New York City: Early days and colonial rule
Before the arrival of European explorers, Native Americans populated the area now encompassing New York City. In 1524, 32 years after Christopher Columbus had sailed to the New World, Giovanni da Verrazano , an Italian in the service of the French King Francis I, arrived in New York Harbor. In 1609 Henry Hudson , an Englishman employed by the Dutch East India Company, landed at Manhattan and sailed his ship upriver as far as Albany. The Dutch established a trading post at the most northerly point Hudson had reached, Fort Nassau. In 1624, four years after the Pilgrim Fathers had sailed to Massachusetts, thirty families left Holland to become New York's first European settlers.Most sailed up to Fort Nassau, but a handful - eight families in all - staying behind on what is now Governors Island, which they called Nut Island because of the many walnut trees there. Slowly the community grew as more settlers arrived, and the little island became crowded; the decision was made to move to the limitless spaces across the water, and the settlement of Manhattan , taken from the Algonquin Indian word Manna-Hata meaning "Island of the Hills," began.
The Dutch gave their new outpost the name New Amsterdam though following British conquest of the island in 1664 the settlement took its new name from its owner the Duke of York - New York .
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