In the 16th century, Native Americans referred to its farthest northwest corner, by the cove on the Hudson River at present-day Gansevoort Street, as "Sapokanikan" ("tobacco field"). The land was cleared and turned into pasture by Dutch and freed African settlers in the 1630s, who named their settlement (also spelled , "North district", equivalent to ‘North/Northwick’). In the 1630s, Governor Wouter van Twiller farmed tobacco on here at his "Farm in the Woods". The English conquered the Dutch settlement of New Netherland in 1664, and Greenwich Village developed as a hamlet separate from the larger New York City to the south on land that would eventually become the Financial District. In 1644, the eleven Dutch African settlers were freed after the first Black legal protest in America. All received parcels of land what is now Greenwich Village.