Still my deference to the learned obliges me to notice
the opinion of the worthy Dominie Heckwelder, which
ascribes the name to a great drunken bout, held on
the island by the Dutch discoverers, whereat they made
certain of the natives most ecstatically drunk for
the first time in their lives; who, being delighted
with their jovial entertainment, gave the place the
name of Mannahattanink—that is to say, the
Island of Jolly Topers—a name which it
continues to merit to the present day.[32]
[31] Vide Hazard’s Col.
Stat. Pap.
[32] MSS. of the Rev. John Heckwelder,
in the archives of the New
York
Historical Society.
It having been solemnly resolved that the seat of
empire should be removed from the green shores of
Pavonia to the pleasant island of Manna-hata, everybody
was anxious to embark under the standard of Oloffe
the Dreamer, and to be among the first sharers of
the promised land. A day was appointed for the
grand migration, and on that day little Communipaw
as in a buzz and a bustle like a hive in swarming
time. Houses were turned inside out, and stripped
of the venerable furniture which had come from Holland;
all the community, great and small, black and white,
man, woman, and child, was in commotion, forming lines
from the houses to the water side, like lines of ants
from an ant-hill; everybody laden with some article
of household furniture; while busy housewifes plied
backwards and forwards along the lines, helping everything
forward by the nimbleness of their tongues.
By degrees a fleet of boats and canoes were piled
up with all kinds of household articles; ponderous
tables; chests of drawers, resplendent with brass
ornaments, quaint corner cupboards; beds and bedsteads;
with any quantity of pots, kettles, frying-pans, and
Dutch ovens. In each boat embarked a whole family,
from the robustious burgher down to the cats and dogs
and little negroes. In this way they set off across
the mouth of the Hudson, under the guidance of Oloffe
the Dreamer, who hoisted his standard on the leading
boat.
This memorable migration took place on the first of
May, and was long cited in tradition as the grand
moving. The anniversary of it was piously observed
among the “sons of the pilgrims of Communipaw,”
by turning their houses topsy-turvy, and carrying
all the furniture through the streets, in emblem of
the swarming of the parent hive; and this is the real
origin of the universal agitation and “moving”
by which this most restless of cities is literally
turned out of doors on every May-day.
