Transcription and image of original document, Mohawl Deed of 1730

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

It’s a serious loss to historians that no Dutch or American archive contains any kind of
contract, receipt, or deed of transfer to serve as proof of the so-called “purchase” of Manhattan.
Apart from anything else, such a document would have put a stop to much of the endless
theorizing and half-baked legend-making associated with this event.

Amsterdam City Archives https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/scans/5075/54.2.1/start/100/limit/10/highlight/4

On a warm, cloudless night in February I walked into the rustling garden of my friends’ house and looked up at the sky. What I saw up there wasn’t a complete surprise, and yet it was still striking, and very strange to me. Despite the lights of the city I could see plenty of stars, and yet I was unable to link them together into any discernable pattern, as I was so used to doing at
home. The simple reason for both my awe and my confusion was that I was in Auckland, New Zealand. This was the southern sky, presenting me with an unfamiliar clutter of stars.