Portrait of Samuel Blommaert (1583-1654) – 1622 director West India Company in 1622.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
Also arriving on the Orange Tree with Verhulst was Peter Minuit. Born of French Protestant parents in Wesel, Germany in 1590, Minuit was, like many explorers of his day, a mercenary. After he worked for the Dutch he became the director of New Sweden (Delaware). Minuit\u2019s assignments in New Netherland were spelled out by the West India Company to Verhulst, who was charged with having Minuit sail up the Hudson and explore the territory, to dig for valuable minerals, and to identify useful products of the region (Laer 1924:49, 75).<\/p>\n
The three areas that the Dutch originally settled were found not to be entirely satisfactory. Fort Orange eventually survived, but in its first year had experienced floods. High Island was abandoned, and Nut Island was found to be too small for pasturage. On 22 April 1625, the West India Company sent out Further Instructions to Verhulst to find a better location for the settlement, as well as instructions to Cryn Fredericksz to lay out a fort to be named Amsterdam (Laer 1924:82-129, 132-169). Included in the Further Instructions for Verhulst was a more specific directive about obtaining land:<\/p>\n<\/div>
And finding none but those that are occupied by the Indians they shall see whether they cannot, either in return for trading-goods or by means of some amicable agreement, induce them to give by ownership and possession to us, without however forcing them thereto in the least or taking possession by craft or fraud, lest we call down the wrath of God upon our unrighteous beginnings (Laer 1924:106).<\/div>
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After the Further Instructions of 22 April 1625, there are no known documents concerning New Netherland for over a year. A letter written by Minuit to Barentsz on 11 May 1626 revealed his intentions to buy Manhattan in the near future (Gehring 1980:6-7). The next evidence which has survived are three documents associated with the passage of the Arms of Amsterdam, which sailed from New Netherland on 23 September 1626, and arrived at Amsterdam on 4 November. All of these three were written after the purchase.
\nOne of these is the letter of de Rasiere, to which we have already referred, written on 23 September 1626, the day the ship left the colony. De Rasiere made no mention of the Manhattan purchase, which he surely would have done had it been affected while he was in New Netherland; the purchase must have taken place before his arrival on 28 July 1626.
\nThe second document is the only contemporary evidence for the purchase of Manhattan, and allows us to place the date of the purchase back a bit further. It is a letter written by Peter Schagen, a member of the Nineteen of the West India Company, to the States-General on 5 November 1626, which recounts the news he had gathered from the crew and passengers on the Arms of Amsterdam after it arrived. It says in part:<\/p>\n<\/div>
They report that our people are in good heart and live in peace there; the women have also borne some children there. They have purchased the Island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders; \u2018tis 11,000 morgans (about 22,000 acres) in size. They had all their grain sowed by the middle of May, and reaped by the middle of August. They send thence samples of summer grain; such as wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, canary seed, beans, and flax (O\u2019Callaghan 1856, 1:37).<\/div>
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The third piece of evidence is the description of the colony which Nicolaes Wassenaer gathered from the people on the Arms of Amsterdam and used for his Historisch Verhael. He reported that the plans for the fort had been laid out, a sawmill and a windmill had been built, and New Amsterdam was a bustling community (Jameson 1909: 83-86). The date of 22 April 1625, when the Further Instructions were written, has been accepted by the City of New York as the official date for its founding. A City Council resolution of 8 January 1975 proclaimed 1975 to be the 350th anniversary of the city, owing largely to the efforts of the Holland Society. The date of the city\u2019s founding on its seal and flag, which until that time had been 1664, the year when the English took over from the Dutch, was also changed to 1625 (Zabriskie and Kenney 1977a:11-14).<\/p>\n
The date and circumstances of the purchase of Manhattan are not fully revealed by the surviving evidence. Some historians had believed that Minuit was not director- general of the colony when it was bought and that it was purchased while William Verhulst was in charge, although Minuit or Adrien Theinpont may have negotiated the contract (Zabriskie and Kenney 1977b:12). Verhulst was sent home in disgrace on the Arms of Amsterdam because of his inconsistent, poor administration (Laer 1924:176). However, documents recently uncovered in the New York State Library at Albany by Charles Gehring, including the letter to Barentsz from Minuit, show that Minuit was director-general of the colony when Manhattan was bought and that the purchase was probably made shortly after 11 May 1626, so that the grain could be sown by mid May as Schagen reported to the Nineteen.
\nThe basic documents for the study of New Netherland were discovered by Harmanus Bleeker, an Albany Dutch- man, who served as the ambassador to the Netherlands under Martin Van Buren, himself a New Yorker of Dutch descent. In 1839, Bleeker persuaded the New York legislature to send his secretary, John R. Brodhead, to Amsterdam to transcribe materials in the state archives. Three years later Brodhead returned with a rich harvest of papers which were translated and edited by E.B. O\u2019Callaghan and published in Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, under the authority of another act of the state legislature.<\/p>\n
Brodhead knew that some material had been removed from the Dutch archives and sold as waste paper and was presumed lost to historians. In 1910, however, six documents written between 1624 and 1626 were offered at auction, including the instructions to May, the Further Instructions to Verhulst, the de Rasiere letter of 1626, and the letter to Cryn Fredericksz about building Fort Amsterdam. They were bought by Henry Huntington, translated by A.J.F. van Laer, and published in California in 1924. These Van Rappard Documents, as they are commonly called, are a valuable supplement to the papers Brodhead transcribed.<\/p>\n
As we have seen, the documentary evidence for the purchase of Manhattan is extremely scanty. No deed has survived, although the West India Company specifically instructed that a deed be secured. Unless the deed for Manhattan surfaces sometime in the future, an unlikely though not impossible event, we shall never know the terms of purchase beyond the fact that the Dutch valued its worth at sixty guilders. However, some idea of what may have been used for the purchase of Manhattan can be gathered from the record of the purchase of Staten Island.<\/p>\n<\/div>
BEADS IN THE PURCHASE OF MANHATTAN<\/h2><\/div>The original deed to Staten Island has not survived either, but before it was lost a copy was made by Cornelius Melyen. It shows that Minuit and five other colonists bought the island on 10 August 1626. The natives, who were represented by seven named leaders, received for the island, \u201cSome Diffies [duffles; that is, cloth], Kittles [kettles], Axes, Hoes, Wampum, Drilling Awls, Jews Harps, and diverse other wares, which were all particularized\u201d (The Melyen Papers\u201d 1913:124)(Figures 2-3).<\/p>\n
These objects may seem of little worth to us, especially compared to real estate, but to the natives, who had no concept of the possession of land, they were of great value. Cloth and metal items were scarce and novel and, especially in the case of kettles, hoes, and axes, were generally superior to their own equipment. Jews harps are not really necessary items, but even small musical instruments were no doubt greatly admired. Drilling awls can be used for a number of tasks, but of the uses to which they may be put, the manufacture of wampum was probably foremost. The natives of New York harbor and southern New England were the producers of this highly prized bead (Figure 4). The ease of drilling shell with European metal drills rather than with stone implements was an important factor in the growth of wampum manufacturing and trade.<\/p>\n<\/div>
It is important to note here that no glass trade beads are named in Melyen\u2019s abbreviated copy of the Staten Island deed. They may have been included in his \u201cother wares\u201d category. But even if they had been, they were clearly not an important component of the purchase price.<\/p>\n
The beads which are mentioned in the Staten Island deed are the native-made wampum beads of shell. It is impossible to overstate the importance of wampum to the Indians and European colonists during this period of American history. The Dutch recognized the value of these small shell beads so well that a string of wampum encircling a beaver was used on the official seal of New Netherland.<\/p>\n
The juxtaposition of the beaver and the wampum string was most appropriate. The Dutch were geographically positioned so that they could easily gain control of the wampum trade, as the Indians of eastern Long Island and Narragansett Bay were the main producers. This they sought to do early because wampum could be traded inland for pelts which would yield a 900 percent profit in Europe.2 Soon after his arrival, de Rasiere recognized the value of wampum. His letter of 23 September 1626, informed the West India Company:<\/p>\n<\/div>
[The French Indians] come to us for no other reason than to get wampum, which the French cannot procure unless they come to barter for it with our natives in the north…. I shall know how to get wampum and to stock Fort Orange in such a way that the French Indians will never come there in vain…. I hope this winter before the frost sets in to stock Fort Orange with a thousand yards of wampum, nearly all of which I have in my possession (Laer 1924:223-224, 227).<\/div>
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De Rasiere also introduced wampum to the Plymouth settlers in 1628. They soon recognized its value so well that the first Euro-Indian war, the Pequot War of 1637, was waged largely over who would control the wampum trade. Wampum became currency throughout the colonies, and was still legal tender in New York as late as 1701 (Bradford 1966:203; Fernow 1893, 4:299; Josephy 1982:32-75).<\/p>\n
It is, however, doubtful that the Indians regarded the wampum given to them for Staten Island as payment in the sense of currency. The monetary use of wampum was a European invention, necessitated by the acute coin shortage of the colonies. The Indians were more likely to have regarded the wampum as a sign of agreement. The use of wampum to ratify treaties and other compacts was an Indian conception, and not appreciated by the Europeans until some time later.3 Lending support to this supposition was the inclusion of drilling awls in the Staten Island purchase price, most probably used primarily to make more wampum.<\/p>\n<\/div>
THE BEAD MYTH<\/h2><\/div>The foregoing shows that there is no documentary evidence that even suggests that European trade beads were used to buy Manhattan Island. Nonetheless, the association of beads with the Manhattan purchase is commonplace. An enumeration of sources asserting this would be too tedious to list, but a few additional samples can be offered. J.G. Wilson\u2019s Memorial History of the City of New-York (1892) says, \u201c…the glittering beads and baubles and brightly colored cloths filled the minds of the simple Indians with delight\u201d (Wilson 1892, 1:158).
\nA generation later James Sullivan (1927, 1:157), obviously influenced by Wilson, wrote in his History of New York State, \u201cGlittering beads and baubles, brightly colored cloths, glittering trinkets of small value brought from the ships nearby in chests, and opened on the shore before the eager eyes of the aborigines, were what worked the miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Current New York State school history texts repeat the story. The New Exploring American History by Schwartz and O\u2019Conner (1981:60) says, \u201cPeter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan from the local Indians. Minuit paid $24 worth of colored beads and trinkets for the island.\u201d
\nAnd, of course, those interested in beads, such as Erikson (1969:22) in her The Universal Bead, share in the myth: \u201c…and included in the barter for Manhattan, as we have all been taught, were strings of glass beads.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so have all Americans been taught. But where did the story originate? Certainly not from the available evidence. One of the earliest histories of New York was William Smith, Jr.\u2019s History of the Province of New York, published in 1757. Smith mentions neither beads nor anything else used to buy Manhattan because the purchase was not known to him. Washington Irving\u2019s (1809) Diedrich Knickerbocker\u2019s A History of New-York, based largely on Smith and the source of many early New York myths, also makes no mention of any purchase. The first historian to write about the purchase of Manhattan was N.C. Lambrechtsen, whose A History of the New Netherlands states that Pavonia and Hoboken (both in New Jersey), Nut Island, Staten Island, and Manhattan Island were all bought from the Indians. Lambrechtsen must have studied the Dutch archives; the work appeared in Dutch in 1818 and was translated into English in 184l (Kemp 1841:91). His work, however, had no affect upon American historians.<\/p>\n
Joseph W. Moulton\u2019s Novum Belgium (1826) was the first American history to say that Manhattan had been bought from the Indians. This account, however, was completely fictitious, describing how small tracts were bought one at a time on lower Manhattan (Moulton 1826:427). It is difficult to discern what his sources may have been; a contemporary historian, George Folsom (1841:450), asserted that Moul- ton\u2019s only source was his own fertile imagination.<\/p>\n
During the following two decades a number of histories of New York appeared, including Macauley\u2019s The Natural, Statistical, and Civil History of the State of New-York (1829), Eastman\u2019s A History of the State of New York (1832), Dunlap\u2019s History of the New Netherlands, Province of New York and State of New York (1839), Barber and Howe\u2019s Historical Collections of the State of New York (1842), and Watson\u2019s Annals and Occurences of New York City and State in Olden Time (1846). None of them mention the purchase of Manhattan.<\/p>\n<\/div>
Only after Brodhead had returned from Amsterdam with the material from the Dutch archives that he had so tirelessly tracked down, was the purchase discussed again. O\u2019Callaghan\u2019s History of New Netherlands, published in 1846, says: \u201cThe 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\u201d (O\u2019Callaghan 1846, 1:104). His source was the Peter Schagen letter of 5 November 1626, which gives the purchase price only as \u201cthe value of 60 guilders.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this point it is interesting to note how old the figure of twenty-four dollars is in regard to this purchase. Recent historians who have traced the historiography of the Manhattan purchase have suggested that the figure was first used by Anderson and Flick in 1902 or by Riker in 1881 (Weslager 1968:5; Zabriskie and Kenney 1977a:11). It is clearly much older than that. During the next three decades the purchase of Man- hattan Island for twenty-four dollars equaling sixty guilders is repeated by virtually every historian and textbook writer dealing with the history of New York. Among them were: Mather in A Geographical History of the State of New York (1848), Brodhead in History of the State of New York (1853), Valentine in History of the City of New York (1853), Vogelvanger in \u201cThe Manhattan Papers\u201d which appeared in The Sunday Times4 (1859-1860), Booth in History of the City of New York (1867), Randall in History of the State of New York (1870), and Stone in History of New York City (1872).<\/p>\n
Randall appears to have been the first writer to have pointed out that the purchase would not have been made in coin. He suggested that trinkets and other goods would have been used instead (Randall 1870:19). With this there is no argument. The error that has been made was in trying to enumerate and identify, without any proof, the trading goods that were used, and presenting this identification as fact.<\/p>\n
Beads were first brought into the picture in 1877 by Martha J. Lamb in her History of the City of New York. As far as can be determined by the present survey of historical works, this is the first attempt to list the actual goods exchanged for Manhattan, but the list is only a product of the author\u2019s imagination. She wrote: \u201cHe [Minuit] then called together some of the principal Indian chiefs, and offered beads, buttons, and other trinkets in exchange for their real estate. They accepted the terms with unfeigned delight, and the bargain was closed at once\u201d (Lamb 1877, 1:53). Now the myth was complete. Peter Minuit stepped off the ship from Holland, called the Indians together, and for the paltry sum of twenty-four dollars worth of beads and assorted gew-gaws purchased the island of Manhattan, closing the \u201cgreatest real estate deal in history.\u201d
\nThe story has been so often repeated and so widely illustrated, particularly by Alfred Frederick\u2019s painting, commissioned by the Title Guarantee and Trust Company, that it has become firmly rooted in American folklore. Nearly all laymen and most (although not all) professional historians have taken it for fact.<\/p>\n
Some writers have been concerned about the equating of sixty guilders of the 1620s with the modern twenty-four dollars. O\u2019Callaghan was clearly thinking of gold coin, and his estimate was par for his day. Others have not been happy with the figure. George W. Schuyler (1885:11, n. l) estimated that in that year it was worth three hundred dollars. John Fiske (1899, 1:121) estimated its worth at one hundred and twenty dollars. Morison (1965:57) suggested a value of only forty dollars, apparently reflecting a bit more than an ounce of gold, now much elevated in price.
\nThe most interesting calculation of the value of the purchase of Manhattan was made by John J. Anderson and Alexander C. Flick in A Short History of the State of New York (1901), when they reckoned that if the twenty-four dollars had been put at 6 percent compound interest it would be worth $122,500,000 by the time they were writing. They must have calculated the amount from 1626 to 1891; by the time their book appeared in 1902 it would have been worth over 231 million dollars. In the same spirit, if we make a similar calculation from 1626 to 1986, we arrive at a figure of
\nnearly 31 billion dollars! Viewed in this way, the purchase of underdeveloped land was not too unfair, if only the Canarsie Indians had had access to a bank account.<\/p>\n
James Wilson was so concerned about the price for Manhattan that in 1875 he asked the Queen of the Netherlands (Sophia) if she thought it had been unfair. Her Majesty\u2019s reply was that it had been perfectly fair because: \u201cIf the savages had received more for their land they would simply have drunk more fire-water. With sixty florins [guilders] they could not purchase sufficient to intoxicate each member of the tribe!\u201d (Wilson 1892, 1:158). Her majesty obviously envisioned payment in coin and a neighborhood bar. Daniel Van Pelt thought her comments unamusing, not because of the racial slur, but because he believed the price equitable on other grounds:<\/p>\n<\/div>
The foregoing shows that there is no documentary evidence that even suggests that European trade beads were used to buy Manhattan Island. Nonetheless, the association of beads with the Manhattan purchase is commonplace. An enumeration of sources asserting this would be too tedious to list, but a few additional samples can be offered. J.G. Wilson\u2019s Memorial History of the City of New-York (1892) says, \u201c…the glittering beads and baubles and brightly colored cloths filled the minds of the simple Indians with delight\u201d (Wilson 1892, 1:158).
\nA generation later James Sullivan (1927, 1:157), obviously influenced by Wilson, wrote in his History of New York State, \u201cGlittering beads and baubles, brightly colored cloths, glittering trinkets of small value brought from the ships nearby in chests, and opened on the shore before the eager eyes of the aborigines, were what worked the miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Current New York State school history texts repeat the story. The New Exploring American History by Schwartz and O\u2019Conner (1981:60) says, \u201cPeter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan from the local Indians. Minuit paid $24 worth of colored beads and trinkets for the island.\u201d
\nAnd, of course, those interested in beads, such as Erikson (1969:22) in her The Universal Bead, share in the myth: \u201c…and included in the barter for Manhattan, as we have all been taught, were strings of glass beads.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so have all Americans been taught. But where did the story originate? Certainly not from the available evidence. One of the earliest histories of New York was William Smith, Jr.\u2019s History of the Province of New York, published in 1757. Smith mentions neither beads nor anything else used to buy Manhattan because the purchase was not known to him. Washington Irving\u2019s (1809) Diedrich Knickerbocker\u2019s A History of New-York, based largely on Smith and the source of many early New York myths, also makes no mention of any purchase. The first historian to write about the purchase of Manhattan was N.C. Lambrechtsen, whose A History of the New Netherlands states that Pavonia and Hoboken (both in New Jersey), Nut Island, Staten Island, and Manhattan Island were all bought from the Indians. Lambrechtsen must have studied the Dutch archives; the work appeared in Dutch in 1818 and was translated into English in 184l (Kemp 1841:91). His work, however, had no affect upon American historians.<\/p>\n
Joseph W. Moulton\u2019s Novum Belgium (1826) was the first American history to say that Manhattan had been bought from the Indians. This account, however, was completely fictitious, describing how small tracts were bought one at a time on lower Manhattan (Moulton 1826:427). It is difficult to discern what his sources may have been; a contemporary historian, George Folsom (1841:450), asserted that Moul- ton\u2019s only source was his own fertile imagination.<\/p>\n
During the following two decades a number of histories of New York appeared, including Macauley\u2019s The Natural, Statistical, and Civil History of the State of New-York (1829), Eastman\u2019s A History of the State of New York (1832), Dunlap\u2019s History of the New Netherlands, Province of New York and State of New York (1839), Barber and Howe\u2019s Historical Collections of the State of New York (1842), and Watson\u2019s Annals and Occurences of New York City and State in Olden Time (1846). None of them mention the purchase of Manhattan.<\/p>\n<\/div>
But what were a few thousand acres of land to the Indians roaming over miles of it continually, compared with the glittering glory of utensils and trinkets and gaudy dress-stuff or blankets, to the value of more than four times $24, as money counted in that day? It was an honest, honorable, transaction worthily inaugurating the trade and traffic of America\u2019s mercantile and financial capital; satisfying the instincts of justice and equality in the savage breast (Van Pelt 1898:19).<\/div>
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After all this, it seems a shame not to have the Indians\u2019 side of the story of first meeting the Dutch on Manhattan. Or do we? One of the most fascinating documents of early New York history was gathered by the Rev. John Heckewelder about 1760 from the elders of the tribes who once lived around New York harbor: The Indians said they saw a ship (apparently Hudson\u2019s Half Moon) approaching the island, and they dressed up believing it to be their spirit Mannitto. When the Dutch landed, they drank with the Indians and gave them \u201cbeads, axes, hoes, stockings &c\u201d and said that they would return in a year and \u201cshould then want a little land of them to sow some seeds in order to raise herbs to put in their broth\u201d (Collections of the New-York Historical Society 1841:69-74; Heckewelder 1876:71-75).<\/p>\n
The next year (if this account is true, it would have been two years later when Hendrick Christiansen returned in 1611) the Dutch found that the Indians were wearing the hoes and axes around their necks like pendants and using the stockings for tobacco pouches. The Dutch put handles on the tools and showed the Indians how to use them and how to wear the stockings. \u201cHere (they say) a general laughter ensued among them (the Indians) that they remained for so long a time ignorant of the use of so valuable implements; and had borne with the weight of such heavy metal hanging<\/p>\n
to their necks for such a long time\u201d (Heckewelder 1841:73). The Indians retained their good humor when the Dutch asked for land that a hide would cover or encompass, and then proceeded to cut a hide spirally into a long thin thong which enclosed a large plot of land when unrolled. The account ended with these words:<\/p>\n<\/div>
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.crazycrow.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/The_Purchase_of_Manhattan_Island-wiki-cropped-02-1400x800-1.jpg\" "\\"The")
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<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>![\"1626](\"https:\/\/www.crazycrow.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Verkoopakte_Manhattan-pieter-schaghen-letter-purch-manhattan-1626-01-1400x1066-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>![\"Figure](\"https:\/\/www.crazycrow.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/beads-that-didnt-buy-manhattan-fig01-1400x933-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>![\"Depiction](\"https:\/\/www.crazycrow.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/beads-that-didnt-buy-manhattan-fig02-1400x933-1.jpg\")
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<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>![\"Wampum](\"https:\/\/www.crazycrow.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/beads-that-didnt-buy-manhattan-fig04-1400x933-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>![\"Peter](\"https:\/\/www.crazycrow.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Peter_Minuit_portrait_New_Amsterdam_1600s-wiki-crop-1000x750-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>![\"Portrait](\"https:\/\/www.crazycrow.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Samuel_Blommaert-1583-1651-wiki-crop-1000x750-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>![Samuel Blommaert in 1647 by an unknown artist<\/a>,](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Samuel_Blommaert_(1583-1651).jpg\"){kind=link}