NATIVE AMERICANS, THREE DRAMA'S

by: Pieter Bos
date: 8/11/2008
Category: Nations

How New York started and how this Wall Street Initiative started.
The “Wall Street Initiative” was designed to deal with the legacy of Dutch colonial policy in the early 17th century. It was initiated by Native American leaders, and carried out by a combined Native American, European American and Dutch team.
In 1609 the Englishman Henry Hudson “discovered” the bay of the river, later named after him, and landed on the southern tip of what is now Manhattan. He reported to the Dutch East Indies Company, VOC, who had employed him, that this location might make a strategic trading post. However, the VOC deemed fur and hides a second-rate commodity and did not follow up the advice.
In 1621 the West India Compagnie (WIC) was established; in her founding brief the spreading of the gospel was specifically mentioned. In 1624 the WIC decided to start a permanent trading post at Manhattan, which island was in 1626 bought from the Native Americans for the infamous price of 60 guilders.
This “New Netherlands” lasted from 1624 until 1664, when the English took it over and renamed the young settlement New York. The historic and spiritual foundation of the present world-class city New York is rooted in, and polluted by Dutch WIC policy.
The Twin Towers massacre at Manhattan, 9/11/2001, reminded some Native American leaders of the massacres by the Dutch in the early history of Manhattan. In 2002, at an international prayer leaders conference in Cape Town, my wife and I were the first Dutch that one of these leaders saw after 9/11 and he confronted us right away: “When are the Dutch coming to take responsibility for massacring the Wappingers-tribe in the Ground Zero area?” We immediately answered: “Tell us what we did, and when we should come to apologise”, for over the years we had learned the pattern: The (descendants of the) perpetrators want to forget as soon as possible, but the victims pass on the pain from generation to generation.
This Native American leader, together with a dedicated and skilled team, started a thorough research, profoundly helped by the timely discovery of WIC-archives. We tried to do our own research, but that was not easy on our side of the ocean.
What was worse, the contact with this leader withered. However, through three (!) coincidences, no less than absolutely divine appointments, God kept us connected. In hindsight we may say that the Native Americans were not waiting for another polite “podium-apology” and, as they told us later, they wanted to see whether we were sincere and serious with our offer of availability.
June 1 till 7, 2008, an international team endeavoured to carry out a special reconciliation process: “The Wall Street Initiative”. The team consisted of Lenape-, Iroquois-, Mohawk-, and Cherokee Native Americans, several European Americans, including descendants from the first settlers and the Amish, and four Dutch people, members of the Dutch Reconciliation Coalition. We visited 19 massacre sites to repent for our sins, to God and mutually to each other. In each borough (Staten Island, Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx and Manhattan) we had a day-base camp in a local church and local pastors and intercessors of that borough participated for that day.

The alcohol drama
Beginning with early explorer Henry Hudson, the Dutch introduced alcohol to Native Americans, thus setting the stage for subsequent social contacts. Native Americans were never exposed to alcohol prior to the arrival of the Dutch. The Dutch discovered that they had a low tolerance for it and quickly became intoxicated. Some Native chiefs once complained to New Amsterdam’s Governor Willem Kieft, “Why do you sell brandy to our young men? They are not used to it—it makes them crazy. Even your own people, who are accustomed to strong liquors, sometimes become drunk, and fight with knives. Sell no more strong drinks to the Indians, if you wish to avoid mischief.”
America’s first breweries were established by the Dutch on Staten Island and in Hoboken, New Jersey. Drinking was rampant among the general population throughout New Netherlands, even among ministers of the gospel! New Amsterdam’s illustrious Dominie, the Rev. Everardus Bogardus, was accused of missing church because of “habitual drunkenness, even at the communion table”. The island of Manhattan itself became associated with alcohol. Native Americans phonetically nicknamed the island, Mahahachtaniek meaning “a place of general inebriation.” According to Kieft, “’Fully one-quarter of [New Amsterdam’s] buildings were ‘grog-shops or houses where nothing is to be got but tobacco and beer... immoderate drinking caused daily mischief and perversity.’” (One legacy of this lives on today, with over one-thousand drinking shops on Manhattan Island alone.)
Knowing that alcohol easily impaired Native judgment, the Dutch strategically required its use in all transactions with Native Americans in order to manipulate them and gain unfair advantage. Alcohol consumption became an integral part of the process of dispossessing the Native people from their land. According to the American Indian scholar John A. Strong, the British continued this practice of using alcohol when doing business with Native Americans. From New Amsterdam and Fort Orange, now Albany, the curse of Native American alcohol abuse has spread to the rest of the continent.
Alcohol continues to play a major role today in suppressing Native Americans in the US from soberly rising up to fulfil their God-given destiny in the land. Alcoholism will continue to be the chief cause of social disintegration among Native Americans as long as reservations are the least evangelized places in North America.
The prophet Habakuk says: "Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbours, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk, so that he can gaze on their naked bodies” (Hab 2:15). This curse is on the Dutch, as they purposely used drunkenness for dark purposes. The sin here of the Dutch was also that they gave the First Peoples alcohol instead of sharing the gospel. This was an indication of the spiritual condition and motivation of the Dutch traders. Instead of bringing the liberating message of Jesus Christ they brought the inhabitants of the land into bondage through alcohol.

The Wall Street drama.
Before the Dutch landed at the southern tip of Manhattan,
(A) already major trade routes merged there, and
(B) it was next to Long Island where special shells were found, which were made into beads, which had become the regional currency. In other words: for the Lenape Native Americans that place, Manhattan, had a commercial and monetary role before the Dutch ever came.
The Dutch "bought" the whole island (for $ 24), but
(C) for Native Americans, a contract to buy territory was just a contract for living together, because in their thinking the soil belonged to the Eternal Creator, and could therefore not be "owned" by persons or peoples. However, in 1643, Governor Kieft, after some bloody conflicts with the Natives, out of fear built a wall across the island “to keep the Natives out” and secure the southern tip. That wall, now the location of Wall Street (!) (C) kept the Natives from their own soil, and (A) cut them off from their commercial - and (B) from their monetary centre!
In all three ways this is very dramatic, if not crushing for the Lenape, the Host Nation.
In the same period, still during Kieft’s governorship, a policy was developed and executed of driving the Native Americans away or completely subduing them. A “pig war” and a “peach war” were fought because of (accusations of) theft. The Lenape, who lived nearest, were forced to pay taxes (with the suggestion of protection by the Dutch in case of danger) whereas the more distant Mohawks were sold guns. However when Mohawks attacked the Lenape with these guns, who then fled to Kieft, he decided to set an example and cruelly murdered 140 men and women and children in one night. This was real betrayal and can be seen as the breaking of a covenant of trust. Governor Kieft called this “a Roman deed, striking terror”, thus introducing the spirit of empire and terrorism to the continent.

During the reconciliation meetings, at a number of relevant sites, the Dutch confessed what had happened in the past and the injustice done to the Native Americans.
When we stood at the plaque which commemorates the selling of the island, and when the effrontery and disrespect of the Dutch dawned on each of us with new force, the Dutch knelt before the Native Americans and we all just waited on God how to pray at all.
Then the leader, an Iroquois, prayed along this line: "Lord forgive us that we worshipped the soil, instead of the Creator; maybe the coming of the Dutch was a punishment". (This is an enormous prayer to pray, with a Dutch delegation around, but there was a strong presence of the Lord.) Then the following dawned on me: "Lord, we, the Dutch, by our Wall, excluded the Native Americans from their own soil, and from their commercial and monetary system. Then we, the whites, made this place into a global commercial and monetary hub according to our own ideas, while the Lenape were pushed away. Thus we impoverished them and cut them off from secular wealth. And on top of this the whites invited the UN to settle on Manhattan (!), an organisation that pursues the global worship of Mother Earth, in fact multiplying the sin of the original population, the worshipping of the soil, into a global sin. Lord, have mercy on us".
It was as if for a moment we held the world's history in our intercessor's hands. All wept. From great depth forgiveness was released.
It was at that moment that the Dutch delegation presented a “Rembrandt Bible”, a copy of the 17th century Dutch translation of the Bible, illuminated with drawings and paintings of the Dutch 17th century painter Rembrandt, to the Native Americans. We said: “This was available at the time we first met and this is what we should have brought and nothing beyond this. Would you accept this, as a token of our apology?” A Mohawk pastor accepted the token with tears, joy and pride.

The Missions drama.
Though in words the WIC promoted the gospel, and though organisationally there was always a Reformed pastor in any WIC-establishment, the goal was to run a profitable trading post; the pastor mainly represented the WIC-policy. Only after the trading post had been established for 10 years did the governor start to release territory to individual settlers. A number of these had a morbid understanding of predestination, assuming that “those savages” were not among the elect, and that therefore they were free to abuse or even kill them without sin.
On the other hand there were settlers who came with an honest vision to build healthy relations with Native Americans and evangelise them. Many of these, though, were not Dutch but Wallonians, English and Scots, and many were Anabaptists and Arminians. Some exemplary testimonies have been recorded, showing the zeal and love and fear of the Lord of these settlers. Some even bought the soil “from the fortress” and from the Native Americans, in order to make sure they were on speaking terms with them.
In other words, and these are the words of the team leaders: Both the Native Americans and the Dutch had great God-given potentials. The Lenapes had an enormous commercial and spiritual potential: the love for their soil, their commerce and their strategic location. Also the Europeans had an enormous commercial and spiritual potential: the WIC and the society-transforming power of the gospel. If only both parties had met at the core of their God-given potentials, then both the Lenape, the Native Americans in general, and the Dutch, would have entered their destiny!
But under Governor Kieft, 1639-’47, the Dutch made the choice for the commercial option, recklessly at the expense of the Native Americans and recklessly at the expense of the society-transforming power of the gospel. This is the great tragedy, the Missions drama, at the root of New Amsterdam and New York: money at any price.
And this immediately worked against the other option: The Native Americans, in retaliation against atrocities and injustices of Kieft, identified “white” with “Christian”, and killed “good and bad” settlers alike, eradicating not only Christians but also the humble and loving Christian presence in the region. (The borough Bronx was named after one of these: the Swede Broncos.) And for this very reason the openness to the gospel among Native Americans has been historically very limited!
We visited several sites where Native Americans and Christians had been murdered, to bring this before the Lord. At several of these sites we came across signs of witchcraft, both through revelation and through observation. Shedding ‘’innocent’’ blood attracts demonic activity.

Conclusions: the three dramas in summary.
Much more can be said. We had an awesome time of bonding as a team, of confrontations with deep evil and also of deep, deep wounds, of being silenced before God and one another, not knowing how to pray, of sudden tears by the Dutch and by the Native Americans, of clear guidance how to proceed when confronted with the facts. The borough-pastors who participated, each at “their” day, learned new ways of identifying with their borough.
These three “dramas”, which the Lenape suffered through the Dutch in the Manhattan region seem representative for what the Native Americans went through throughout the continent.
The Alcohol-drama: The Native Americans were degraded in their own eyes, polluted in their ways, and dispossessed from their beloved soil.
The Wall Street drama: The Native Americans were cut off from their commercial systems and excluded from the imported commercial system and so condemned to poverty.
The Missions drama: The Native Americans were confronted with such a disfigured image of the Creator God and Father of Jesus Christ, that they were almost blinded to really meet Him.
Much has happened after the Dutch left. But huge and terrible is the Dutch responsibility for putting these three drama’s on stage in the early 17th century, causing the Lenape to be driven away, first to Pennsylvania, then on to Missouri and now to Ontario, Canada, and causing all Native Americans to be wounded.
We visited only 19 sites. We want to be available for a follow up, believing that confessing guilt at intercessors’ level, will open the way in the heavenlies for spiritual and political leaders to finally take responsibility. May that lead to the restoration of the Native Americans in their dignity as First Nations.

The Saturday we finished was also the weekend that, for the fourth time, every street in New York was prayer walked. The intercessors involved in that project were informed about this Wall Street Initiative and their follow-up may serve this “opening the way in the heavenlies”.

(We are very thankful and appreciative for the anointed Native American team leadership. In this report we thankfully use information provided by the skilful and committed researcher in the team.)

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