Whencery

Go deeper

Each episode runs about ten minutes. Here are questions to talk over afterwards, with friends, at the dinner table, in a book club or in a classroom, plus the transcript and every source, for anyone who wants to check a line or read further.

Reading the sources yourself

Each episode tells one stretch of how New York City came to be, and follows the money through it: who paid for what, what was traded, and who held the land. Each episode page carries the full transcript and a How We Know section that lists every source, with a note for each passage showing which source supports it. That makes the episodes a good way into reading sources: anyone can follow a sentence of the narration back to the book or record it came from, and many of those books are free to read online.

The scenes are animated reconstructions. Where the sources do not record a detail, such as the exact spot where a scene took place, the animation makes a setting choice and labels it on screen.

Episode 1: The Ice and the People

before 1609 · 10 min

About 20,000 years ago a sheet of ice stopped on this coast. It piled up the two ridges that became Long Island, carried New Jersey stone onto Brooklyn, and filled a deep gorge in the rock so that Manhattan stayed one island. When the ice melted and the sea rose, the Lenape made a living from the harbor for at least a thousand years: nets across the stream mouths every spring, fields of corn, beans and squash tended by women, shell beads strung into wampum that served as money, and fires set each autumn to keep the meadows open for game. The episode ends with how the Lenape held land. It belonged to the whole village, families used it, and no leader could give it away forever. That idea of land is the first thread of the season’s business story.

Questions to talk over

  1. The episode says Manhattan is one island only because the ice filled a gorge in the rock. What other features of New York’s land did the ice create, and how might they have shaped where people later lived and traveled?
  2. Wampum beads were highly valued and served as money. What makes something work as money? Compare wampum with the coins and paper money people use today.
  3. Among the Lenape, land belonged to the whole village, and a leader had to persuade people rather than command them. How might a people who held land this way understand an offer of goods for land, and why would that matter once European traders arrived?

Episode 2: The Ship in the Harbor (coming soon)

1609

In September 1609 men fishing off this coast saw something enormous floating far out on the water. It was the Halve Maen, a small ship of the Dutch East India Company under Henry Hudson, an Englishman. The Company’s merchants had argued over whether the voyage was worth sending at all: the prize was a northern sea route to China and the Spice Islands, the Zeeland chamber called it money thrown away, and Amsterdam went ahead for fear that a rival would hire Hudson first. Hudson sailed late, met the ice off Nova Zembla, and then broke his orders and turned west. On September 3 the ship came to three great rivers, turned away from a shallow bar, and anchored in the harbor. For two days the people of the country came aboard and traded green tobacco for knives and beads, each side working out what the other one was.

Questions to talk over

  1. The Company’s merchants argued over whether Hudson’s voyage was worth the money. What were the possible rewards and the risks, and why did Amsterdam decide to go ahead anyway?
  2. Hudson’s orders allowed one route only, to the northeast, but he turned the ship west. Why do you think he broke his orders, and what did his choice lead to?
  3. On the first days of trade, the people of the country traded green tobacco for knives and beads. What did each side seem to value, and what did each side believe the other one was?

Showing an episode

Showing an episode to a group, in a classroom, a library, a club or a tour, linking to it, and printing its transcript and questions are all welcome, free of charge. Questions about other uses, such as a museum screening, can go through the Whencery YouTube channel.