Jacob Steendam was a poet and successful merchant.   He was born in the year 1616, perhaps at Enkhuizen, Holland.  He was employed by the DWIC and from 1641-1649 lived in Guinea.    Steendam became the first poet in New Amsterdam.  He wrote "spurring verses" in 1659 and 1661 to encourage settlement on the South River of New Netherland.   When the English took the colony he went out to Java in 1666.  By his wife, Sara de Rosschou (or Abrahams), he had a daughter, Vredegund.  He must have passed away in 1672.  Paraphrased from Anthology of New Netherland by Henry C. Murphy, 1865 in The Founders by Charles Knowles Bolton.

Paraphrased from Anthology of New Netherland by Henry C. Murphy, 1865 in The Founders by Charles Knowles Bolton.

While in the employ of the DWIC as a soldier he also became a slave trader.   

"In Praise of New Netherland" by Jacob Steendam

"You poor, who know not how your living to obtain;
You affluent, who see in mind to be content;
Choose you New Netherland, which no one shall disdain;
Before your time and strength here fruitlessly are spent.

The birds obscure the sky, so numerous in their flight;
The animals roam wild, and flatten down the ground:
The fish swarm in the waters and exclude the light;
The oysters there, than which none better can be found;
Are piled up, heap on heap, till islands they attain;
And vegetation clothes the forest, mean and plain.

...a living view does always meet your eye,
of Eden, and the promised land of Jacob's see;
Who would not, then, in such a formed community,
Desire to be a Freeman; and the rights decreed,
To each and every one, by Amstel's burgher lords,
T'enjoy? and treat with honour what their rule awards?"