Harmen van den Bogaert

Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert (1612/13 – 1648) was an early Dutch settler in New Netherland (present-day New York), explorer, and barber surgeon. Van den Bogaert's personal journal from his expedition into Iroquois country, A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 1634-1635, is the first written description of the Mohawk Valley and among the first ethnographical accounts of the Iroquois people and the Mohawk language.[1] He is also notable for being among the first known people in the Americas to be killed as a result of their homosexuality.

Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert
Born1612 or 1613
Dutch Republic
Died1648
Hudson River near Fort Orange (New Netherland), New Netherland
Cause of deathDrowning
OccupationBarber surgeon
Known forExplorer, Killed because of Homosexuality

A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country 1634-1635

Van den Bogaert was employed as a commissary, a business agent, of the Dutch West India Company at Fort Orange, the site where the present-day city of Albany would later develop. After a stall in the company's lucrative fur trade with the Indigenous Iroquois People, Van den Bogaert and two others were ordered to embark on an expedition to enquire for an explanation for the lack of business and to restore the fur trade.[2][3]

Van den Bogaert penned a daily journal of his expedition from 1634 to 1635. He recorded not only the daily activities of his party, but also wrote of the geography of the land and of Iroquois life, settlements, healing rituals, and language.[4] The journal is the earliest known record of the interior west of the Hudson.[5] As one of the earliest European accounts of the Iroquois Five Nations, it is also of great historical and ethnological value.[6][7]

A wordlist, found at the end of Van den Bogaert's journal, is the earliest known philological treatment of the Mohawk language in existence.[8]

The existence of Van den Bogaert's journal only came to light in 1895,[9] and contemporary interest in the text only surged after an English translation by Charles T. Gehring (with annotations by William A. Starna) in 1991. Gehring's translation of the journal inspired George O'Connor’s first graphic novel, Journey into Mohawk Country, which uses the events of the journal as its sole material.

Van den Bogaert’s Homosexuality and Death

Van den Bogaert was engaged in a homosexual relationship with his African slave, Tobias.[10]

Toward the end of 1647, Van den Bogaert was caught having sex with Tobias and they both were jailed at Fort Orange. Cognizant that the punishment for homosexual relations throughout the Dutch Empire was death, they escaped together and fled north for the Iroquois lands with which van den Bogaert was well acquainted from his expedition.[11][12]

He and Tobias were subsequently found and captured by Dutch soldiers and returned to Fort Orange. Van den Bogaert, in a final act of desperation, escaped again from the fort's prison. During this escape, Van den Bogaert attempted to cross the frozen over Hudson River, but fell through the ice and drowned.[12] He had not yet even reached his 40s at the time of his death. The fate of Tobias is unknown.[13]

As the first recorded example of an LGBT person being killed as a direct result of their sexual orientation in the New World, the case of Harmen van den Bogaert's horrific death is a significant precursor to the history of LGBT rights in the United States and the history of violence against LGBT people in the United States.

References
  1. "The "bad fate" of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert | New-York Historical Society". www.nyhistory.org. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  2. MVM (2022-12-31). "This day in Mohawk Valley history: December 31". Mohawk Valley Museums. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  3. "History of the Mohawk Valley: Gateway to the West 1614-1925 — Chapter 13: Van Den Bogaert's Journal - 1634-5". www.schenectadyhistory.org. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  4. van den Bogaert, Harmen Meyndertsz (1634–1635). A Journey Into Mohawk and Oneida Country.
  5. "Major Floods on the Mohawk and Hudson rivers (NY): 1634-1831". minerva.union.edu. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  6. Meuwese, Mark (2014). "Source Criticism and the Study of Dutch-Indigenous Relations". Reviews in American History. 42 (4): 577–583. doi:10.1353/rah.2014.0088. ISSN 1080-6628.
  7. Rine, Holly (2004-01-01). "Intercultural contact and the creation of Albany's new diplomatic landscape, 1647--1680". Doctoral Dissertations: 72–79.
  8. Gehring, Charles T.; Starna, William A.; Michelson, Gunther (2013). A Journey Into Mohawk and Oneida Country 1634-1635: The Journal of Harmen Meyndertsz Van Den Bogaert Revised Edition. Syracuse University Press.
  9. Trelease, Allen W. (1997-01-01). Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century. U of Nebraska Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-8032-9431-8.
  10. dramer, kim (2015-09-15). "New Amsterdam's Gay Scene: The Queer Case of Harmen van den Bogaert in Early NYC". Untapped New York. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  11. Seamon, Tobias (2007-03-27). "The Strange Case of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, Part Two". The Morning News. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  12. Shorto, Russell (2005). The island at the center of the world: the epic story of Dutch Manhatten and the forgotten colony that shaped America. New York: Vintage Books. p. 188. ISBN 978-1-4000-7867-7.
  13. "New Amsterdam "Place of Execution" – NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project". www.nyclgbtsites.org. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
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