Jan Rodrigues

Juan "Jan" Rodriguez (or Rodrigues), born in Santo Domingo, was the son of a Portuguese sailor and of an African woman and was the first man, of African and European descent, to live in what would become New York City^[1][2] spending the winter, without the support of anchored ship, at a Dutch fur trading post on Lower Manhattan that had been set up by Christiaan Hendricksen in 1613.

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 joined the traders established in the tiny 11 year old settlement of New Amsterdam.

In the early spring of 1613, 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 Rodriguez 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, [Rodriguez] born in St. Domingo, who had arrived there with the ship of said Mossel, stayed ashore at the same place. They had given [Rodriguez] eighty hatchets, some knives, a musket and a sword.

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

[Mossel] declared that this Spaniard [Rodriguez] 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 Rodriguez. This means that a native of Santo Domingo, now the Dominican Republic and Haiti, was the first documented non-Native American to remain on Manhattan without the support of a ship in the harbor. And the natives, who preferred the goods and ironware sold by Rodriguez over their own, seem to have accepted him as the island’s first merchant.

By the autumn of 1613, three Dutch ships had arrived: De Tijer, captained by Block, the Fortuyn, captained by Hendrick Christiaensen, and the Nachtegaal, captained by Mossel. This time it was Christiaensen who wrote about Rodriguez. His log states that Rodriguez came aboard the Nachtegaal, presented himself as a freeman, and offered to work for Christiaensen trading furs. Despite the short, exciting narrative, the historical record leaves us with few details about the remainder of the life of Juan “Jan” Rodriguez. What does remain is an intriguing episode of early New York City history.

So despite Christiaensen being officially considered the founder of New York City in late 1613, actually the real founder of the city is Jan Rodriguez, having established himself in Manhattan around a year before in late 1612 (the actual year of settlement of the city by non-natives).

Today a plaque stands in Riverside Park in Manhattan in recognition of Jan Rodriguez, whom history records as the first merchant and non-Native American inhabitant of the island. In addition, a mural created by Creative Arts Workshops for Kids, in sponsorship with the Harlem River Park Task Force, Harlem Community Development Corporation and New York State Department of Transportation, depicts an image of Jan Rodriguez as he might have appeared in 1613.^[3]

References