When the Dutch arrived to what is now present-day New York they had already experience the colonization of other colonies. The first African brought to the colony came only a few years after the Dutch West Indian Company settled in New Amsterdam. The work that they had to fulfill at the beginning was maintaining the fort, unloading the ships and other types of maintenance work for the company. The usually had criminal working with them as punishment for their mistakes. This helps to have an understanding of how harsh and cruel their working experience may have been.   Many of these slaves were freed by their owner and became landowners themselves. Most of these slaves were taken from the Portuguese during the voyage from Angola to Africa and since the Portuguese had established the plantation system in Angola from quite some time, they (the Africans) were already Catholics. After being freed these slaves were given a piece of land and but still were require to pay some retributions and fees to their previous owners.
Thornton, John K. "Blacks in New Amsterdam." Footsteps Jan.-Feb. 2006: 8+. General OneFile. Web. 8 Oct. 2011.
Swan, Robert J. “The Other Fort Amsterdam: New Light on Aspects of Slavery in New Netherland.”Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 22, no.2 (July 1998):1-19.

Fight, Fight, Fight...

               During the time of Dutch settlement in New Netherlands there were no major land conflicts between the Dutch and the different Indian tribes. This was due to no significant population expansion until New Netherlands had already become an English colony. Ft. Orange was one of the most important trade posts of the colony and for the same there were friendly relationships between the whites and the Indians as well as in the Delaware River Valley. But like every rule there is always an exception. The Algonquian tribes lost most of their fur trade significant that they had and this brought conflicts between them and the Dutch. Disputes were for different causes: because both (the Dutch and the Algonquian) were agrarian societies, the dispute for land was very common. When the Dutch arrived to the New World they recognized prior Indian ownership, but this was just in paper.  Abuses for the fur trade, alcohol and armament were also very common frictions. After New Netherlands became New York there was no major colonist- Indian conflicts, this was because the Dutch had already established that the Europeans were the major power.

                Now, let’s talk about how the Dutch set up the concept of European supremacy in the colony. There were three major Indian Wars fought by the Dutch. The major one of them was Governor Willem Kieft’s war of 1643-1645. The Dutch were the victorious side in the conflict, the surrounded about 11 Indian bands. The beginning of this conflict is not quite clear yet, just like the Peach War of 1655, but in the last one it seems possible that the whites were the ones provoking the hostilities. The Usopus Wars motive is perhaps most clear. It was the Indian resentment at white settlers for taking over their lands. It has to be noted that all of these conflicts took place during the second phase of the Dutch colonization of New Netherlands, when immigration became even greater and the ethnicities of the colonies even more diverse.            

B: Trelease, Allen W. "Indian-White Contacts in Eastern North America: The Dutch in New Netherlands." Ethnohistory 9, no. 2 (1962): 137-144.