To the Editor;
It is just fine that Henry Hudson’s 1609 voyage up the Hudson is now being commemorated (Seminar on Mohican Culture submitted by the Native American Institute of the Hudson River, Eastwick Press, March 27). To call him the first European on the Hudson, however, is laughable. Many years later, the English, victorious against the French in North America, attempted to rewrite history, and they have succeeded.
I own a map, published in 1597 by Peter Keschedt, that was based on Gerard Mercator’s world map of 1569, that shows the Hudson, then known as the North River. Verrazano shows a Norman villa at the mouth of the Hudson on his 1520 map.
The upper Hudson River region was called Norumbega (i.e. New Belgium) by the cod fishermen from Normandy. It was north of their American settlement just as was Belgium in relation to their homeland in Europe.
Barn expert Richard Babcock discovered a medieval barn in Hoosick which he called “the forest chapel.” It was probably placed on an ancient Indian calendar site by missionaries on Cartier’s second North American voyage. A 1500s settlement in North Hoosick was called St. Croix. A fort was built there near where the Walloomsac River and White Creek intersect the Hoosic River in the form of a cross. It was destroyed by the Mohawks in the 1600s.
Walter Burr
South Street, Hoosick