According to this converter from the International Institute of Social History at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences , 60 guilders in was equivalent to A few accounts say that the Dutch got the wool pulled over their eyes, and bought the land from a group of natives that lived on Long Island and were only traveling through Manhattan. Coming upon the European rubes, they traded away land they had no claim to and continued on home with the Dutch loot.
Another detail that Schagen leaves out of his letter is what the Dutch actually used to make the purchase. What's less likely is that Indigenous Manhattanites knowingly engaged in the irrevocable sale of their ancestral home. In this light, the real question becomes not so much whether the sale happened but rather what it signified — and for that matter, the significance of any sale that took place in 17th-century New York.
I think the meaning of that exchange is in question," Gorelick said. This raises the question of whether the purported "sale" of New York would even be legal, in today's terms. Historic accounts also suggest that the effects of land sales in New Amsterdam rarely resulted in the direct, short-term removal of Native Americans from the land, who, in many instances, occupied the land alongside the Dutch for a while.
But these sales likely did create an ideological shift in colonists' minds over who was really in control. That served the Dutch for 40 years until , when they were finally edged out of New Amsterdam by the English, who moved in and named it New York.
Battles over landownership grew more complex and intensified across the landscape, and over the following decades, many Native Americans were gradually displaced. Related: Columbus discovered the New World … so why isn't America named after him? The account of Manhattan's founding sale is, it would seem, more falsehood than truth. Why, then, has the story persisted for so long? These details have also had a troubling effect on how the story has been interpreted.
Over numerous recountings, and as shown in dozens of paintings , there's been an emphasis on the idea that "trinkets" were all that native people received in return for their ancestral home. Its goal was to expand the Dutch trade reach globally. It dabbled in trading many goods, including participating in the Atlantic slave trade.
Minuit had been sent to diversify the trade coming out of New Netherland Modern-day New York , they traded in mostly animal pelts then. Minuit was authorized by the DWIC to settle any disputes with any local Native American tribes over trading and land rights. There is no proof of an original title deed. The only evidence we have is a DWIC internal communication from The communication states:.
They report that our people are in good spirit and live in peace. The women also have borne some children here. They have purchased the Island of Manhattes from the savages for the value of 60 Guilders. It is 11, Morgens in size. Historian Nathaniel Benchley found that Minuit was dealing with the Canarsees, a Lenape tribe primarily located in south Brooklyn.
For those of you who are familiar with New York Geography, south Brooklyn is not Manhattan far from it actually. Benchley claims that the Weckquaesgeeks, a closely related Wappinger tribe, actually occupied most of mid and Northern Manhattan. That explains the low price! Manhattan was never the Canarsees to sell away. The Canarsees happily took the goods which were more than just trinkets and beads and went back to Brooklyn.
To further emphasize this point, there was a series of bloody battles between the Wappinger tribes and the Dutch settlers during the early s. Another, a postcard from , shows five bare-chested Indians seated at Minuit's feet in front of a longhouse. Each has a headdress consisting of a few vertical feathers; one smokes a long pipe while three companions hold up and examine strings of beads that the Dutchmen have pulled from a chest, along with some red cloth.
A soldier with a musket stands in the rear. Yet another drawing shows two Dutchmen in big floppy hats, beribboned shoes, and knee breeches meeting beneath a tree with three over-dressed and po-faced Indians. Here we again see the familiar error of a flamboyantly feathered Western war bonnet, extending right down the native's back. Before them stands a chest in which can be seen cloth and various baubles.
Inevitably, the head Indian is gazing at a string of beads in his hand. One of the Dutchmen is pointing at a piece of paper that lies on a table set between them. No deed to Manhattan survives, but many of the artists who have depicted the transaction assume that one was completed, for their illustrations show such a document.
In one painting it seems as if Minuit is holding up the deed, showing it to the chief Indian, while around them a varied tableau of characters shows Dutch children and women, an Indian examining a hatchet, a relaxed colonist sitting on a chest, smoking, and a barefoot northern Pocahontas shopping for cloth among the beads. One detail of an illustration in Martha Lamb's History of the City of New York is of particular interest for its egregious error.
It shows a Dutchman leaning over the usual chest in a gesture of munificence, offering a string of beads to a couple of Indians. To the left at his feet is a smaller box containing more goods overhanging its edge, including, surprisingly, a rosary—a highly unlikely trade object for a fiercely Protestant country like the Netherlands.
Apart from disregarding the facts about the true nature of the trade goods, what's especially noteworthy is that so many of the illustrations show the rendezvous taking place on or very close to a beach or a shoreline.
In one illustration, the Indians have traveled to the meeting to meet Minuit in at least three canoes, which have been drawn up part way onto the land. Another shoreline gathering is depicted on a postcard produced for the Hudson- Fulton Celebration. We see six Indians wearing long ceremonial war bonnets and elaborate robes gathered beneath a gnarly-rooted tree.
Minuit, clutching a rolled up deed, and his companions have just hauled their longboat up on the shore and unloaded a few chests. One native sits casually, another smokes a pipe, but little interest is being shown in the goods. The meeting as shown is completely stiff and stylized, and the two groups seem to be just staring at each other. In many of these illustrations, an ocean-going ship, sometimes with sails incongruously set, is visible just offshore.
Wherever the rendezvous took place, it hardly seems likely that the Dutch attendance required the use of a seagoing vessel. Although it's not known just where the meeting took place, the most likely location would be somewhere near the southern tip of the island, near where the Battery is today, close to the original settlement on Nut Island and to the small community on Manhattan. A shore meeting is certainly possible, and water transport would have been appropriate for hauling the heavy trade goods.
It would be just as likely for the Dutch party to go by land, requiring a few horses and a wagon or two, though no illustration shows this. This large sailing ship is probably just an attractive artistic motif rather than an attempt to recreate the circumstances of the famous meeting with any accuracy. Even if it proved more expedient to transport men and the trade goods by water, small boats would have sufficed, not a seagoing and impractical three-masted ship requiring a deep anchorage.
Along with the meeting's shoreline setting, the problem with this ship being so often featured in the illustrations is the contrary implication that the viewer may take from this image.
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