JACQUES HERTEL AND THE INDIAN PRINCESSES ^*

Myths of family origins are found in many families which can trace their ancestry back several generations. Many of these prove to be based on misconceptions or simply reflect the changes that occur when stories are passed down from one generation to another in oral form. Imaginative additions meant to give color to family traditions further muddy the waters. Once in people's minds, however, such myths are very hard to correct.

Anyone who has done significant research on the Van Slyke (Van Slyck) and Bradt families has come across the story, promoted as fact by people like historian Nelson Greene, that a French trader named Jacques Hertel came to the Mohawk valley and there fathered two daughters by a Mohawk "princess." They were said to be named Ots-Toch and Kenutje, the former being "wild and savage like her mother while Kenutje was small and handsome and very white, like her father." Ots-Toch, in this tale, married Cornelis Van Slyck and Kenutje "married a Bradt." ^[1]

In my research on the Bradt family, conducted over 20 years, I found many variations on this theme. At some point, "a Bradt" became the father of Arent Bradt born about 1615-1618, and Kenutje became his mother. The source of this elaboration has been lost in time, but many group sheets sent me by descendants of Arent Bradt show Kenutje ^[2] as Arent's mother. This produced interesting problems. Arent was recorded as Arent Andriessen (i.e. son of Andries), and was assumed to be the brother of Albert Andriessen Bradt. Did Albert, born in 1607 in Fredrikstad, Norway, also have an Indian mother? How was a man in Norway able to father two sons by an Indian mother in 1607 and about 1615? Why did both sons indicate by the naming of their children that their father was Andries and their mother Eva or Aeffie? Why were Albert and Arent referred to as Noorman (Norwegian or Northmen), not as half-breeds (or mixed-race, as we would say today)? With all the information we have on the early Bradt brothers, especially Albert, why was an Indian heritage never mentioned?

There is ample proof that Cornelis Van Slyck had several children by an Indian woman at the Canajoharie Castle, as their village was referred to. But was she the daughter of a French trader? At first I uncritically accepted this theory, which has been promulgated by many members of the Van Slyke family, among others, offering very questionable "proofs" from various sources.^[3] But the time frame of the birth of the two daughters did not correspond with the age Kenutje would have been had she been the mother of Arent Andriessen. And in my research it became apparent that Kenutje was a part of the entire tradition of Hertel, his two daughters, their names and descriptions. Kenutje did not stand alone as an Indian maiden who was the mother of Arent Andriessen Bradt, but in conjunction with her sister, who was born about 1620 and who had son Jacques/Ackes Van Slyck in 1640.

The persistence of this tradition was highlighted by the publication, in late 1996, of a book on the Van Slyke family by Lorine Shulze, a descendant of Jacques Van Slyck.^[4] Included is a chapter on Jacques Hertel as the father of Ots-Toch but not Kenutje, who, she says, is controversial and, to her knowledge, only mentioned in one source. Her thesis is that Hertel could have been the father of Ots-Toch, since there was peace between the Iroquois and the French of New France from about 1622 to 1627, a period in which Ots-Toch could have been born. However, Mrs. Schulze only cites 19th and 20th century secondary sources to support her thesis. She presents no primary evidence that Hertel actually was ever in the Mohawk Valley or that he fathered children by a Mohawk woman. As shown below, the primary evidence that does exist shows that the mother of Cornelis Van Slyck's children was a full-blooded Indian.

Peter Christoph, a specialist in colonial New York history, encouraged me to research the Hertel-Indian Princesses tradition by trying to find the earliest sources of the stories. He led me to the journal written in April 1680 by Jaspar Danckaerts while he was visiting Dutch areas of New York. Danckaerts was from Friesland, a province of the Netherlands. He provided an excellent first-hand account of the places and people he visited. One such account was an extensive interview with Hilletie, daughter of Cornelis Van Slyck, and her nephew Wouter. ^[5]

1. Nelson Greene, History of the Mohawk Valley, Gateway to the West 1614-1925 (1925), 2:334-36.
2. In these group sheets and elsewhere Kenutje is also spelled Kinutis, Kinetis, Keuntze, Kanudesha, etc. These varied spellings may have stemmed from oral interpretations of the name.
3. See, for example, Madeline H. Carey, Scot Vandelinder, Arlene Coppernoll Cuba, Jacques Hertel (de La Fresnaye). They cite mainly French sources, and their only citation that refers to an Indian wife is Nelson Greene's work noted above.
4. Lorine McGinnis Schulze, The Van Slyke Family in America: A Genealogy of Cornelis Antonissen Van Slyke, 1604-1676 and his Mohawk wife Ots-Toch, including the story of Jacques Hertel, 1603-1651, Father of Ots-Toch and Interpreter to Samuel de Champlain (Midland, Ont., Canada: Olive Tree Enterprises, 1996).
5. Journal of Jaspar Danckaerts 1679-1680, ed. Burleigh Jones and J. Franklin Jameson (New York: Charles Scribner, 1913), pp. 201-10.

^*This article originally appeared in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 128, Number 2, pages 91-97.