You’ve probably heard–more than once—that the Dutch trader Peter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan from the Indians for sixty Dutch guilders’ worth of trade goods—about twenty-four dollars.
I hate coming across this story in kids’ history books. It intimates that the Indians were duped, or dumb enough to allow themselves to be swindled by the savvy Europeans, who bilked them out of plum real estate just by waving around some bright-colored beads.
In fact, the Lenapes were not one tribe, but multiple bands of smaller groups who moved seasonally around the modern five-borough area in search of fish, shellfish, birds, and deer. Because they tended to pack up and move with the seasons, they weren’t interested in the Europeans’ heavy equipment. Minuit was the head of a rag-tag group of about 270 fur traders and their families, nearly all of whom were employed by the Dutch West India company, whose primary motivation was to buy fur pelts from the Indians.
By 1626 the Lenapes were starting to get annoyed at the Dutch traders’ encroaching on their territory. But the Lenapes didn’t believe anyone actually had a right to own land. The land belonged to everyone. They perceived the transaction they made with the Dutch as an agreement to share the land.
The Dutch didn’t see it that way.