Juan Rodrigues

Juan Rodriguez (Dutch: , Portuguese: ) was the first documented non-indigenous inhabitant to live on Manhattan Island. As such, he is considered the first non-native resident of what would eventually become New York City.

As he was born in the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, the first colony of Spain, to a Portuguese sailor and a West African woman, he is considered by many to be the first person of European and/or West African origin to settle on the island of Manhattan.

Biography Rodriguez was born in the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) to an African woman and a Portuguese sailor, in an era in which a tenth of the Dominican population was born in Portugal, in dynastic union with the Spanish Crown (see Iberian Union).

Raised in a cultural environment in the Spanish settlement of Santo Domingo, Rodrigues was known for his linguistic talents and was hired by the Dutch captain Thijs Volckenz Mossel of the Jonge Tobias to serve as the translator on a trading voyage to the Lenape island of Mannahattan.

After arriving in 1613, Rodriguez learned the Algonquian language of the Lenape people and later married into the local community. When Mossel's ship returned to the Netherlands, Rodriguez stayed behind with his Lenape family. He set up his own trading post and accepted his wages in goods with Mossell supplying him with "eighty hatchets, some knives, a musket, and a saber" . When Hendrick Christiaensen arrived later that year as captain of the Dutch ship, The Fortuyn, Rodriguez facilitated trade relations between the captain and the Lenape. Upon his return, Mossell was upset that Rodriquez had helped someone he saw as a competitor.

Juan Rodríguez Way

In October 2012, the New York City Council enacted legislation to name Broadway from 159th Street to 218th Street in Manhattan after Juan Rodríguez. The neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood in Upper Manhattan have a substantial Dominican community. The first street sign was put up in a celebration with a small ceremony at 167th Street and Broadway on May 15, 2013.

Fiction Writer John Keene published a brief, fictional version of Juan Rodríguez's (Jan Rodrigues's) story, entitled "Mannahatta", focusing on the trader's decision to flee the Dutch, in the Winter/Spring 2014 issue of the literary journal TriQuarterly. A revised version of the story appears in his 2015 collection Counternarratives, published by New Directions.