Not bad, you are surely thinking, even by the stringent standards of the GOP. But wait. Now, the Louisiana Purchase was not the best land deal the U. It cost 3 cents per acre in 5 cents when you figure in the interest , whereas Alaska cost 2 cents per acre in Just the same, it offers an interesting comparison.
The Louisiana Purchase accounts for about 23 percent of the present area of the U. Having performed prodigious feats of calculation, we find that since the heartland of America has appreciated at an average annual rate of 5.
Conclusion: that dimbulb Minuit may have paid too much! But compared to other historic U. I grew up in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, New York. Named after the Canarsie Indians, it is the farthest point from Manhattan in Brooklyn.
When I was in high school, a history class published a research project in which they convincingly proved that Peter Minuit had purchased Manhattan from the Canarsie Indians. Since they did not live on Manhattan Island, it is unlikely that they had any ownership claim in the first place.
Rather than giving Mr. The letter contains no details of the individuals involved in the sale, nor the precise date of the exchange. That figure was taken from a history book published in and has somehow remained unchanged since then. Furthermore, there's no indication of what that money represented in terms of traded goods, though many accounts have perpetuated the questionable idea that native people sold their homelands for little more than a few " trinkets.
The absence of evidence doesn't mean the exchange didn't occur, however. Trading land was actually common during this period; there are many cases in which there is much more convincing evidence that land was exchanged in some way between Native Americans and the Dutch.
For instance, there are several formal land deeds, signed by Native American sellers and Dutch buyers, for the purchase of Staten Island in , for parts of Long Island in , and also for Manhattan, again, in But considering that it's become the defining symbol of New York City's "origins," that first purported sale ironically seems to be the least reliable account we have.
Even assuming the historic transaction did go ahead, there are other factors that make it unlikely that Manhattan was traded so straightforwardly, as the story suggests. Related: Why is it called 'Wall Street'? Historians have dissected the various accounts of land sales across 17th-century New Amsterdam and have concluded that broad cultural differences in the understanding of property rights and ownership would have muddied what it really meant to "sell" land.
Some historians have noted that land trading and ideas of private landownership were not uncommon features in the economies of native people. But as well as that, land was more commonly understood as a space to be shared among different groups or, in some cases, leased between them.
Less common was the idea that land might be sold and permanently relinquished to another group — which was the driving principle behind European ideas of property and ownership. To the Native Americans who signed title deeds, it's likely that the documents represented an agreement that the Dutch could share the land or lease it for a limited period — which might also explain why the modest payment doesn't match the magnitude of what was seemingly being acquired by the Dutch.
The trade may also have represented a guarantee of safe passage for the Dutch through the area. What's less likely is that Indigenous Manhattanites knowingly engaged in the irrevocable sale of their ancestral home. In this light, the real question becomes not so much whether the sale happened but rather what it signified — and for that matter, the significance of any sale that took place in 17th-century New York.
Another detail that Schagen leaves out of his letter is what the Dutch actually used to make the purchase. Also missing with the deed or any additional documentation of the sale are records of any intangibles that might have been traded with the 60 guilders worth of whatever it was. Early Dutch settlements in the area were established to participate in fur trade with the natives, and whichever tribe made the Manhattan deal likely could have counted on the Dutch as trade partners and potential allies in the future, making the deal that much sweeter.
One last thing to consider—which further complicates the story of the Manhattan deal—is the ideological difference between the Europeans and the Native Americans regarding the sale of land. But that's not accurate.
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