The history of New York
Four hundred years ago, Manhattan Island was the home of the Algonquin Indians. In 1609, a man called Henry Hudson came up the river to Manhattan. He was British but he was on a Dutch ship, The Half Moon. Today, the river is called the Hudson River.
In 1626, a Dutchman called Peter Minuit came to Manhattan, and he paid the Indians about twenty-four dollars for the island. Minuit put up some houses, and called the little town New Amsterdam.
By 1647, about 500 people lived in New Amsterdam, and the Governor was a Dutchman called Peter Stuyvesant. But in 1664, the British took the town from the Dutch and changed its name to New York.
Then came the War of Independence (1776 - 1783) - a war between the British and some of the people of North America. When it finished in 1783, the British left and George Washington was made the first President of the United States of America.
In 1790, about 33,000 people lived in New York, but then millions more men and women began to come to America from all over the world. They all wanted to be part of the new country, and many of them came to live in New York. At first they came from Germany and Ireland, then later on from Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Africa, and China.
The new people of New York worked hard, and many of them helped to build the first skyscrapers and bridges. These 'New Americans' often lived in the same streets with other people from their own country - Irish with Irish, Italians with Italians, Chinese with Chinese. Today, New York has parts called Chinatown and Little Italy.
Ellis Island was the first stop for the 'New Americans' when they came to New York. All the ships bringing people from Europe to America stopped here.
The Brooklyn Bridge opened on 24 May, 1883, and thousands of New Yorkers came to see it. There were too many of them. The big crowd pushed some people off the bridge into the water; more men and women died under the feet of the crowd.
John Escott: New York. Oxford University Press, 1995, page 2 f.