East RIVER
