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Apparently entering Upper New York Bay, Estêvão Gomes may have sighted the Hudson River (which he names the "San Antonio River").

He returns to Spain on August 21, 1525.

During his voyage, Gomes has abducted over fifty natives, who he has taken them back to Spain as evidence of a potentially lucrative slave trade.

Charles V is reportedly horrified and sets them free.

The Halve Maen is on August 4 at Cape Cod, from which Hudson sails south to the entrance of Chesapeake Bay.

Rather than entering the Chesapeake he explores the coast to the north, finding Delaware Bay but continuing on north.

On September 3, he reaches the estuary of the river that initially is called the North River or Mauritius.

He isn't the first to discover the estuary, though, as it had been known since the voyage of Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524.

John Colman of his crew is killed on September 6, 1609, with an arrow to his neck loosed by natives.

Hudson sails into the upper bay on September 11, 1609.

He begins a journey the following day up the river, which now bears his name.

The territory around Manhattan Island had been surveyed and charted from 1611 through 1614, by private commercial companies on behalf of the States General of the Dutch Republic and had operated commercially before it becomes a provincial entity in 1624.

A permanent European presence in what is to become the capital city of New Netherland begins in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island.

Manhattan Island is chosen as the site of Fort Amsterdam, a citadel for the protection of the new arrivals; its establishment is recognized as the birth date of New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam), the future New York City.

The town is founded in 1625 by Willem Verhulst, the second Director-General of New Netherland, who, together with his council, has selected Manhattan Island as the optimal place for permanent settlement by the Dutch West India Company.

Military engineer and surveyor Krijn Frederiksz lays out a citadel this year, with Fort Amsterdam as its centerpiece.

The city, situated on the strategic, fortifiable southern tip of the island of Manhattan, is to maintain New Netherland's provincial integrity by defending river access to the company's fur trade operations in the North River, later named Hudson River.

Furthermore, it is entrusted to safeguard the West India Company's exclusive access to New Netherland's other two estuaries; the Delaware River and the Connecticut River.

Fort Amsterdam, designated the capital of the province in 1625, is to develop into the largest Dutch colonial settlement of the New Netherland province, now the New York Tri-State Region, and will remain a Dutch possession until September 1664, when it will fall provisionally and temporarily into the hands of the English.

Peter Minuit secures the Dutch settlers' property and its surroundings in a deed with the Manhattan natives in 1626 which signifies legal possession of the island according to Dutch law.

According to the document by Pieter Janszoon Schagen, “our people” (ons Volck)—Peter Minuit is not mentioned explicitly there—acquire Manhattan in 1626 from native Lenape people in exchange for trade goods worth sixty guilders, often said to be worth twenty-four dollars, though (by comparing the price of bread and other goods) actually amounts to around one thousand in modern currency (calculation by the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam).

Minuit is appointed New Netherland's third director by the local council after Willem Verhulst returns home in November 1626.

Collegiate School is founded in New Amsterdam in 1628 by the Dutch West India Company and the Classis of Amsterdam.

The school’s initial incarnation is located south of Canal Street and is an academic institution for both sexes.

The school's location is to change several times over the next four centuries, although the school will been at its current location, next to the West End Collegiate Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, from 1892.

Today an independent school for boys in New York City, Collegiate claims to be the oldest school in the United States.

Controversy surrounds the school's actual founding date.

The common belief before 1984 was that the school had been founded in 1638, placing it two years later than the founding of Harvard University and three years after the founding date of Boston Latin School.

Massimo Maglione, a historian and Upper School teacher at Collegiate, will conduct research into the accuracy of this date and find that Collegiate's founder—the Reverend Jonas Michaëlius, the first minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in America—had written of his efforts to teach the catechism to Immediately after the armistice period between the Dutch Republic and Spain (1609–1621), t children as early as 1628.

Based on this evidence, the school in 1984 will officially move up its founding to the earlier date.

Whether Michaëlius' early teaching actually constituted the founding of a school, however, will remain under debate.

Maglione will tell The New York Times in 1985 that "it seems clear that the school was not an official entity until 1638."

The Dutch West India Company has encouraged settlement in New Netherlands.

The population of the Hudson River Valley has swelled to one thousand by 1640.

Willem Kieft's response to the murder of Claes Swits is the formation on August 29, 1641, of the Council of Twelve Men on relations with the natives.

Although the council is not permanent, it is the first representational form of democracy in the Dutch colony.

The councilmen are asked three questions:

1. Whether it is not just to punish the barbarous murder of Claes Swits committed by a native and, in case the natives refuse to surrender the murderer at our request, whether it is not justifiable to ruin the entire village to which he belongs?

2. In what manner the same ought be put into effect and at what time?

3. By whom it may be undertaken?

They do not counsel war, as desired by Kieft, instead proposing a friendly request to be sent to the natives to surrender the murderer.

Kieft, unhappy with the reply of the Council of Twelve, disassembles the council on February 8, 1643.

Some of the Wappingers had taken refuge among the Netherlanders (their presumed allies) when fleeing raiding Mahican from the north.

Kieft now orders the Dutch West India Company soldiers to attack these native encampments at Corlears Hook on the East River and ...

The united tribes have harassed settlers all across New Netherland for the past two years, killing sporadically and suddenly.

The sparse forces are helpless to stop the attacks, but the natives are kept too spread out to mount more effective strikes.

A truce is finally agreed upon in August 1645.

The war has been extremely bloody in proportion to the population at the time: more than sixteen hundred natives have been killed at a time when the European population of New Amsterdam is only two hundred and fifty.