Juan Rodrigues (abt. 1590 - aft. 1640)

Born about 1590 in Captaincy General of Santo Domingo

Died after 1640 after about age 50 in New Amsterdam, New Netherland [uncertain]

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Biography

Jan Rodrigues is a part of US Black heritage.

Jan Rodrigues is Notable.

Jan/Juan/João Rodrigues

Name

Jan Rodrigues, Dutch

Juan Ronrigues

Juan Ronriguez

João Rodrigues, Portuguese

Juan Rodriguez ^[1][2] (Dutch: Jan Rodrigues, Portuguese: João Rodrigues) was the first documented non-Native American to live on Manhattan Island

Juan Rodrigues is also reputed to have been the first man, representing Dutch interests to remain permanently on the island of Mannahatta, which became Manhattan, New Amsterdam in the Dutch Colony of New Netherlands, commencing in May or June 1613..

Rodrigues remained at Manhatta with his native American family and set up his own trading post with goods given to him by Dutch sea captain Thijs Volckenz Mossel of the Dutch merchant ship Jonge Tobias; consisting of eighty hatchets, some knives, a musket and a sword, was wages, and an advance for future services^[3]

Birth

Juan Rodrigues is thought to have been born ca. 1590, in the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) to an African woman and a Portuguese sailor^[4], in an era in which a tenth of the Dominican population was born in Portugal.^[5]

Birth: between1560 and 1590: The CUNY DCI Monograph suggests a birth date, at least in the early 1570s or 1580s, if not earlier, which would then put him in his early 40s or 30s at the time our Juan Rodriguez arrived in what is today New York, a plausible age for the kinds of activities we know Rodriguez engaged in during his 1613-1614 stay in the Hudson area.^[6]. However, ages of sailors were typically younger, teens through early thirties. People matured earlier and undertook difficult tasks at younger ages.) As evidence of this examine the ages of the sailors disposed in Amsterdam to give evidence relating to Jan Rodrigues.

A search by CUNI DSI found Ecclesiastical documents from La Espanola mentioning individuals named Juan Rodriguez.^[7] While interesting these are findings were not conclusive. CUNY DCI suggests that Juan was one of the Island's population involved in smuggling (Spanish records show three smugglers named Juan Rodriguez), suggesting that he was conversant in Dutch, having dealings with the Dutch merchants, who in defiance of Spanish Authority, traded in the "Black Market" that thrived in the impoverished Island. The Monograph provides an excellent background to understand the conditions of the time.

Not finding official Church documentation is not a surprise, considering that if he was of the known bands of smugglers, and being a muletto, he might not have had his birth sanctified by the Catholic Church.

CUNY DCI researchers did find church records for the following Rodriguezes:

C.1 May 27, 1591. Marriage record of Juan Rodriguez and Ana Gonzalez, married at the Cathedral of the City of Santo Domingo. . .Page 58. This Juan Rodriguez would have been about age 42 in 1613. He is possibly too old, and with a family, to be the sailor in Manhattan in 1613.

C.2 July 2nd, 1592. City of Santo Domingo. Baptism record of a boy named Antonio, baptized at the Cathedral of Santo Domingo. He was the son of a Juan Rodríguez and Ana González. . . Page 59. The age is right, however the given name is wrong.

C.3 January 9th, 1599. City of Santo Domingo. Baptism record of a boy named Juan, baptized at the Cathedral of Santo Domingo, whose parents names were Juan Rodriguez and Maria Magdalena. . .Page 60. It would appear that this child would be too young to have been the Juan Rodrigeuz on Manhatta ca. 1613, He would have been aged 14..

Residence

Raised in a culturally diverse environment in the Spanish settlement of Santo Domingo, Rodrigues was known for his linguistic talents and was hired by the Dutch captain Thijs Volckenz Mossel of the merchant ship Jonge Tobias to serve as the translator on a trading voyage to the Native American island of Mannahatta. Arriving in 1613, Rodrigues soon came to learn the Algonquian language of the Lenape people and married into the local community. When Mossel's ship returned to the Netherlands in May or June 1613^[8], Rodrigues stayed behind with his native American family and set up his own trading post with goods given to him by Mossel, consisting of eighty hatchets, some knives, a musket and a sword^[9].

He spent the summer and part of the following winter without the support of anchored ship, at the trading post on Lower Manhattan that he set up in 1613, until ships returned in the mid-late winter of 1614. Captains Christiansen, Mossel and Block left Amsterdam in late September and October, 1614 on their westerly voyage.

During the age of sail winds and currents determined trade routes. According to Historian Simon Hart, a voyage by sailing ship, following the established trade routes, took about 10 or more weeks from Amsterdam to Manhattan Island. This would be exclusive of stops for provisioning, repairs, and trade. The route West followed the Canary Currents and winds to Africa, the North Equatorial Current and "Easterlie" trade winds to the West Indies, then northward along gulf stream to Manhattan. The best time to sail west was in the fall of the year, when the winds were strongest. Return was typically via the Labrador and North Atlantic currents and the North Atlantic's "Westerlie" trade winds. The return voyage was typically faster. To reverse direction would have meant that the ships were sailing against the winds and currents. Ships avoided the mid-Atlantic doldrums, where a ship might become becalmed for weeks. The fastest voyage from Amsterdam belongs to the ship Houttuin at 53 days, and the slowest belongs to the Rensselaerwyck which took 185 days.^[10][11]

Captain Hendrick Christiansen set up a small trading post on Manhattan Island in 1614, and is said to have left crewmen there to manage it. It is speculated that since Jan Rodrigues was in the employ of Captain Christiansen, commencing spring of 1614, he may have resided there.

This small settlement, and others, along the North River were part of a private enterprise. It was not until 1621 that the Dutch Republic firmly established its claim to New Netherland and offered a patent for a trade monopoly in the region. In 1624, a group of settlers established a small colony on Governors Island. Together with a contingent of colonizers coming from the Netherlands that same year, the traders established in the tiny settlement of New Amsterdam.

The Following Year

According to Historian Simon Hart, two Dutch companies were bitter rivals for the fur trade, to the extent there was armed conflict. In fact, Jan/Juan Rodriguez was wounded in a fight between the crews of the rival ships, when they returned in spring 1614. In spring 1614 Jan Rodrigues had entered Captain Christiaensen’s service as a resident trader, to the great dissatisfaction of Captain Mossel and Hontom (The company trader supercargo).

Supercargo Hontom and Captain Mossel's crew members claimed Jan Rodricuez did not live up to prior agreements and should have done business exclusively with Captain Mossel, when he was found under contract with the rival company, Captain Christiansen, saw an opportunity to settle accounts with Rodrigues, Christiaensen's crew rescued him in time. Hontom would not return the musket taken from Rodrigues, presumably because Rodrigues had not kept his agreement^[12].

Report of Adriaen Block

In August 20, 1613 at the post trip notarial depositions, fur trader Adriaen Block complained bitterly that a competitor, Thijs Volckenz Mossel, commander of the Jonge Tobias, had tried to “spoil the trade” by offering three times more for a beaver than Block did. In his report against Mossel, which he submitted to the Amsterdam Notary upon his return to Holland, Block topped off his list of accusations against Mossel with his outrage that---

'crewman Rodrigues had become a permanent fixture in the Manhattan frontier, trading and living alone among the natives. When the said Mossel sailed away from the river with his ship, Rodrigues, born in Sto. Domingo, who had arrived there with the ship of said Mossel, stayed ashore at the same place. They had given Rodrigues eighty hatchets, some knives, a musket and a sword.' Later it appeared that this payment also included an advance on services still to be rendered ^[13]. When the ships departed in May or June, 1613, Jan Rodrigues stayed on in the Hudson.

According to Block, Mossel denied that Rodrigues was working on his behalf. Rodrigues had taken it upon himself to gain friendship with the natives, set up a trading post, and live comfortably on Manhattan Island.

In his defense, Mossel declared that---

'this Spaniard [Rodrigues] had run away from the ship and gone ashore against his intent and will and that he had given him the said goods in payment of his wages and therefore had nothing more to do with him.'

Block closed his report by writing that he knew of no other crewman who stayed behind but Rodrigues. And the natives, who preferred the goods and ironware sold by Rodrigues over their own, seem to have accepted him as the island’s first merchant.

By the spring of 1614, three Dutch ships had arrived: De Tijger, captained by Block; the Fortuyn, captained by Hendrick Christiaensen; and the Nachtegaal, captained by Mossel. This time it was Christiaensen who wrote about Rodrigues. His log states that Rodrigues came aboard the Nachtegaal, presented himself as a freeman, and offered to work for Christiaensen trading furs. The historical record leaves us with few details about the remainder of the life of Jan Rodrigues.

What happened to Jan Rodrigues?

What we do know is that Jan Rodrigues did not go with Captains, Block and Mossel, when they returned to Amsterdam with Captain Christiansen on the Fortuyn. Nor was he identified as sailing with the mutineers on The Nachtegael , or sailing on the two other ships (Fortuyn and Vos') 'that arrived before their departure and sailed for Amsterdam. This was established in the July 23, 1614 notarial depositions.

Captain Block's ship The Tiger had burned while anchored in the Hudson River during January-February, 1614. On March 7, 1614, Captain Mossel's ship The Nachtegael was seized by mutineers. The two ship less captains and crew had to return to Amsterdam on Captain Christiansen's Fortuyn and two other ships that arrived before their departure. Jan Rodrigues was not identified as one of the mutineers that seized Captain Mossel's ship The Nachtegael. Further, had Jan Rodrigues gone on to Amsterdam he would have been a deponent at the July 23, 1614 notarial deposition/inquiry, rather than a subject of depositions made by the three Captains and their crews regarding the attack on him. It would appear that Jan Rodrigues either remained at Manhattan Island as a trader and family man, or subsequently died.

Historical Data about Juan Rodriguez in the Hudson Harbor

In 1959, historian Simon Hart, wrote about New York and about the August 23, 1614 legal case of a free black man, from the island of Santo Domingo, who had a row with Dutch captains who were trading with the Indians, mostly for animal skins. Simon Hart’s initial research was based on archival documents uncovered in the late 1950s. Source: Hart, Simon: The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company. Amsterdam: City of Amsterdam Press, 1959. Historian Simon Hart provides his views on Rodriguez on pages 23 and 26, and an English translation of the Dutch archival documents that mention Rodriguez on pages 75, 80, 81 and 82.

What we know for sure about Juan Rodriguez’s days in what is today New York City is essentially what Simon Hart’s initial research based on archival documents uncovered in the late 1950s. CUNY DCI Monograph did not refute Simon Hart's work, but rather used his work as a base and extended it.

Rodriguez was a black or mulatto man from Santo Domingo who appeared in the Hudson Harbor at the early date of 1613 on board a Dutch ship that, as per all indications, was exploring the Northeast Coast of North America for its economic potential in the fur trade. The name Santo Domingo was used at the time as an alternate of the older name of La Española (which in Spanish means precisely “The Spanish One”). La Española was the name given in 1492 by Christopher Columbus to the island, the oldest European colony in the New World. In 1605 the Spanish Crown had forcefully concentrated the population of La Española on the Eastern regions of its territory, shortly before the arrival of Rodriguez in Hudson Harbor. This relocation would have a decisive impact on La Española's society, as the region subsequently evolved into what is today the Dominican Republic.

We also learned from Hart that after docking in the Hudson Harbor in 1613, Rodriguez was left in the area for many months, when the rest of the crew returned to the Netherlands during the late spring of 1613, and that he was still in the Hudson Harbor the during the spring of 1614, when other Dutch ships came back to the region, and further, did not leave when the Dutch traders returned to Amsterdam. This can be established by the August 24, 1614 post trip depositions.

Nothing else, in terms of first-hand evidence, has been firmly documented on Rodriguez ever since. Little more has been learned, since the publication of Hart’s book, about this peculiar aspect of the very early years of New York as a modern, multicultural, enclave of European colonialism in the Americas.

Simon Hart’s publication included some Dutch notarial documents dated August 20, 1613, and July 23, 1614,, in which some Dutch sailors described the incidents of the trip in 1613 that had taken them, presumably from the Caribbean, to the Hudson Harbor, as part of the expansion of the Dutch Republic into the Western Hemisphere during the first half of the seventeenth century. In their depositions, the sailors referred to a dark-skinned man “from Saint Domingo” named “Jan Rodrigues” who had come aboard one of the Dutch ships captained by Thijs Mossel, apparently as a sailor.

According to the Dutch documents, in spring, 1613, Rodriguez is said to have resisted the captain’s decision to continue the trip to the Netherlands, and remained in the Hudson Harbor area (possibly interacting in the meantime with the local Native American groups of the area) until the following year when more Dutch ships returned. One of those rival ships seems to have hired Rodriguez during the crew's attempt to trade in furs with Native Americans. When Rodriguez’s former captain returned to the Hudson on another trip, and finding Rodriguez working for another Dutch ship master seems to have sparked a scuffle between Rodriguez and his former fellow crew members. In the fight Rodriguez is said to have disarmed one of his opponents but at the end he was wounded and overpowered, before being rescued by his new co-workers. No further first-hand information about Rodriguez seems to have been identified by the historical scholarship since Hart’s book and, as a result, after 1613-1614 Rodriguez disappears from the known historical record.

More information

You are referred to the CUNY Dominican Studies Research Monograph which explored the life of Juan Rodriguez in greater depth, and which contains extensive manuscripts and dispositions relating to Jan/Jaun Rodricuez,along with translations in English taken from Spanish archives.^[14]

Death

Since there is no found evidence that Jan Juan Rodrigues left Manhattan, and further, some historical evidence exists to suggest Jan/Jaun Rodrigues was absorbed into the New Amsterdam community, and was still residing in the northern part of Manhattan as late as the 1640's.^[15]

Monuments

After 346 years, two monuments were erected to honor the long forgotten first immigrant to New Amsterdam/New York

A Sacred Space in Manhattan

A mural was erected to honor Jan/Juan Rodrigues at New York City's African Burial Grounds, A National Monument.

From about the 1690s until 1794, both free and enslaved Africans were buried in a 6.6-acre burial ground in Lower Manhattan, outside the boundaries of the settlement of New Amsterdam, later known as New York. Lost to history due to landfill and development, the grounds were rediscovered in 1991 as a consequence of the planned construction of a Federal office building.

Juan Rodríguez Way

In October 2012, the New York City Council enacted legislation to name Broadway from 159th Street to 218th Street in Manhattan after Juan Rodríguez^[16]. The neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood in Upper Manhattan have a substantial Dominican community. The first street sign was put up in a celebration with a small ceremony at 167th Street and Broadway on May 15th, 2013.

Sources

1. ↑ CUNY DSI Monograph on New York’s First Immigrant", The City College of New York
2. ↑ "El primer habitante de Nueva York era latino", BBC Mundo
3. ↑ Simon Hart, The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company. Amsterdam
4. ↑ Roberts, Sam. "Honoring a Very Early New Yorker", New York Times, October 2, 2012
5. ↑ Sención Villalona, Augusto (2010). Haché, Juana, ed. Historia dominicana: desde los aborígenes hasta la Guerra de Abril (in Spanish) (AGN-118 ed.). Santo Domingo: Editora Alfa y Omega. pp. 4–5. ISBN 978-9945-074-10-9.
6. ↑ CUNY Dominican Studies Research Monograph---Juan Rodriguez and the Beginnings of New York City
7. ↑ CUNY DSI Monograph on New York’s First Immigrant---Juan Rodriguez
8. ↑ Hart, Simon: The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company. Amsterdam
9. ↑ "The Life of Jan Rodrigues". African Burial Ground National Monument. National Park Service. 8 March 2013. Retrieved 9 March 2013.
10. ↑ From New Amsterdam to New York: The Founding of New York by the Dutch in ... By Dirk J. Barreveld
11. ↑ Tom Quick, ~~~~.
12. ↑ Simon Hart, The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company. Amsterdam
13. ↑ Simon Hart; The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company. Amsterdam
14. ↑ CUNY Dominican Studies Research Monograph---Juan Rodriguez and the Beginnings of New York City, by Anthony Stevens-Acevedo, Tom Weterings and Leonor Álvarez Francés., Copyright © 2013 CUNY Dominican Studies Institute
15. ↑ [http://www.nps.gov/afbg/learn/historyculture/jan-rodrigues.htm The Life of Jan Rodrigues
16. ↑ Legislative Research Center, New York City Council

• Book: From New Amsterdam to New York: The Founding of New York by the Dutch in ... By Dirk J. Barreveld

• Source: Hart, Simon: The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company. Amsterdam: City of Amsterdam Press, 1959. Historian Simon Hart provides his views on Rodriguez on pages 23 and 26, and an English translation of the Dutch archival documents that mention Rodriguez on pages 75, 80, 81 and 82.

• Source: Wikipedia article: Juan (Jan) Rodriguez

• CUNY DSI Publishes Monograph on New York’s First Immigrant, The City College of New York, press release, May 14, 2013. Notes from the release: The monograph is entitled “Juan Rodriguez and the Beginnings of New York City." It details the Latino identity of man from Island of Santo Domingo who settled here 400 years ago. A 1613 deposition by three crew members from ships owned by Adrian Block and Thijs Mossel mentions "a mulatto born in St. Domingo" who left Mossel's ship and stayed in the vicinity what would later become known as New Amsterdam.

Acknowledgements

• Rodrigues-447 was created by Tom Quick, Quick-803 21:25, 3 October 2015 (EDT).