Driving Ms. Maas, and Trading Manhattan for Saphron Spice

[Ed Ziomek]

In my travels as a “gabby cabby”, I was lucky enough to meet with a certain wonderful, elderly Ms. Maas.

As we discussed the history of the local area, she matter of factly spoke of something her late husband had given her, “the Treaty where the Dutch traded away Manhattan and Westchester, for Surinam, a spice island which produced Saphron”!

Oh! What treaty is this? The Dutch made a treaty? Didn’t the English just TAKE Manhatten?

“No, the Dutch traded it away. My husband was a lawyer-architect who collected old documents, and one of them was the Treaty that traded Manhattan! Oh, and he also invented the legal term...'air rights'!"

I’ve never heard of this, are you sure it is authentic? Might it not be...uhhh...VAL-U-A-BLE?!

“I think it is, my husband thought it was.”

So in my followup research, I found that somewhere in the world there may be a paper document treaty, showing the transfer of title for Manhatten and Westchester to the English, in exchange for the very valuable spice island of Suriname. Yes, the Dutch thought they got the better deal.

I also learned of a cute little scene, possibly 1663, when the English sailors arrived in New Amsterdam harbor, unloaded armed sailors, and were met I guess at Battery Park with a sword-swinging Peter Stuyvesant, an army of ONE!

The English apparently looked on with amazement as Mr. Stuyvesant was yelling, screaming, trying to encourage the settlers to rally to his cause. Mostly he was met with the rabble such as ....”What the hell are you doing up there?”

After all, there were the outnumbered Dutch landowners, the Yon-kers...young Princes, but the majority of inhabitants were non-Dutch, even freed slaves, known by the comically derisive term of “Yan-kees”, and they welcomed the English!!!

It took a full year or so, even a re-seizure by the Dutch, then re-re-seizure again by the English, and in 1664, a treaty apparently was signed.

More on Peter S....
http://www.lakelandschools.org/lt/NewYorkVM/peoplestuyvesant2.htm

Is the Ms. Maas Treaty document authentic, or is it a fraud, and does it even still exist?

Does it sit in Ms. Maas’s top drawer, as she claimed it did?

Does anyone know where that document is today?

[Richard Haut]

fascinating.

looked at from the reverse-end, apparently the British ceded Surinam to the Dutch in exchange for New Amsterdam in 1667 (although it only became finally Dutch with the Treaty of Vienna in 1815).

My impression is that the British did seize New Amsterdam (in the name of the Duke of York) but may have offered Surinam as a sort of trade-off. Since they seized New Amsterdam in 1664, and ceded Surinam in 1667, that might make sense.

Typical British Imperial trade. (They seized Surinam again a few years after giving it away).