Some four centuries ago, on September 1609, the navigator Henry Hudson dropped anchor in front of the island of Manhattan. A few years later, Protestants from Wallonia and the North of France, chased from their region by war and religion, left to build a new life in the New World. Upon their arrival, they purchased virgin lands from the Indians where they started a settlement, never imagining that one day it would become the most famous city in the world: New York. This film is about the pre-history of New York. It explains that many years before Peter Stuyvesant arrived on the scene the original 30 families from the North of France and the South of Belgium and governor Peter Minuit were the real founders of what became the state and the city of New York.