A view of a native village as it may have looked prior to the Dutch colonization of New Amsterdam. From Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York, edited by D.T. Valentine, 1858.
One of the most well-known mysteries about New York, an irrevocable part of the city’s origin story, is that Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island for the equivalent of $24. Dutch West India Company Director Minuit was indeed the person authorized to purchase lands, and it is assumed that he is the one who made the “deal.” However, no deed for the sale has survived, as the purchase is only recorded in letters.
For example, Dutch merchant Pieter Schaghen recorded the following in a letter that was received in November 1626:
“Yesterday the ship the Arms of Amsterdam arrived here. It sailed from New Netherland out of the River Mauritius on the 23d of September. They report that our people are in good spirit and live in peace. The women also have borne some children there. They have purchased the Island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders. It is 11,000 morgens in size. They had all their grain sowed by the middle of May, and reaped by the middle of August. They sent samples of these summer grains: wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, canary seed, beans and flax. The cargo of the aforesaid ship is: 7246 Beaver skins, 178 ½ Otter skins, 675 Otter skins, 48 Mink skins, 36 Lynx skins, 33 Minks, 34 Muskrat skins. Many oak timbers and nut wood…”
The sale is recorded in other letters, although what is now known as the Schaghen Letter offers the most information about it, and also provides additional insight about the types of goods that were leaving the colony, with beaver skins as the chief export.
A depiction of the sale of Manhattan Island to Dutch West India Company Governor Peter Minuit. From Tercentenary of the City of New York: A Tribute to the settlement of Manhattan Island, now New York, by the Dutch, early in the Seventeenth Century. Issued by The Consistory of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church, 1926.
The deed was also referenced as late as 1670 in the minutes for a meeting at Fort James (previously Fort Amsterdam) on April 9th of that year:
“Some of ye Indyans present lay Clayme to ye Land by Harlem , but ye Records shews it was bought & paid for 44 yeares.”
Several Lenape tribes shared the abundant resources of Manhattan, using the island for hunting, fishing, and planting. They did not engage in private land ownership, and may have seen the sale as akin to an agreement for the Dutch to use the land along with them, rather than an exclusive purchase. The Dutch, of course, were not concerned with understanding the native concept of land use, and considered the land to be theirs.
Native paths in Lower Manhattan, showing notable places with some original names. From Indian paths in the great metropolis by Reginald Pelham Bolton, 1922.
Native habitation sites dotted the island, including Werpoes, a settlement on the shores of the Collect Pond in what is now lower Manhattan; Rechtank (“sandy place”), later called Corlear’s Hook and now the Lower East Side; Shepmoes, which was the site of a great council elm tree, around where Astor Place is today; Sapokanikan, a place to grow tobacco on the banks of the fertile Minetta Creek (likely from Manetta, “evil spirit,” or “devil’s spring”). in what is now Greenwich Village; the Konaande Kongh and Rechgawanes fishing sites along the East River in what is now Harlem, and a small village on the northern end of Manhattan Island in what is now Inwood (Shorakapok, “the sitting place”), which is where the sale of the island supposedly took place.
What seems to be the general consensus among historians is that some sort of sale did in fact take place. However, it was in all likelihood not the kind of land purchase that Europeans were used to, where money or goods are exchanged and the sale is permanent. Indeed, since the “birth certificate of New York” has been lost to time, it’s unknown what exactly was exchanged as part of the sale, although similar land purchases during the Dutch period included exchanges of guns, knives, kettles, hoes, axes, duffel cloth, and wampum.
The tulip tree near which the sale of Manhattan supposedly occurred, in what is now Inwood Hill Park. The 165-foot tall tree stood until 1932 when it died, and it was removed. From the Annual report of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society to the legislature of the State of New York, 1913.
The notion of Manhattan specifically being sold for $24 came in 1846, when New York historian Edmund O’Callaghan reviewed the Schaghen Letter and converted the figure of 60 guilders to $24:
“The island of Manhattans, estimated then to contain twenty-two thousand acres of land, was therefore purchased from the Indians, who received for that splendid tract the trifling sum of sixty guilders, or twenty-four dollars.”
This figure was repeated by other authors and historians, and soon passed into the folklore of New York. The city has long searched for its own mythology, and the idea of the honest and just Dutch plucking the choice fruit of Manhattan for what amounted to trinkets fit in well with both the lore of the city and the time period of the 1840s and 50s, which was seeing an increase in nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
By the turn of the 18th century, most of the land in what is now the Five Boroughs had been sold (and sometimes re-sold) to Europeans. With their population long decimated and forced to leave their ancestral lands, many Lenape moved to the west, a devastating process that would be repeated time and time again.
Sources
Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Grumet, Robert S. First Manhattans: A History of the Indians of Greater New York. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.
Grumet, Robert S. Manhattan to Minisink: American Indian place names in greater New York and vicinity. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021.
Minutes of the Executive Council of the Province of New York: Administration of Francis Lovelace, 1668-1673. Edited by Victor Hugo Paltsits. New York: State of New York, 1910.
O’Callaghan, E. B. History of New Netherland. New York: D. Appleton, 1846.
Pritchard, Evan T.. Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York. San Francisco: Council Oak Books, 2002.
Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World: The epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America. United Kingdom: Doubleday, 2004.
The Encyclopedia of New York City: Second Edition. Edited by Kenneth T. Jackson. Germany: Yale University Press, 2010.