Jan Rodrigues

Jan Rodrigues

João "Jan" Rodrigues, born in Santo Domingo, was the son of a Portuguese sailor and of an African woman and was the first documented non-Native American to live on Manhattan Island.

Raised in a culturally diverse household in the Spanish settlement of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, Rodrigues was known for his linguistic talents and was hired by the Dutch captain Thijs Volckenz Mossel of the Jonge Tobias to serve as the translator on a trading voyage to the Native American island of Mannahatta. Arriving in 1613, Jan soon came to learn the Algonquinian language of the Lenape people and married into the local community. When Mossel's ship returned to the Netherlands, Jan stayed behind with his Native American family and set up his own trading post with goods given to him by Mossel, consisting of eighty hatchets, some knives, a musket and a sword.

He spent 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.