Creoli was convicted of sodomy (“this crime being condemned of God as an abomination”) and ordered to be “conveyed to the place of public execution, and there choked to death, and then burnt to ashes.” Congo was flogged for his part. In 1646, Jan Creoli, a slave of African descent, was turned in to the authorities by fellow slaves for sexual assault on a 10-year-old slave boy named Manuel Congo. Two men are known to have been executed in New Amsterdam for sexual relations with boys, the crime doubly enforced, for same-sex contact as well as for assault on a minor. They managed to escape again, but Harmen died, falling through the ice in the Hudson River (the fate of Tobias is unknown). Harmen and Tobias fled to upstate New York, but the fugitives were captured to be brought back for punishment. In 1647, he was accused of sodomy with his slave Tobias. One of the earliest known cases was that of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, a young Dutch immigrant barber-surgeon, who rose in rank to become commissary at Fort Orange (present-day Albany) after his exploration of Mohawk country in upstate New York on a trade mission there (he is credited as the first white man to reach the Mohawk Valley). The colony of New Amsterdam, though considered more socially and religiously tolerant in general compared to other colonies, made homosexuality a capital offense under Dutch law. Laws were in existence throughout the 17th and 18th centuries against sodomy, even if rarely enforced.
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There are three known sodomy cases involving men in Dutch New Amsterdam, resulting in two executions. The strong religious taboo against even the mention of homosexuality in the 17th and 18th centuries has made documentation of this period quite rare, aside from some statutes and court cases.