The Manhattan “Swindle” Myth

by Peter A. Douglas

This label is not applied as a compliment to the business acumen of the Dutch; quite the opposite, in fact, for people who know nothing about the deal often see it as a big swindle. It’s natural in this cynical age that even a historical land deal such as this opens itself up to suspicion, but the unwarranted accusation made against the Dutch over their acquisition of Manhattan in 1626 has a disappointingly impressive durability.

The idea that the Dutch cheated the Indians has grown out of various aspects of the story. Two of these are notorious falsehoods: that the Dutch paid for Manhattan with beads and other such cheap shiny trinkets, and that these baubles were worth only $24. The third source of the allegation stems from the Dutchmen’s supposed fundamental lack of appreciation of the Indians’ way of looking at the “purchase,” something that they permitted themselves to take advantage of. Because of such persistent beliefs, the contention is that the Dutch were guilty of dishonest and corrupt practices in their deal.

These baseless myths have had the dual effect of giving the impression that the Indians were foolish and defeated and the Dutch were treacherous and immoral, the latter conveniently foreshadowing the white man’s broken treaties and other Indian-related horror stories from America’s nineteenth century westward expansion. Quite to the contrary, in fact: the West India Company was most enlightened, insisting on making the occupation of New Netherland a lawful act. Director-General Verhulst’s orders were that the Indians were not to be forced to give up their land but convinced to sell it, and they should be paid in whatever form was satisfactory to them. The Dutch acquisition of Manhattan was thus one of the few instances where Europeans acknowledged the property rights of the native population.

For the Dutch in New Netherland, legitimizing their claim, and creating and maintaining good relations with the indigenous inhabitants, was wise, and, of course, profitable. The Dutch didn’t want to upset or offend the Indians. After all, the Manhattan settlement planned to trade with the Indians for furs, with both parties expecting to reap benefits from the relationship. It’s refreshing and typical of solid, practical Dutch businessmen that they preferred to treat the Indians well, work with them, and go this legal route rather than seize and hold by coercion the land they needed. New Amsterdam was a city “based not on conquest but on contract,” (Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace).

Despite these good intentions, the Dutch reputation for fairness seems to have become tarnished over the years. Being known as shrewd businessmen is not such a bad thing, but not so much in this case, when one reads so many harsh accounts of the allegedly devious Dutch and how they cheated the Indians. We read, for instance, of “the Manhattan Swindle of 1626,” and “Minuit’s $24 sleight of hand.” And again, “In the years since, the transaction’s been listed among the shames of the white man, the Great Manhattan Swindle.” We are told how the Dutch bought the island “for a mere pittance,” and of “their cunning negotiation for the purchase of Manhattan from the trusting Indians.” Another source refers to the transaction as “the first of countless shady real estate schemes to come.” A 1970 obituary quotes the deceased’s opinion of a 1958 contract as being “the biggest steal of public lands and money since the trade for Manhattan Island with the Indians for a basket of beads.” Helen W. Henderson’s A Loiterer in New York (1917) snappishly refers to the Battery as “the place of original sale, or original robbery, this place of monumental taking, as of candy from a child.” The New York Times has said that Minuit’s purchase is “the very first New York real estate swindle on record.” Unsurprisingly, prejudice against Peter Minuit trickles down from all this, and he has been has described as “evil” and “unscrupulous.”

Dozens of such venomous charges might be quoted, all hammering away at the double- crossing Dutch and how they fleeced the naïve natives. Such descriptions are uninformed and offensive, and are accurate towards neither party, ignorantly critical both of the Indians for being exploitable and credulous, and of the sneaky avaricious white men with their 24 bucks’ worth of tawdry beads to swap for huge tracts of valuable land.

While it’s now generally understood in enlightened circles that the price of Manhattan was not shoddy trinkets but a valuable amount of practical articles very useful to the Indians, it may not be so widely grasped that the $24 comes from what 60 guilders, the value of the trade goods, was worth in the nineteenth century when this sum was first learned of. Nevertheless, the constant repetition of this misleading now paltry sum, one seemingly resistant to inflation, helps ensure the tenacity of the legend that the Dutch were cheap and made a huge real estate killing. Apparently we’ve become so remorseful, overly sensitive, and politically correct that it’s easy to make these early settlers the scapegoat for our guilt for our later iniquitous treatment of our native population. The Dutch in New Netherland are thus the first to be called upon to pay for our collective guilt and penitence.

To smother the swindle charge it’s important to remember the true significant value of European manufactured goods to Indians accustomed to mere Stone Age know-how. Through the deal they got a lot of practical items they had no way of making themselves and they doubtless considered that they did not get the short end of the transaction, as has since been claimed on their behalf ever since by those who are ultra-sensitive to the plight of the Indians and who, absurdly, see now a wealthy modern city crammed with skyscrapers, a prime location that was turned over to slick European adventurers for a few dazzling trifles. An assessment of the goods’ worth to the Indians can’t be viewed in terms of their value in the developed marketplace of the Netherlands, where an axe head or a kettle was nothing special.

The third factor sometimes used to blacken the Dutch role in obtaining Manhattan is the disparity between the Indian and Dutch understanding concerning the “purchase,” something that even brings up the very question of whether a deal was arrived at, given the different philosophies in play. The Dutch concept of land acquisition was alien to the Indians’ view of the deal, theirs being that no one could “own” Nature and that both parties would simply be sharing the natural amenities of the island. This crucial divergence has been the origin of further accusations of Dutch malfeasance. The often misunderstood dual nature of the transaction, as viewed by the two parties, makes the idea of Dutch unscrupulousness recur as an insistent accusation.

And what of this accusation? Is their any validity to it at all? Even if we acknowledge that the Dutch traded 60 guilders’ worth of very useful and desirable items for Manhattan, isn’t that still a heck of a deal? Even if we are reasonably assured that the Dutch were not knowingly fleecing the Indians, wouldn’t it be true to say that just about any price they paid for that vast tract of land would be so low as to be an exceptionally good bargain, if not a rip-off? As useful and valuable as those axes, awls, and cooking pots were to the Indians, they were just ordinary household items for the Dutch, and it’s impossible not to imagine cautious but satisfied smiles on their faces as they left the meeting, and their shrugs and the shaking of heads in wonder and disbelief at how the savages valued what was really only the commonplace contents of any Dutchman’s kitchen or workshop—items that would be easily replaced as soon as the next ship from Amsterdam docked.

That at least some of the Dutch at the time recognized that they had acquired Manhattan for a satisfactorily low price is shown in letters from Jonas Michaelius, the first Dutch Reformed minister in the colony. In a letter back home in August 1628 he notes, “For a small sum of money we can buy of them [the “wilden”] a large quantity of land,” and later he wrote that there is land “which can be bought from the savages for a trifle.” While Michaelius had nothing good to say about the Indians, this seems not so much gloating as a plain statement of fact, that what’s legally necessary can be easily and cheaply accomplished.

In any case, fair or not, this is often this is how the reputation of the Dutch lives on in the uninformed popular imagination whenever the Manhattan deal comes up, with allegations of them swindling, or at least taking calculated advantage of, the simple natives. To counter this charge we should ask what more—or what else—could the Dutch have done? How much more could they have given in reasonable exchange for all that land? Would ten times the value make the deal ten times better? If Minuit had given six hundred or six thousand guilders’ worth of trade goods, would he still be accused of sharp practice? Would any price have been enough to prevent that imputation? Whatever the price paid, it’s inevitable that the durable goods eventually get worn out, used up, and disappear, while the land itself lasts forever, and can only increase in value. In truth the Dutch could have done nothing more to satisfy their future detractors, but the fact remains that, while hardly cheating, they did get an awful lot for very little, and they must have been well aware of it.

Those Dutchmen could hardly have imagined that the wild wooded island they acquired in 1626 would mature into what we know as New York City, the most populous city in an undreamed of country, and thrive as a global focus of commerce, finance, entertainment, culture, and so much else that’s central and vital to modern life. That their modest settlement of New Amsterdam grew into such a valuable and important place—the recipient of so many superlatives—can only intensify and prolong the notion that a swindle was at the root of its acquisition.

In spite of their bargain and the essentially ambiguous nature of the Dutch ownership of Manhattan, to suggest deliberate malpractice is unwarranted, and in the end, the Indians were clearly free to refuse an agreement they could not accept. For all the misapprehensions surrounding the deal, which both the Dutch and the Indians were doubtless oblivious to, we can assume that both sides were content. A deal was made, after all, and desirable goods exchanged for the use of (as the Indians thought) the land. If no one felt cheated then there was no cheating. In the contemporary context, which is clearly hard to appreciate now, Minuit and his people acted honorably and paid a reasonable price, and they ought to be exonerated once and for all from this unfair and seemingly unshakeable allegation.