The wonders of nature
Starting in the mid-sixteenth century Dutch ships began venturing farther and farther across the oceans. Once back in their home ports, the crew members told stories of the many wondrous things they had seen along the way. The interest in these stories was enormous. Merchants were eager to learn all they could about trade possibilities with distant lands, cartographers were hungry for facts about newly discovered regions, and collectors tried to purchase the exotic objects these travellers had brought home. Almost everyone was curious about the ‘cannibals’ and ‘carnivorous animals’ that had threatened the lives of many an ‘honest sailor’.

With quite some regularity the ships brought exotic animals back with them. Some of the animals were still alive, but more often than not they had died en route and been stuffed by the crew. The living and the stuffed animals found their way to menageries (forerunners of today’s zoos), collectors’ cabinets, travelling exhibitions and, in some cases, inns.

In the port city of Amsterdam there were countless inns in the seventeenth century, and some of them maintained collections of exotic animals. There were other interesting things to see there as well: people who were exceptionally large or very small, or who had a serious physical defect that they could show off. Not all the people who visited the inns came for the sole purpose of alcohol and thrills. The exhibited objects attracted the attention of men of learning from all over Europe.

The Blauw Jan
The inn known as the Blauw Jan, which opened its doors on the Kloveniersburgwal in Amsterdam in the mid-seventeenth century, had a large barred cage in the inner courtyard. Upon payment of four stuivers visitors were permitted to see the exotic birds that were kept there. They could also examine the various cabinets containing ‘rarities’ and ‘naturalia’ (which included animals and human foetuses preserved in bottles of alcohol), as well as exotic mammals, some of them stuffed. The inn had built up a name for itself throughout Europe because of the regular ‘refreshment’ of the collection. The managers of the Blauw Jan did not limit themselves to displaying the animals and other objects coming in from distant lands; they traded in them, too. Animals from the inn were sold to the courts of France and Sweden and to the stadholder in The Hague.

By 1784 it was all over. When the supply of new animals came to a halt because of the Fourth English War, the inn was sold and shut down.

Jan Velten
In around 1700 the inn was regularly visited by Jan Velten, who made drawings of the exhibited objects and wrote about them. Nothing is known of the background of this nature enthusiast. He certainly was not a trained artist. The pencil drawings he made lack skill and look very much like children’s drawings. This is less true of the ink drawings and gouaches. Velten drew the animals and objects being shown in another Amsterdam inn as well. He bound his 265 drawings in a single volume which he called ‘Wonderen van de natuur’ (Wonders of Nature), which is now located in the Artis library of the Library of the University of Amsterdam.

A real Indian comes to call
In the autumn of 1764, a real American Mohawk Indian could be seen at the Blauw Jan. A German living in the Mohawk Valley had joined forced with his neighbours to earn some money in Europe. He reached Amsterdam via England with two Indians. He sold one of them, named Sychnecta, to the manager of the inn who in turn put him on display. Sychnecta was drawn there from life in his traditional costume by the artist Pieter Barbiers. A. Smit made an etching from the drawing. There are few known drawings of 18th century Mohawks, and Barbiers had made one of them, probably without knowing it. Sychnecta returned to the Mohawk Valley in the summer of 1765.