It was Peter Minuit from the Dutch West India Company. What’s often overlooked is the tribe he dealt with, the Canarsee, who didn’t actually live on the majority of Manhattan. They were essentially selling land they didn’t control, and the Dutch probably just dealt with the first group of Indians they encountered at the southern tip where they wanted to build Fort Amsterdam. It was a politically motivated purchase the Dutch needed some sort of legal documentation, however flimsy, to claim the land against other European powers like the English and French.
It’s attributed to Peter Minuit, the first Director-General, acquiring it from the Canarsee for the Dutch West India Company. The whole “sale” is really controversial because the people he negotiated with weren’t the main residents of the island and definitely didn’t share the Dutch concept of permanent, exclusive land ownership. It’s less a proper sale and more of a negotiated, heavily misunderstood land use agreement that the Dutch decided to treat as a permanent legal deed.
Minuit was the buyer, but the real question is who were the sellers. It was the Lenape people, or specifically the Canarsee band, but the idea of them “selling” it is misleading. For the Lenape, land was like the air or the ocean something you used, but couldn’t own permanently and couldn’t sell outright. They probably saw it as accepting gifts in exchange for the Dutch having temporary use of the land, probably for trading purposes. It’s a huge lesson in how cultural differences can completely alter what a “deal” even means.
You want the name of the Dutch guy? It was Peter Minuit. The Native Americans involved were a group of the Lenape. It was the equivalent of sixty guilders in trade goods, not the famous $24 in trinkets, which is a bit of an inflated myth. The goods were things like metal tools and cloth that were extremely valuable to the natives, so it wasn’t just junk, but it was a massive cultural mismatch on the nature of the transaction.
It was Peter Minuit from the Dutch West India Company. What’s often overlooked is the tribe he dealt with, the Canarsee, who didn’t actually live on the majority of Manhattan. They were essentially selling land they didn’t control, and the Dutch probably just dealt with the first group of Indians they encountered at the southern tip where they wanted to build Fort Amsterdam. It was a politically motivated purchase the Dutch needed some sort of legal documentation, however flimsy, to claim the land against other European powers like the English and French.
It’s attributed to Peter Minuit, the first Director-General, acquiring it from the Canarsee for the Dutch West India Company. The whole “sale” is really controversial because the people he negotiated with weren’t the main residents of the island and definitely didn’t share the Dutch concept of permanent, exclusive land ownership. It’s less a proper sale and more of a negotiated, heavily misunderstood land use agreement that the Dutch decided to treat as a permanent legal deed.
Minuit was the buyer, but the real question is who were the sellers. It was the Lenape people, or specifically the Canarsee band, but the idea of them “selling” it is misleading. For the Lenape, land was like the air or the ocean something you used, but couldn’t own permanently and couldn’t sell outright. They probably saw it as accepting gifts in exchange for the Dutch having temporary use of the land, probably for trading purposes. It’s a huge lesson in how cultural differences can completely alter what a “deal” even means.
You want the name of the Dutch guy? It was Peter Minuit. The Native Americans involved were a group of the Lenape. It was the equivalent of sixty guilders in trade goods, not the famous $24 in trinkets, which is a bit of an inflated myth. The goods were things like metal tools and cloth that were extremely valuable to the natives, so it wasn’t just junk, but it was a massive cultural mismatch on the nature of the transaction.