Whatever you believe to be true about the Dutch acquisition of Manhattan—notably the tale of the baubles and beads and the $24—there is another broader myth that underlies all of this.
The Mohawk who made this land deal with the Anglo-Dutch settler Johannis Minderse, are one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee, a group often mistakenly referred to as the Iroquois Confederacy.
One the many myths that blur the story of the Dutch “purchase” of Manhattan—one that is firmly cemented in the popular psyche—says that the price was mere “beads and baubles.”
Meeting of the City Council of Amsterdam, November 3, 1649 https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/scans/5025/1.19/start/40/limit/10/highlight/8 https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/scans/5025/1.19/start/40/limit/10/highlight/9
In the 1590s, the Dutch began to turn their attention to the East Indies, the lands and islands of Southeast Asia, and in time this interest grew into a vast moneymaking concern.
In New Amsterdam, 10 June 1645, English clergyman Francis Doughty (“François Doutey” in the source) filed a complaint against Englishman William Gerritsz accusing him of writing a “scandalous” song about Doughty and his daughter Mary.
During the first decade of trade with the East Indies, a Dutch retourschip leaving Texel bound for the East Indies followed the old route that Arab and Portuguese sailors took—south
down the west coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, northeast through the Mozambique Channel and across the Indian Ocean, sometimes via India or Ceylon.
Amsterdam City Archives https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/scans/5075/54.2.1/start/100/limit/10/highlight/4
The Dutch “purchase” of Manhattan from the Indians has been called “the deal of the millennium,” though some say it was the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, or that of Alaska in 1867, that was the most lucrative real estate deal in American history.
In the inaugural Translator’s Corner in the March, 2025 e-Marcurius, Deborah Hamer translated Testimony Regarding Cornelis Pieters van Purmerent’s Labor from the City Archives in Amsterdam, Notarial...
