Bergen, New Netherland

[3] While the Hackensack tended to camp on the tidal lands (Upper New York Bay and Meadowlands), the Tappan moved in the highlands (North Hudson to Palisades Interstate Park).

[5] The trapping of beaver and rodents for pelts played a crucial role in their interaction with the Swannukens or Salt Water People,[6] who procured the land from them through "purchases" that were misconstrued by both parties.

A basic misconception was that while Europeans thought they were buying land in perpetuity, the Lenape believed they were entering into defense alliances with farming, hunting, and fishing rights.

[7] In 1621, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) was founded to exploit trade in the Western Hemisphere,[8] and by 1625 had established a colony at New Amsterdam (Lower Manhattan).

[13] Initially, a small hut and ferry landing were built at Arresick, called Powles Hoek (Paulus Hook), but Pauw failed to fulfill the other conditions set forth by the company (which included populating the area with at least fifty adults),[9] and was later required to sell his interests back to it.

[16] In 1640, David Pietersen de Vries bought from the Tappan a tract of about 500 acres (2.0 km2) and established Vriessendael (Edgewater), about an hour's walk north of Communipaw.

These homesteads grew into small, mostly agricultural, communities as the land around them was sold or leased and "bouweries" (home farms) and "plantages" (outlying fields) were developed.

Though the settlements were small, they were strategic trading posts with a good harbor and foothold on the west bank of what had been named the Noort Rivier (Hudson River).

The term Achter Col was used by the New Netherlanders, and later the English colonials, to describe the entire region around Newark Bay and the waters that flow in and out of it.

In 1642, Myndert Myndertsen, who bore the title Heer van Nederhorst, received a large land grant (including much of contemporary Bergen and Passaic Counties), where he wished to establish a colony called Achter Kol (Bogota)[19] The site chosen was "five or six hundred paces" from the Hackensack village[3] on Tantaqua (Overpeck Creek).

[20] Willem Kieft was appointed Director of New Netherland by the Dutch West India Company in 1639, with one of his orders to increase profits from pelts for the fur trade at Achter Kol and its port at Pavonia.

The initial strike was a slaughter: 129 Dutch soldiers killed approximately 120 people (including women and children): eighty at Pavonia and thirty at Corlear's Hook (Lower East Side).

Overcoming their other rivalries in face of a common enemy, the indigenous populations united and retaliated in October of the same year, attacking the plantations at Pavonia, with survivors fleeing to the fort at the tip of Manhattan.

De Vries, with interest in and better contact with the local population, was able to negotiate temporarily holding off attacks at his farm and the Achter Kol Colony, from which settlers were evacuated.

It was in that year that a series of land patents were made at Communipaw and Harsimus extending to Achter Col, as well as farther south along the bay at Minkakwa[24] and Pamrapo.

According to popular belief, it started when a young Lenape girl was shot by a Dutchman as she attempted to pluck fruit from a peach tree in an orchard on Manhattan.

Some say that it was named after any of number of towns in the Netherlands or the city in Norway[33] Others believe it comes from the word bergen, which in the Germanic languages of northern Europe means hills,[34][35] and could describe a most distinct geological feature of the region, The Palisades.

[13] Yet another interpretation is that it comes from the Dutch word bergen, meaning to save or to recover, prompted by the settlers' return after they had fled attacks by the native population.

[21] New Netherland was quickly divvied up, the lands west of the newly named city of New York becoming part of proprietary colony of East Jersey; Staten Island's status would be determined 10 years later.

[44] By-passing Bergen, the English chose as its capital a site close to Arthur Kill, naming it Elizabethtown, after the wife of its proprietor, Sir George Carteret.

The wide waterways that separated them geographically mirrored the cultural divide and allowed the New Netherlanders to retain their language, religion, traditions, and local political power.

[50] During negotiations for The Treaty of Breda, English commissioners' offers to return New Netherland in exchange for sugar factories on the coast of Suriname were refused.

[52] During this period they also confirmed previous patents and deeds,[53] in 1665 for a land owned by Nicolas Verlet at Hobuk (Hoboken), and in 1669 for a large tract (of 2260 acres) at Achinigeu-hach (or "Ackingsah-sack") (Hackensack River/Overpeck Creek) given earlier to Sarah Kiersted in gratitude for her work as emissary and interpreter by Oratam.

Ten years later, in October 1693, the counties were re-aligned and Bergen grew to include more territories west of the Hackensack, though not the Lenape/Netherlander trading post that would grow into the city of the same name.

The village of Hackensack (in the newly formed New Barbados Township) was seen as being more easily reached by the majority of the Bergen's inhabitants, and hence was chosen as the county seat.

[51] Hackensack Township included those lands east of the river of the same name, north of the contemporary Hudson-Bergen line, and the area became known as the English Neighborhood.

A statue of Peter Stuyvesant, commemorating the 250th anniversary of its founding, sits on the grounds of the longest continuously used school site in New Jersey, which had also been established by them.

The patroonship of Pavonia lends its name to an avenue and PATH station in Jersey City, while the mascot of Saint Peter's College is a peacock.

[citation needed] Like The Netherlands, Northeastern New Jersey is considered to be "diverse" and "tolerant", a place where many people from different ethnic, economic, and religious backgrounds interact on a daily basis while still maintaining their distinct identities.

[69][70] The concept of "home rule" allows citizens and residents to have direct influence on their immediate neighborhoods, and at the same time participate in a society which supersedes civic boundaries.