icient labor. White servants were few, and the cost of securing
them from abroad was a great hinderance to their increase. The Dutch
had possessions on the coast of Guinea and in Brazil, and hence they
found it cheap and convenient to import slaves to perform the labor of
the colony.[216]

The early slaves went into the pastoral communities, worked on the
public highways, and served as valets in private families. Their
increase was stealthy, their conduct insubordinate, and their presence
a distressing nightmare to the apprehensive and conscientious.

The West India Company had offered many inducements to its
patroons.[217] And its pledge to furnish the colonists with "as many
blacks as they conveniently could," was scrupulously performed.[218]
In addition to the slaves furnished by the vessels plying between
Brazil and the coast of Guinea, many Spanish and Portuguese prizes
were brought into the Netherlands, where the slaves were made the
chattel property of the company. An urgent and extraordinary demand
for labor, rather than the cruel desire to traffic in human beings,
led the Dutch to encourage the bringing of Negro slaves. Scattered
widely among the whites, treated often with the humanity that
characterized the treatment bestowed upon the white servants, there
was little said about slaves in this period. The majority of them were
employed upon the farms, and led quiet and sober lives. The largest
farm owned by the company was "_cultivated by the blacks_;"[219] and
this fact was recorded as early as the 19th of April, 1638, by "Sir
William Kieft, Director-General of New Netherland." And, although the
references to slaves and slavery in the records of Amsterdam are
incidental, yet it is plainly to be seen that the institution was
purely patriarchal during nearly all the period the Hollanders held
the Netherlands.

Manumission of slaves was not an infrequent event.[220] Sometimes it
was done as a reward for meritorious services, and sometimes it was
prompted by the holy impulses of humanity and justice. The most cruel
thing done, however, in this period, was to hold as slaves in the
service of the company the children of Negroes who were lawfully
manumitted. "All their children already born, or yet to be born,
remained obligated to serve the company as slaves." In cases of
emergency the liberated fathers of these bond children were required
to serve "by water or by land" in the defence of the Holland
government.[