When the first Dutch settlers arrived about 1626 in the New World and established a town called New Amsterdam, later transformed into the English city of New York, they were astonished at the prodigious quantity of game birds—passenger pigeons, quail, geese, swans, cranes, turkeys, heath hens, snipes and ducks. Swans were so plentiful that the bays and shores where they resorted appeared as if they were dressed in white drapery. And in the spring and fall, “ducks and geese blackened the sky over the marshlands on the east side of the [Manhattan] island,” and “woodcocks were in plenty in the thick coverts.”

The colonists began at once to trade with the Indians for their commodities, which were comprised principally of grains, vegetables, fish, game, and furs. Nicasius de Sille, who arrived in 1653, remarked: “The Indians bring us wild geese, turkeys, partridges, wild pigeons, ducks and various other birds and animals.” Three years later, 1,000 Europeans lived in New Amsterdam and the new inhabitants complained they couldn’t sleep at night because of the constant noise of the thousands of ducks and geese. A writer remarked: “The men scarcely ever labor, except to provide some game, either fowl or other description, for cooking, and then they have provided everything.” By the early 1660s, New Amsterdam had transitioned from a wilderness trading post to an entrepot of colonial commerce in the New World in which New York City would become the world’s greatest game market. It would remain the most redoubtable fortress for game dealers and markets hunters for the next 230 years.