When the Dutch founded the city of New Amsterdam, at the tip of Manhattan Island, they brought three elements that would shape the city of New York: tolerance, trade, and water management. Four hundred years later, these issues are confounding the modern world.
Watch a conversation about the experiences of the Black communities who lived and worked in New Amsterdam in the 17th century—and who ultimately changed the city. Under Dutch colonial rule, enslaved Black people in Manhattan lived alongside free and “half-free” Black people who sometimes owned land and property and had legal rights.
Watch this conversation about the experiences of the Native American peoples who, in the 17th century, lived in the area that would become New York City. For centuries before European colonists landed in North America, Native Americans farmed, fished, and hunted on Mannahatta and traded with other people along the waterways.
