Peter Minuit and the Purchase of Manhattan

Who Was Peter Minuit?

Peter Minuit was born sometime between 1585 and 1594 in Wesel, Germany, part of the Kleve archduchy on the lower Rhine near the Dutch border. He married into affluence and became a successful business man, but few records survive. In 1625 Minuit took a job with the Dutch West India Company, which sent him to their small colony called New Amsterdam. Here Minuit was tagged by his employer to replace the current governor. In New Amsterdam, Minuit demonstrated his skill as a businessman and guided the colony to rapid growth. His most famous achievement was the purchase of Manhattan Island from the Lenape natives for $24. The colonists and native Americans lived and traded together in peace and prosperity under Minuit’s reign.

Director of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, Peter Minuit (1589 – 1638) (standing at center right) offers a group of Native Americans a variety of good from a chest in exchange for Manhattan Island, May 24, 1626. In the background, several additional chests are unloaded from a rowboat. (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)

How Did Minuit Come to Purchase Manhattan?

The Lenape people had long been settled through the Hudson River region. They spent their summers on the island of Manhatta, Algonquian for ‘hilly island’, where they traded food supplies and furs with other indigenous Americans. The beaver trade quickly became interesting to the Europeans when they arrived in the region. Dutch merchants traded beaver pelts with the natives to send back to Europe for the fashion industry. Many European traders took up residence in the colony that later became know as New Amsterdam and eventually became Manhattan. 

New Amsterdam in the early 1600’s (Source: Reddit)

Did Minuit Really Pay $24 for Manhattan?

A colonist named Peter Schagen wrote in a letter to the Dutch West India Company in 1626 that the Dutch (Minuit) had ‘purchased the Island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 Guilders’ (National Geographic). In the 1840’s, historian Edmund O’Callaghan researched documents from the sale and wrote that the natives had received ‘for that splendid tract the trifling sum of sixty guilders’. Eventually this figure became associated with the sum of $24. However it is not clear whether money was actually exchanged in the purchase. It is possible that the exchange involved a combination of money, commodities like fur and beads or both. The insinuation however was firmly established that the Indians had been cheated, and is cited as an early example of how early European settlers destroyed Native American culture and  economic welfare. 

Summary

The Indians probably did not see their agreement with Minuit as a sale, but thought they were agreeing to share the land and its riches with the Dutch. The Dutch, on the other hand, clearly viewed the agreement as a purchase and subsequently began to settle the island with their own colonists. By 1664 New Amsterdam was home to 1,500 people and 18 languages were reportedly spoken. The town was known for the wall that surrounded it. Built by slaves, the encompassed area eventually became known as Wall Street. 

Peter Minuit was later involved in a dispute with his employer, the Dutch West India Company, and was dismissed. He founded another colony called New Sueda under the Swedish West India Company and died on a trading mission in the Caribbean during a tropical storm in 1638.

Today the land value of Manhattan is estimated at $1.74 trillion (Bloomberg 2018).

Sources:

www.wikipedia.org

www.nationalgeographic.com

www.jstor.org

www.landofthebrave.info