Peter Minuit
The Eighty Years' War split the Netherlands into a Catholic South and a Protestant North. The religious wars were concluded by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. They would leave much of Germany devastated, though Westphalia suffered less than some areas. Protestant refugees from German states and France migrated to sympathetic nations and cities such as London. The neighboring Dutch Republic emerged in the 17th century as a dominant force in Europe.
On May 24, 1626, Minuit was credited with purchasing the island from the natives (most likely the Lenape tribe [2]) in exchange for trade goods valued at 60 guilders.
The figure of 60 guilders comes from a letter by a member of the board of the Dutch West India Company, Pieter Janszoon Schagen, to the States-General in November 1626.[2][3] In 1846 a New York historian converted the figure of Fl 60 (or 60 guilders) to US$24. "[A] variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars," as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York.[4] Sixty guilders in 1626 had the approximate value of $1000 in 2006, according to the Institute for Social History of Amsterdam[5] Based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992.[6]
The transaction is often viewed as one-sided, usually to the benefit of the Dutch, though one popular history of Manhattan claims that Minuit actually purchased the island from the wrong tribe (the Canarsee, who lived on Long Island).[6] In any event, there is no evidence that either the Dutch or the Indians believed they had swindled, or been swindled by, the other party to the deal [6] An 1877 embellishment of the myth claimed that the Dutch offered "beads, buttons and other trinkets," though there is no evidence for this.[7]
A contemporary purchase of rights in nearby Staten Island, to which Minuit was also party, involved duffel cloth, iron kettles and axe heads, hoes, wampum, drilling awls, "Jew's harps", and "diverse other wares". "If similar trade goods were involved in the Manhattan arrangement", Burrows and Wallace surmise, "then the Dutch were engaged in high-end technology transfer, handing over equipment of enormous usefulness in tasks ranging from clearing land to drilling wampum."
The calculation of $24 also fails to recognize that the concepts of property trading and ownership held by the 17th century Dutch and East Coast natives were both different from modern conceptions. Comparisons to modern land dealing distort the reality of what Minuit was trying to do. Both the Dutch and the Indians undoubtedly included intangibles along with any hard goods in their concept of the total value of transaction. For Indians and Minuit alike, both sides felt they were getting far more than a mere 60 guilders.[8] For instance, the natives most certainly would have thought the trade included the value of the Dutch as potential military allies against rival Indian nations -- a 'good' that cannot valued strictly in currency. As well, the value of the sale to the Dutch and the Indians, would have included the prospect of future trade. The settlement at Manhattan was to be created, after all, to trade furs with the Indians, with both communities expecting to benefit from the relationship.
