Issue 145

Winter & Spring 2014

Image from War Movie

Fiction John Keene Fiction John Keene

Mannahatta

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

According to Simon Hart’s 1959 study The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company: Amsterdam Notarial Records of the First Dutch Voyages to the Hudson, published by the City of Amsterdam Press, a certain “Jan Rodrigues,” described as a “mulatto . . . of San Domingo,” sailed to what is now Manhattan, New York, in 1613 aboard the Jonge Tobias, captained and owned by Thijs Volckenz Mossel. Hart continues by pointing out that Rodrigues was “not satisfied on Mossel’s ship and did not wish to go back to Holland with him.”

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