History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 227

Pierre Minuit
In 1626, Pierre Minuit, governor of New-Belgium, became famous by the purchase of
Manhattan Island. He bought it from the Manhattes Indians in exchange for glittering
beads and other trinkets. The total value was about sixty guilders or $ 24.
Pierre Minuit was a Walloon, born in Wesel (Rheinland). His parents, from Tournai
(Hainault), had settled there in 1581 in order to flee the religious persecutions .
Himself will become deacon of the Walloon Church.
Willing to defend the colonists interests, he also distinguished himself by the respect
shown to those of the Indians. In his opinion, the harmonious mix and integration of
two cultures - even apparently opposed - was preferable to the pure and simple
throwing out of the weakest or so-called less civilized one.
Besides, tolerance was not particularly the strong point of the West India Company.
Feudal organization, the latter enforced a series of strict rules for all colonists wishing
to emigrate to New-Belgium: apart from public worship of the reformed religion, the
settlers were required to make exclusive use of the Low-German - the language from
which Flemish and Dutch are originated - in every public act of the colony.
A lot of family names got a Dutch “camouflage”, like Rapalje for Rapaille or Minnewit
for Minuit. Other colonists were simply called by the name of the Dutch city they just
left. The American historian Charles W. Baird, in his book “History of the Huguenot
Emigration to America”, qualified this type of abuse as "Batavian disguise".
The settlers were also forbidden to weave wool or linen, make cloth or any other
textile, at the risk of being banished or prosecuted as perjurers. The secret aim was to
protect the monopoly for the imports from Holland.
The kindly and protective attitude of Pierre Minuit towards the settlers, and the
covetousness of a Director from the Dutch company who wanted to impose his
nephew as a governor, made that he was called back in 1632.
The trails of the Walloons and Flemish people in New York are numerous and often
unknown: the Gowanus Bay for instance, west of Brooklyn, is named after Owanus,
Latin translation of Ohain, a village in Walloon Brabant. The Wallabout Bay, north of
Brooklyn, is a deformation of the Dutch "Waal bocht" (Walloon Bay)
The name Hoboken, well known district west of Manhattan, comes from a municipality
near Antwerp, Flanders. Communipaw, in Jersey