Ask A New Yorker interviewed Joep de Koning, Chairman and President of The Tolerance Park Foundation, on the history of New York. He discussed the history of Dutch colonial life in New York.
Ask a New Yorker: What’s the biggest myth
about New York’s history?
Joep: That is a real estate myth. The story about Peter Minuit having bought
Manhattan Island from the Indians for a few kettles and beans worth sixty dollars
just didn’t happen. There was no real estate transaction. There were instructions.
These instructions were given in 1624 and 1625 to the first settlers to Governors
Island. They were led by the second Director of New Netherland called Willem
Verhulst. They were told by the Dutch government and the West Indian Company
that they had to build a citadel as permanent settlement in this region. They
could select to build that fortification in any place they would want to as
long as the place was not occupied by Indians. But if a preferred place was
already occupied by natives they had to appease them by giving them merchandise
that would allow the settlers to live among them in peace. Those were the presents
that were given to the Indians and enabled the colonists to live harmoniously
among the Manhattan Indians. The West Indian Company had suggested though that
the colonists consider a spot on the west side of the Hudson River to build
Fort Amsterdam, which is now Hoboken, or at the southern point of Manhattan.
In the end it was left up to Willem Verhulst and his council to decide where
fort Amsterdam was going to be built and they decided on Manhattan Island in
1625. Then most of the settlers moved gradually from Governors Island to Manhattan
Island. What has Minuit to do with the founding of the City?
Ask a New Yorker: Cheers to Peter Minuit.
Joep: Peter Minuit was a volunteer of the West Indian company, he was not an
employee. At the end of 1626 Willem Verhulst, the second director of New Netherland,
was sent back to the Netherlands together with the fortification engineer. They
arrived there in November 1626 on the wharf of Amsterdam. There was a parliamentary
representative from the West Indian Company that made a report. It was only
that local guy who had written down that Manhattan had been bought from the
Indians. It’s no more than a slip of the tongue or hearsay because there
is no deed and never was. He had most likely heard it from Verhulst himself
who reinterpreted his instructions as it sounded better. I guess that later
story tellers just assumed that it was Minuit who had “bought” Manhattan
because he had been elected director by the New Netherland Council to succeed
Verhulst. But Minuit wasn’t even here at the time. He had only arrived
from the Netherlands in May 1626 and went straight to what is now called Albany.
He wasn’t even in New Amsterdam in May 1626 when the so-called real estate
transaction allegedly took place.
Ask a New Yorker: Thank you for setting the story straight.
Joep: There is no proof anywhere that Peter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan
from the Indians.
