' The Dutch settlers in Westchester County obtained their first .\fri- I can slaves under the "Freedoms and Exemptions" granted by the n West India Company in 1629, which promised that to all planters of col- I onies in the New Netherlands '* the Company will use their endeavors I to supply the Colonists with as many Blacks as they Conveniently Can ; | in such manner, however, that they shall not be bound to do it for a J longer time than they shall think proper.'' In 1G44 Nicholas Toorn, at I Rensselaerwyck, acknowledged the receipt of a young black girl -- to be ' returned at the end of four years, "if yet alive," to the director-genei-al or his successor. The average price of slaves was one hundred dollars in our money each for men and two hundred dollars for women. The treatment of them was, on the whole, humane. In 1644 an ordinance was passed which emancipated those who had served the company eighteen or nineteen years on condition of a yearly small payment in wheat, peas, beans and hogs, but a failure to comply with the conditions

:\IAXNKKS AND CUSTOMS.

47 2a

eas\-," Cooper makes Miles Walliiigroid say, to describe the affection of an attached slave, which has blended with it the pride of a jjartisan, the solicitude of a parent and the blindness of a lover." A common custom amonp; the Dutch was to assign to each child in the household, when it had reached six or eight years, a slave of the same age and sex, who clung to the little msister or mistress with an affection that was fully returned and, in many instances, lasted through life.