Project MUSE - The Flemish Bastard and the Former Indians: Métis and Identity in Seventeenth-Century New York The Flemish Bastard and the Former Indians Métis and Identity in Seventeenth-Century New York Tom Arne Midtrød (bio) In 1709 the English Board of Trade recommended the settlement of three thousand Palatine migrants on the Hudson and Mohawk rivers in New York. The officials expressed confidence that these colonists would not only produce naval stores for the fleet but also intermarry with the Indians "as the French do" and lay the foundation for an expanding fur trade. They knew well that French Canadians had long mingled with Indians and produced children of mixed ancestry, or métis. What they perhaps did not know was that New York had long had métis of its own. 1 Compared to Canada, New York never had a large métis population, and some historians have commented upon the social distance between Dutch and Indians. Nevertheless, intimacy resulting in métis children does not seem to have been uncommon in this colony. Dutch observers charged Indians with lack of sexual restraint, and liaisons between Dutch men and Native women sometimes worried the authorities.

In 1638 the Dutch council prohibited adultery with blacks and Indians and at least occasionally took legal action. Manor lord and patroon Kiliaen van Rensselaer warned his nephew Arent van Curler and forbade his tenants from sleeping with Indian females. Sexual promiscuity with Indian women was among the charges levied against provincial secretary Cornelis van Tiehnoven by his political enemies in the 1640s. Prosecutions of colonists impregnating Indian women are known from the early English period. 2 Native people probably thought these relations should involve a degree of reciprocity and mutual obligation. Historians have stressed that many Native peoples saw marriage and other intimate relations as means [End Page 83] of incorporating outsiders, and an early Dutch observer alluded to the existence of this practice among Native traders in New Netherland. Such intimacy created a bond between strangers, and in 1643 a Long Island chief deplored Dutch violence by recalling how his people had let early Dutch visitors sleep with their daughters. In 1659 Mohawk envoys complained that Dutchmen involved with Native women who had passed away did not honor obligations to the relatives of the deceased.

In some cases colonists may have married Native women according to local custom, and in 1683 a Long Island Englishman married a Native woman according to English law. 3 To most métis born from these relationships, European ancestry was probably just a relatively minor biological fact. They followed their mothers—normally in charge of children—and became for all practical purposes fully Indian. In 1680 a Dutch visitor to New York alluded to these people when he wrote of the fruits of Dutch immorality, and the Long Island chief mentioned above charged the Dutch with killing their own blood, since "there roved many an Indian begotten by a Swanneken [Dutchman]." While in Mohawk captivity in 1653 Frenchman Pierre Radisson found that his adoptive brother was courting a light-haired young woman "who, by report of many, was bastard to a Flemish." Radisson's observation seems to indicate some interest in this woman's Dutch father, but it also suggests that her biologically mixed background did not set her much apart from the rest of her community.

This is, of course, not to suggest that most métis people were oblivious of the fact that they had European fathers, only that their mixed ancestry did not have much of an impact on their social standing. How much a distant European father shaped a person's self-perception is now impossible to determine, but perhaps many European fathers gave their Indian children no more than slightly light features and possibly made them the topic of occasional conversation in Native settlements. 4 But some métis maintained ties to European relatives, and these were perhaps the only ones who were métis in any socially or culturally meaningful sense of the word. Scattered evidence indicates ongoing contact between métis persons and the society of their fathers. When a French force in January 1666 captured a métis boy in Mohawk country, local Dutch officials persuaded the French commander to hand him over to the custody of his Dutch uncle. Facing prosecution for taking three guns away from some Indians, an Albany colonist in 1676 wanted an Indian [End Page 84] daughter of Arent van Curler (who apparently ignored Kiliaen van Rensselaer's avuncular advice) to testify on his behalf.

It was then ten years since Van Curler died, but people still knew of his Indian daughter. An anonymous Dutchman showing responsibility for his Mohawk nephew, Albany people remembering the Indian daughter of a long-dead colonial official—such fragments of information do not reveal much about how contacts between métis individuals and European communities actually functioned, but at least they seem to hint at their existence. To those who nurtured connections to the communities of European kin, being métis was of at least some significance, although how much is hard to ascertain. 5 This paper examines the lives of three children of Dutch men and Mohawk women: the Mohawk leader Smits Jan and the siblings Jacques van Slyck and Hilletie van Olinda of the Dutch village of Schenectady. In recent years several historians have examined how cross-cultural settings enabled people to reshape their identities. William Hart sees the eighteenth-century New York frontier as a place in perpetual flux and its inhabitants as cultural borrowers who could defy established categories of ethnicity and status. The case of métis in seventeenth-century New York, however, seems to suggest that ethnic categories were important and difficult to transcend.

While Smits Jan lived his life as a Mohawk leader, Jacques van Slyck and his sister Hilletie van Olinda became full members of Dutch colonial society. Being métis may have afforded these people some cultural capital not available to either Indians or Europeans, and at times all three seem to have attempted to use their background as a diplomatic tool, with varying degrees of success. In that sense métis people could bridge a cultural gap, but they were not people who changed ethnicity or identity at will. While the Van Slycks managed to make the transition from Mohawk to Dutch society, they did not do so more than once, and it seems to have been a trying experience. Indeed, the case of the Van Slycks seems to suggest that métis persons may to some extent have been vulnerable members of Iroquois society in the mid-seventeenth century, at least if they acted in ways that defied established ethnic boundaries. Smits Jan is in some ways more difficult to assess. As a prominent Mohawk leader he was in frequent contact with European officials, and both he and the French appear to have placed some level of importance on his Dutch ancestry.

But the Dutch never clearly acknowledged Smits Jan as anything other than a Mohawk, which may be [End Page 85] symptomatic of an enduring skepticism of or discomfort with people of mixed ethnicity, and the headman himself had far more extensive interactions with the French than with the Dutch or any other Europeans. 6 As a war captain and diplomat, Smits Jan (known as Canaqueese to the Mohawks and the "Flemish Bastard" to the French) consistently worked to promote the interests of the Mohawk people. A French source from 1650 first described the headman as "an execrable issue of sin, the monstrous offspring of a Dutch Heretic Father and a Pagan woman," and he reappears as an enemy of the French through the 1650s and mid-1660s. But he was also a diplomat and played an important role in a complex set of diplomatic struggles within the Iroquois League following the Franco-Iroquois peace of 1653.

Smits Jan was concerned that relations between the French and the four western nations threatened Mohawk control over trade with Europeans, and he went on two diplomatic journeys to Canada in 1654, warning the French that they should conduct their relations with the Longhouse through the "eastern door" of the Mohawks, not the central fire of the Onondagas. During the French peace the headman pursued the long-term Iroquois goal of absorbing the Huron nation, herding a band of captives back to Mohawk country in 1656. As long as the peace with the French lasted, Smits Jan did his best to preserve it, going as far as to hand a French renegade among his warriors over to Montreal authorities in 1656, but when war was renewed two years later, he again took up the hatchet against Canada, fighting near Montreal in 1660 and against a French invasion force near Schenectady in early 1666.

7 In his dealings with the French it is unclear whether Smits Jan's European background played any significant role at all, but in 1663 he made an attempt to strengthen relations between the Mohawks and the society of his Dutch father. When the Munsee-speaking Esopus Indians (of present Ulster County, New York) in June 1663 captured several Dutch colonists near present Kingston, Smits Jan offered the Fort Orange magistrates his help in negotiating their release. When his negotiations failed, and he only managed to procure the release of a single captive, he wanted to free the prisoners by force. As a métis perhaps he hoped to use his Dutch background to influence the Dutch trading partners of the Mohawks both to benefit his people and to increase his own standing in Mohawk society. Dutch records do not mention Smits Jan's mixed roots, but the French were well aware of his background, which suggests [End Page 86] that he had some kind of tie to his father's society. Perhaps it was simply his European features that gave him away, but even captives such as Radisson were often mistaken for Indians by strangers who judged them by their clothing and other apparel.

Perhaps Smits Jan wore some other visible sign of Dutch connections; Marie de l'Incarnation initially reported that he was a Dutchman. 8 As a man with both Dutch and Iroquois roots, Smits Jan may have believed he would be an ideal mediator, a role that would bring him influence and access to European goods. Smits Jan was willing to go to war for the friendship of the Dutch, but this plan came to naught when Fort Orange magistrates voiced their opposition, having no desire to see the war with the Esopus Indians spread to their immediate neighborhood. The Dutch officials claimed that Smits Jan had been drunk and had made the offer of intervention without the approval of senior Mohawk chiefs. The latter half of this claim, at least, may well have been true, as the Mohawks were already involved in other military conflicts, and it is at any rate striking that the métis headman was the only prominent Mohawk leader who seemed interested in intervening in the Esopus War in favor of the Dutch. 9 But Smits Jan was always first and foremost a Mohawk and shortly after the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664 showed his willingness to risk his life for the sake of his people.

In late 1665 the western Iroquois again made peace with the French, but the Mohawks remained aloof, and in January 1666 the French governor, the marquis de Tracy, sent a military expedition against them. This advance stalled near Schenectady (where the vanguard clashed with Smits Jan and his warriors), but Dutch colonists treated the invaders with kindness, supplying the weary troops with provisions before they departed for Canada; the Netherlands were allied with France in war against England at this time. No doubt alarmed by this incursion (as well as by the attitude of their Dutch trading partners), Mohawk delegates signed a treaty of peace at Quebec in July, but the peace was soon marred by the killing and capturing of French soldiers, and Tracy immediately sent another expedition into Mohawk country. Finding no help at Albany (the magistrates claimed to lack ammunition), Smits Jan and three of his compatriots collected the French captives and intercepted the invaders two days' march from the Mohawk towns. Smits Jan handed over the prisoners and offered guaranties of peace. This was a daring move; the Native allies [End Page 87] of the French wanted to burn the Mohawks alive.

But it worked. The Mohawks were spared a French assault, for the time being. 10 Once again Smits Jan became a central participant in complex diplomatic negotiations. In July 1666 the Albany magistrates arranged for a meeting of Mohawk and French delegates at Albany. The Mohawks promised peace, and Smits Jan went as a hostage to Quebec, but in October Tracy broke off the negotiations and launched a third invasion of Mohawk country. When Tracy returned to Canada, leaving the smoking remains of Mohawk towns and cornfields behind him, he sent Smits Jan back to his homeland with French demands. New York governor Richard Nicolls now took an interest in the métis headman, hoping to use him to obtain intelligence of the French, but much to his annoyance Smits Jan appears to have avoided meeting with the governor at Manhattan, probably realizing that his people could not count on English aid. Smits Jan returned to Quebec in April 1667, and in July Mohawk envoys came to Tracy to request Jesuit missionaries. Smits Jan had succeeded, and the Mohawks had peace with the French.

11 Unlike Smits Jan, who lived his life as a Mohawk, the métis members of the Van Slyck family chose integration into colonial society. Born in the 1640s, the brothers Martin and Jacques (often called Akus) Cornelissen van Slyck, their sister Hilletie van Olinda, and probably also a woman called Lea Stevens, were the children of Dutch colonist Cornelis van Slyck and an unknown Mohawk woman. The siblings spent their early years among the Mohawks but came to settle at Schenectady, where Martin died young and unmarried but where Jacques, Hilletie, and Lea lived for several decades and married Dutch colonists. 12 It was apparently their conversion to Calvinist Christianity that led the Van Slycks to become Dutch rather than Mohawk. The early years of the Van Slycks are known to posterity through the relation of Jasper Danckaerts, who met Hilletie at Schenectady in 1680 and was impressed by her piety.

According to Danckaerts, Hilletie became attracted to Christianity as a young girl, but her Mohawk mother and other relatives tried to discourage her interest in the alien religion, cursing her and pelting her with stones, until her persistence finally made her an outcast. Some time in the early 1660s Hilletie moved to Schenectady, where she became a household servant and learned to read the Bible, although she apparently never attained full literacy, and in 1706 signed a petition [End Page 88] with a simple cross. Finally, she received baptism and in 1680 married a Dutchman, with whom she had several children. 13 There is little doubt that Hilletie's conversion and subsequent ostracism was a painful experience, but she was not quite the lone pious convert Danckaerts delighted in describing.

Although Danckaerts thought Jacques was a "wicked" man (Jacques was in good company here; Danckaerts met a great number of wicked people), he admitted that Hilletie's brother was likewise a Christian, and the Netherlander took great interest in Wouter, Jacques and Hilletie's twenty-six-year-old Mohawk nephew, who was then living with his uncle. Hilletie may have been the first of her family to convert, but her siblings apparently soon joined her, and in this they resembled later converts to Catholicism, who often followed Christian relatives. The same is also true of Wouter, who clearly followed the lead of his métis relatives, and if Jacques was Wouter's maternal uncle, he would, in Iroquois reckoning, be among his closest kin. By moving to Schenectady, Wouter thus may have acted to preserve rather than break family ties. Wouter, in fact, related that he had heard Jesuit missionaries preaching among the Mohawks but apparently elected to follow the lead of his relatives rather than that of coverts to Catholicism. 14 To these early converts Christianity and Mohawk identity apparently seemed impossible to reconcile, and being Christian therefore meant not being Mohawk.

The Van Slycks were among the very first Mohawks to convert to Christianity, and if one believes Danckaerts's account, it seems apparent that most Mohawks simply would not accept Christians among them. Like his aunt, Wouter claimed to have suffered much abuse at the hands of his compatriots, but his interest in Christianity was still unshaken, although he practiced his new religion in a highly Iroquois fashion, calling upon God to aid him in his hunting, much like other Iroquois would enlist the aid of spirits controlling the game. To Wouter, however, it was no less Christian for that. He had not yet received baptism but clearly impressed Danckaerts with his conviction. 15 The ostracism of the Van Slycks was never complete, as their involvement in New York's diplomatic relations with the Iroquois demonstrates, but even when they were in contact with their mother's kin, their behavior in many ways resembled that of other members of colonial society. From 1663 Jacques worked as an interpreter and envoy in the service of the Fort Orange (later Albany) authorities and continued in that capacity [End Page 89] until his death in 1690.

But his relations with Indians were in several ways not unlike those of colonists in similar positions. He received a license to sell liquor at Schenectady in competition with another interpreter, Cornelis Cornelissen Viele, the brother of the more famous fur trader and interpreter Arnout Cornelissen Viele. Like Arnout Viele, both Jacques and his sister used their connections among the Mohawks to acquire land. In 1672 Jacques negotiated the sale of a flat of land to the inhabitants of Schenectady, and both he and his sister obtained personal land grants. Jacques also shared other Schenectady inhabitants' strong dislike of Albany's monopoly on the fur trade and that town's dominance over its smaller neighbor community, and when the sheriff of Albany sought to prosecute a Schenectady resident for illegal trading in early 1680, both Jacques and Cornelis Viele refused to act as interpreters at the questioning of a Mohawk witness. 16 At times the Van Slycks seem to have made a deliberate effort to distance themselves from their Mohawk past. According to Danckaerts, Jacques was in the habit of making disparaging remarks about Indians, apparently trying to highlight his own European credentials.

Once when they were out hunting, Jacques told Wouter that he, "a mere stupid Indian," could not shoot, but Jacques himself, "a Christian," would have a good hunt. While this tale serves as a kind of morality play in which the pious Wouter fells a large deer with God's aid and leaves the sneering Jacques empty-handed and humiliated, it may hint at a larger truth about Jacques' desire to shed his Mohawk past. Jacques did, in fact, manage to go from being seen as a Mohawk to becoming a full member of colonial society. While a record from 1663 refers to the métis man as "Akus, the savage," by 1682 he had managed to become "Akus Cornelis formerly an Indian," underscoring a successful transition from Mohawk to Dutch society. Even Wouter may have sought to distance himself from his Mohawk roots, dressing in the European fashion and trying to learn Dutch. Danckaerts and his companion Peter Sluyter in fact persuaded Wouter to return with them to the Netherlands, but he never appeared at their agreed-upon rendezvous in Boston, and his later fate is unknown.

17 The Van Slycks were not the only Mohawks to face ostracism because of their interest in Christianity, but for several reasons their case nevertheless seems unusual. During the Franco-Iroquois peace after 1665 Jesuit missionary efforts effected the conversion of hundreds of Iroquois, [End Page 90] creating deep divisions within Mohawk communities. From the mid-1670s francophile Catholic Mohawks, who increasingly found themselves harassed and shunned by traditionalist relatives, began to leave Iroquoia to form new communities in Canada. The Van Slycks, however, had converted several years before this split had become apparent, and though their experiences in some ways resembled those of later converts, the degree of resentment they stirred up nevertheless seems puzzling. According to Daniel Richter, traditionalist Mohawks especially resented that Catholic converts refused to participate in traditional rites and ceremonies. When large numbers of people scorned the rituals that bound Mohawk society together, the social fabric itself seemed to be in danger of unraveling, particularly when prominent Mohawk leaders abandoned the old ways. The Van Slycks, however, can hardly have seemed especially threatening to Mohawk society.

They were few and quite young, hardly prominent or influential individuals, and, unlike later Catholic converts, they did not have Jesuit missionaries who insisted that they abstain from participating in rituals and other social events. Nor can they have been the only Mohawks who cultivated an interest in foreign spirituality, as many adopted Hurons still clung to the Catholic beliefs. Yet they seem to have been the only Mohawks forced into exile for religious reasons at this time. 18 Part of the explanation may lie in the peculiar stresses in Iroquois society in the mid-1600s. Because of the Iroquois practice of adopting captured enemies, Iroquoia had become extremely ethnically heterogeneous, so much that in 1660 a Jesuit claimed that adopted captives now outnumbered native Iroquois. As the Iroquois knew well, these adoptees were not all assimilated, and Daniel Richter has argued that the Five Nations found it increasingly difficult to integrate foreigners at this time. When Radisson made his first attempt at escaping from the Mohawks, he went together with an Algonquin man who had fallen into Iroquois hands two years earlier.

Given the large foreign element in their communities, many Iroquois may have been wary of deviants, whether they longed for their old homes or dabbled in alien spirituality. 19 On the surface it would seem that their métis background should have nothing to do with the hostility the Van Slycks aroused in their Mohawk homeland. The Iroquois matrilineal kinship system placed prime importance on the mother's kin, and most métis probably became fully Iroquois, even if they retained some contact with European [End Page 91] relatives; there is little indication of any widespread prejudice against these people. Smits Jan, after all, became an influential leader; indeed, to the extent that he could draw on his European roots in diplomatic negotiations with the French and the Dutch, his mixed background might even have been an asset.

Likewise, the woman Radisson's brother desired was reputedly "of a great family." Nor was biological descent as important as external compliance with the Iroquois mode of life, for a society that practiced mass adoption of war captives and other forms of fictive kinship would have little truck with European notions of kinship flowing solely through bonds of "blood." People with one or even two non-Iroquois parents were commonplace in Iroquoia by the mid-seventeenth century. Some of these people were Europeans, and if they behaved like other Iroquois, they might become prominent individuals, as was true of an English-born Cayuga chief mentioned in 1705. 20 The problem with the Van Slycks may therefore lie less in their biological ancestry than in their ongoing contact with the society of their father. The Iroquois could be intolerant of nonconformity in their captives, but the Van Slycks should have required no forced integration. The Iroquois were as a rule loath to use coercion against members of their own communities, valuing the suppression of negative emotions.

The Van Slycks were unusual only in their European background at a time when Iroquois communities were struggling to incorporate large foreign and potentially disloyal elements. Having a foreign father may not have mattered much, but biological relations to Europeans were only part—and perhaps the least important part—of the métis experience, for métis people sometimes had ongoing contact with the society of their European fathers. According to Danckaerts, Dutch colonists offered to raise Hilletie in a colonial household, but her mother said she would kill her daughter rather than have her live with the Dutch. Her brothers adopted the surname of their father, and both they and their sister used the patronymic "Cornelissen" after they moved to Schenectady. The Dutch community at large apparently accepted them as Cornelis van Slyck's children, all of which suggests that he was hardly a father they did not know. When métis individuals added an interest in Christianity to such ongoing kinship connections to people outside of Mohawk society, other Mohawks may have found them too alien to accept.

21 The Dutch, too, found ethnically ambiguous people hard to tolerate, and during her first years at Schenectady Hilletie had to weather the insults [End Page 92] of colonists who called her a "sow converted" and told people to fetch her some swill. Janny Venema suggests that the palisade constructed around the town of Beverwijck (the settlement by Fort Orange) in 1659 had the effect of strengthening the feeling of Dutchness or Europeanness among the local colonists, more clearly separating them from the Indians on both physical and mental planes. What this might mean, of course, is that the Van Slycks left Mohawk country for a life among the Dutch precisely as the Dutch were fencing themselves in and emphasizing their separateness from Indians. Under these circumstances it is easy to understand why Jacques may have wanted to stress the distance between himself and his Mohawk nephew. By discarding as much as they could of their Mohawk past, the Van Slycks not only reacted to a bitter experience of ostracism but also attempted to accommodate their new neighbors.

In time the Van Slycks gained recognition as full members of the Dutch community, but even in later years outsiders might see them as Indians, as did the New York governor, the Earl of Bellomont, who in 1698 referred to Hilletie as a "Mohack woman." 22 The growth of an anglophile faction among the Mohawks in the 1680s seems to have enabled the Van Slycks to strengthen their ties to their old home. As the francophiles left for Canada, their opponents gained the upper hand, and these people sought a closer relationship to New York. To the anglophiles, the Van Slycks could now become a valuable link to their English allies. In 1683 Mohawk leaders protested to Governor Thomas Dongan that the flats of land Jacques had secured for Schenectady in 1672 belonged not to the town but to Jacques, Hilletie, and Lea alone. The root of this incident is unclear (all the more so because the record is badly damaged by fire), but maybe Jacques regretted signing this land over to Schenectady and enlisted the aid of his kin to obtain compensation.

Whatever the case, the Van Slycks were outcasts no more, and in the late 1680s Jacques began to spend more time in Iroquois country, going on three diplomatic journeys in 1687 alone. In 1688 Iroquois sachems requested that minutes of conferences with colonial officials be left with Jacques, so that he—a man they obviously knew and trusted—could be a source of future reference. 23 Just as important was the emergence of a Protestant community among the Mohawks. Unlike the Van Slycks, these new converts retained a clear Mohawk identity and mode of life. By 1684 the Jesuits' missions had closed, but as Catholicism receded, Albany minister Godfridius [End Page 93] Dellius began to win converts among the Mohawks. With the outbreak of imperial war these people became strong supporters of the New York–Iroquois alliance against the French, and Mohawks with Christian names worked to prevent their compatriots from making any accord with Canada.

When Governor Sloughter arrived at Albany to meet with the Iroquois in 1691, the Protestant Mohawks insisted on being the first to greet him, honoring him with the name of "father" instead of the customary address "brother." Since it was now clearly possible to be both a Mohawk and a Christian, there was no reason to consider the Van Slycks outcasts or deserters. 24 Hilletie now became an important part of Anglo-Iroquois diplomacy. Hilletie had served as an interpreter already in 1666 but does not reappear in this capacity until 1689. After her brother's death in 1690 she was a frequent "interpretess" at meetings between Natives and colonists and became New York's official interpreter, replacing Arnout Viele, now out of favor because of his association with the Leislerian party (a political faction that emerged in the tumultuous period following the Revolution of 1688, when Jacob Leisler seized control of the provincial government). Hilletie received an annual salary of £25 and at some point moved to Albany to be able to perform her duties more effectively.

At least twice she accompanied Albany officials on diplomatic visits to Iroquois towns. Hilletie's increasing contact with her mother's kin is demonstrated by the attention given her by Iroquois delegates, who urged colonial officials to provide well for their interpreter, "who doth good service for the publick and is our mouth and ears." In 1698 an agent of Governor Bellomont accused Hilletie of mismanaging Indian affairs and recommended her suspension (and the reinstatement of Arnout Viele), a charge probably motivated by the changing political landscape of the province, as Bellomont favored the Leislerians, and Hilletie had close ties to anti-Leislerian Albany officials such as Peter Schuyler and Dirck Wesselse ten Broeck. Being an interpreter was a thankless job, at least if one judges by the petitions Hilletie had to file to obtain her salary and how long it took for her to receive it, but she continued in the position into the first decade of the eighteenth century, and her sister, Lea Stevens, also filled this role on a few occasions.

25 It may be tempting to see Hilletie's role as "interpretess" as a sign of her Mohawk background, given the strong position of women in Iroquois society, but Dutch women, too, were involved in various aspects of [End Page 94] Native-colonial relations in early New York. Focusing on Pennsylvania, James Merrell has argued that both European American and Indian leaders agreed that diplomacy was the realm of men, a claim recently contested by Alison Duncan Hirsch, who shows that women were central to the day-to-day workings of intercultural relations. But regardless of the situation in Pennsylvania, women were an integral part of relations between Indians and colonists in New Netherland and New York. Dutch colonial society seems to have allowed women a greater measure of independence than did the English, and many women were active fur traders at such places as Fort Orange. There was thus nothing unusual about colonial women having close contact with Indians, and Hilletie was not the only female interpreter in early New York.

Sara Kierstede interpreted at several meetings between Dutch officials and representatives of various Munsee-speaking Hudson Valley groups in the late Dutch period, as did Trientje Evertsen on at least one occasion. In the early 1700s a woman named Ariantie Tappen worked as "interpretess" at meetings between Ulster County authorities and the Esopus Indians. Other occasional female interpreters include the wife of Dutch colonist Juriaen Tenuisz and the widow of Sylvester Salisbury, English commander at Albany in the 1670s. 26 Hilletie also became an influential figure among the Protestant Mohawks. She was a close associate of Godfridius Dellius, whom she instructed in the Mohawk language, and she remained loyal to the minister even when he and other Albany leaders managed to trick two Protestant Mohawks into signing over an enormous tract of land. When the Mohawks complained, Bellomont had Dellius banished from New York. Immediately before the minister departed, Hilletie apparently managed to pressure the converts who had testified against Dellius to recant and ask his forgiveness. But it was too late to save the minister.

Hilletie's maneuverings were exposed, and the supposedly recanting Mohawks accused her of putting words in their mouths. While Hilletie sided with a European against her own Mohawk relatives, this episode still did not mean the end of her influence among the Protestant Mohawks, for she continued to assist later ministers in preaching to the Mohawks. In 1704 three Mohawk headmen with European names gave Hilletie a tract of land near Albany, apparently affirming her continued importance to her mother's kin. The deed to this conveyance referred to the métis woman as "Hilletie van Olinda one of the Natives"; for the purpose of obtaining [End Page 95] land, it was perhaps advantageous for Hilletie to stress her Mohawk background, no matter how Europeanized she might otherwise appear. 27 In some ways the lives of Smits Jan and the Van Slycks seem to represent exact opposites of each other. To understand Smits Jan, one must consider the political history of the Five Nations, for his career chronicles some of its main features, from struggles within the league to relations with Europeans and other Indian peoples.

Smits Jan's life seems to foreshadow the eventual split of the Five Nations into Canadian and League Iroquois, for he and his family spent the rest of their lives in Canada, where they and other Mohawks formed a community of hunters. Smits Jan may have been among the eleven Iroquois baptized at Quebec in late 1667. To understand the Van Slycks, it is just as necessary to consider the intricacies of colonial politics. Both Jacques and Hilletie were touched by bitter provincial power struggles. Hilletie came under scrutiny due to her ties to anti-Leislerians; Jacques and his wife testified against anti-Leislerian Robert Livingston when he was accused of Jacobitism (loyalty to the deposed King James II), a charge leveled against a number of anti-Leislerians. One might also note that one of Jacques' objections to his nephew Wouter's proposed voyage to the Netherlands was the danger that he might be captured by Turkish pirates, a concern that seems to highlight his essentially European perspective. The Van Slycks grew up as Indians but became colonists.

In this they were highly unusual, and their nephew Wouter was even more so, for while many Europeans became "white Indians" during the colonial era, few Indians ever attempted or desired to become Europeans. 28 But there are also important similarities between these métis. Most obviously, both the Mohawk headman and the siblings Jacques and Hilletie (and to a lesser extent Lea Stevens) became involved in diplomatic negotiations between Iroquois and Europeans. The Van Slycks obviously drew on their mixed background as interpreters, but Smits Jan was also repeatedly involved in diplomatic negotiations with Europeans, and it may well be that both he and other Mohawks saw him as especially well suited to fill this role because he was half European himself. After all, it seems somewhat peculiar that a leader who had so distinguished himself as an enemy of New France should choose or be chosen to handle critical negotiations with French officials.

Richard Nicolls was sure Smits Jan had spilt too much French blood ever to be accepted by his former enemies, but the métis headman himself does not seem to have shared [End Page 96] this view, and although he failed to prevent the final French assault on his Mohawk homeland, he was in some ways quite successful in his dealings with Canada. That the French seem to have placed great importance on his Dutch side may well have served to increase Smits Jan's awareness of the importance of his European background. Smits Jan seems to have been a man able to gain the trust of Europeans. Richard Nicolls was apparently convinced of his loyalty to the colony of New York, as "he is reported to love both English and Dutch"; Smits Jan had been in contact with English officials before, as "Smith John" was one of several Iroquois leaders who concluded a treaty with Nicolls's deputy George Cartwright in September 1664. The métis headman also received preferential treatment as a hostage in Canada, enjoying greater freedom of movement than other Iroquois hostages.

According to Marie de l'Incarnation, the "Flemish Bastard" was treated "like a great lord" at the table of Intendant Jean Talon, and the marquis de Tracy gave him a suit of fine clothing, promised to spare the lives of his family before the French launched their final assault on Mohawk country, and treated him with courtesy, all because the Mohawk leader had returned a captured relative of the governor and a number of other French gentlemen unharmed. In a letter to Arent van Curler, Tracy even claimed Smits Jan as a friend. 29 These cases seem to suggest some level of ongoing contact between métis people in Indian country and their European relatives. It is hard to imagine that the Van Slycks would have left Mohawk country if they did not have contact with their Dutch kin. Smits Jan's European kin are unknown, so evidence of his relationship to them is simply nonexistent, and it remains unclear to what extent his métis background influenced his political and military behavior, although the French, at least, were well aware of his mixed ethnicity. It may be significant that the Dutch almost always referred to Smits Jan by a Dutch name.

Smits Jan disappears from the records after 1667, but after the French invasion of Seneca country in 1687, a captured Catholic Mohawk told Albany officials that some of the Canadian Iroquois had wanted to turn back until a man called Smiths John exhorted them to stay the course. If this man was indeed the same as the Mohawk Canaqueese, Smits Jan must also have used his Dutch name himself, even after he settled in Canada. In that case the name must have had some meaning to him and not just have been an empty label assigned him by the Dutch; after all, in 1687 it was twenty years since Smits Jan had left New York behind. Smits Jan's private [End Page 97] thoughts and self-perception are irrevocably lost, but it would seem that he attached some significance (practical or emotional) to his Dutch ancestry, and the fact that the French tended to stress his Dutch side could only serve to heighten any awareness he might have had of himself as half European. 30 On the other hand, Smits Jan's experiences suggest that kinship relations with Europeans did not automatically translate into successful cross-cultural mediation.

It may be noteworthy that Smits Jan's greatest diplomatic successes came in his dealings with the French, not with the Dutch. When he proposed Mohawk intervention in the Esopus conflict, few other Mohawks wanted to go along, and while West India Company director Petrus Stuyvesant, the head of the provincial government on Manhattan, expressed interest in Smits Jan's proposal, the local magistracy of Fort Orange was openly dismissive of the idea, portraying the métis headman as a drunkard who let his mouth run away with him. This may indicate that members of the local Dutch community distrusted the métis headman, although it was perhaps no more than a reflection of their efforts to keep their settlement from becoming endangered by the fighting at Esopus. The Esopus Indians had warned them to stay out of the conflict, and only a few months later the magistrates sent these Indians what seems like an offer of informal neutrality. To Stuyvesant's frustration, the magistrates made it clear that they must first and foremost take care of their own affairs; localism was a persistent feature of Dutch colonial society.

On the other hand, the failure of Smits Jan accurately to gauge the attitude of the people of Fort Orange to the Esopus War perhaps indicates that his contacts with the Dutch community were not as extensive as the name the "Flemish Bastard" may seem to suggest. 31 On only a handful of occasions is Smits Jan actually recorded to have been in direct contact with Dutch officials, and these men do not seem to have accorded his Dutch side much importance. In December 1653 Mohawk delegates asked the court at Fort Orange to write the governor of Canada a letter assuring him of the Mohawk intention to keep the peace recently concluded with the French and warning him to stay out of future conflicts between the Mohawks and other Indians. Smits Jan carried this letter to Canada, but in the text of this document the Dutch officials called the métis headman by his Mohawk name, Canaqueese, and betrayed no awareness of the fact that the bearer had Dutch roots, [End Page 98] describing him merely as an Indian much beloved by the Mohawks.

The French, on the other hand, were quick to note that the emissary was "an Anniehronnon Captain, the son of an Iroquois mother and a Dutch Father." Although one should perhaps not read too much into this episode, it may suggest that the Dutch were somewhat embarrassed by the presence of people with Dutch and Indian ancestry, particularly when dealing with other Europeans. After all, métis people were living evidence of the past sexual misconduct of Dutch colonists. The French would probably not have minded if Smits Jan discomforted the Dutch heretics at Fort Orange, but the French were at any rate far more comfortable with such intercultural mixing, having a large métis population of their own, and in the seventeenth century the French Crown even encouraged marriages between Indians and colonists in Canada. 32 Perhaps it was therefore only the French, Smits Jan himself, and maybe other Mohawks who showed interest in the Dutch ethnicity of his father.

When Smits Jan returned from Canada in January 1667, he brought letters from the marquis de Tracy to the Dutch officials at Albany, to the frustration of the local English commander, who (like Governor Nicolls) disliked such intimacy between the newly minted Dutch subjects of his king and the French enemy. But while Governor Nicolls evidently had great confidence in the métis headman, he noted that some of the Dutch distrusted him, allegedly because he "hath receiued so much kindness from the French that he hath turned French man." Since the governor had no such fears, it may be more likely that the Dutch distrust of Smits Jan lay elsewhere, perhaps in an ingrained prejudice against people of Dutch and Indian ancestry. Even if Smits Jan thought his mixed parentage was important, which his behavior in 1663 and his apparent use of a Dutch name seem to indicate, he could not effectively exploit that tenuous connection to the Dutch as long as these Europeans would not recognize him as any kind of kinsman. The Van Slycks eventually managed to gain the acceptance of their local Dutch community, but only by conforming to European ways, something Smits Jan never did.

He won the confidence of both the French and the English but evidently not of the Dutch, in spite—or perhaps because—of his Dutch roots. 33 The findings of this study indicate that métis people in seventeenth-century New York found established ethnic categories difficult to overcome. In an insightful study of relations between Indians and colonists in the American South, Theda Perdue has argued that the idea of "mixed [End Page 99] blood" was an exclusively European construct and that Native people did not distinguish between children born to European and Indian fathers. Tom Hatley, on the other hand, holds that while the Cherokees initially made no distinction between métis and other members of their society, as the first half of the eighteenth century wore on a certain amount of distrust of métis individuals began to emerge. Some métis Cherokees apparently responded by going to unusual lengths to prove their allegiance to Cherokee society, while others (no less torn by internal conflict) gravitated toward the English. Among the Iroquois there is little sign of any apparent stigma attached to being "half European" per se, but, depending on the behavior of métis individuals, such a background might still be of some significance in both positive and negative ways.

The case of the Van Slycks seems to suggest that métis individuals could be vulnerable members of Iroquois society. Smits Jan became an influential headman, but his behavior was fully Iroquois. The Van Slycks, on the other hand, were spiritual nonconformists and therefore open to suspicion. It is, of course, not a given that such suspicion toward métis has been an enduring characteristic of Iroquois society. It may simply reflect the peculiar conditions of the mid-seventeenth century, when the Iroquois were absorbing huge foreign populations. 34 Their métis background also provided the Van Slycks with a way out: forced to choose between religion and Mohawk identity, they found that they could highlight the Dutch side of their parentage and settle at Schenectady. Wouter, their Mohawk nephew, was left with a similar choice, and his relationship to the Van Slycks apparently enabled him to become a kind of functional métis, using his kinship to his aunt and uncle in an effort to obtain to Europeanness.

If Wouter had not had the opportunity to join his métis relatives, maybe he would have given in to communal pressure and renounced his interest in the religion of the Europeans, or maybe he would have overcome public censure and gained acceptance for the possibility of being both Mohawk and Christian, as later converts to Protestantism apparently were able to do. Or again, given that Wouter apparently had some experience with Catholic missionaries, maybe he would have joined other religious expatriates in Canada. Strong connections to Europeans could perhaps be a liability in Mohawk communities, but they also increased one's range of options. Perhaps, then, the métis converts were not the only ones facing gruelling harassment at home but merely the only ones who had the means to escape it; the Iroquois may not have thought much in terms of biological [End Page 100] ancestry, but Europeans did. Most non-métis Iroquois may not even have had the option of seeking refuge among the Dutch, however great the adversity they faced at home. As an alternate explanation to the one suggested in this paper, one could therefore argue that being métis was not a disadvantage at all but a valuable asset.

Whatever the case, the path of the Van Slycks would be chosen by few, and with the emergence of a Protestant Mohawk community, later converts to European religion would have no need to follow in the footsteps of Jacques and Hilletie, becoming "former Indians."

Question: In North American history, who was "The Flemish Bastard"?
Answer: A Mohawk chief