Dutch Americans
While the Netherlands was a small country, the Dutch Empire was quite large so emigrants leaving the mother country had a wide variety of choices. New Amsterdam was not high on their list, especially because of the Native American risk. The major Dutch cities were centers of high culture, but they still sent immigrants. Most new arrivals were farmers from remote villages who, on arrival, in America scattered into widely separated villages with little contact with one another. Even inside a settlement, different Dutch groups had minimal interaction. With very few new arrivals, the result was an increasingly traditional system cut off from the forces for change. The people maintained their popular culture, revolving around their language and their Calvinist religion. The Dutch brought along their own folklore, most famously "Sinterklaas" (the foundation of the modern day Santa Claus) and created their own as in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". They maintained their distinctive clothing, and food preferences and introduced some new foods to America, including beets, endive, spinach, parsley, and cookies.
Bamboo wife
The origin of the English term "Dutch wife" is thought via folk etymology to be from the (former) Dutch colony of Indonesia, where Dutch traders would spend long periods away from their wives. A more likely explanation is the link with Dutch courage, Dutch auction or to go Dutch. Here the use of the word Dutch was something dodgy or not regular. It arose in the 17th century when there were a series of Anglo-Dutch wars and the Dutch were seen as untrustworthy by the English. This then carried over to America and the colonies and sees this use of Dutch applied in other circumstances such as in the phrase "you can trust me or I am a Dutchman".