*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of Henry Hudson's expedition around Manhattan and relations with the Lenape natives *Includes accounts of trade and warfare between the Europeans and natives around New Amsterdam *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents Manhattan has long been part of a bustling community, even before it formed the backbone of New York City. Centuries before New York City became a shining city of steel that enthralled millions of immigrants, Lenni-Lenape Indians, an Algonquin-speaking tribe whose name means “the People,” lived in what would become New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. They had lived there for at least 1,500 years and were mainly hunters and gatherers who would use well-worn paths that would one day bear the names of Flatbush Avenue, King’s Highway, and Broadway. The first known European sightings of the island and its inhabitants were made by the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 and by the black Portuguese explorer Estaban Gomez in 1526. After the Englishman Henry Hudson, under the aegis of the Dutch East India Company, sailed by Manhattan in 1609, he returned home with good news and bad news. Like the other explorers before him, he hadn’t been able to find a water route to the Orient. He had, however, returned with maps (confiscated by the British) and beaver pelts. With that, it became clear that the region around the bay that would take Hudson’s name was a very promising new territory for trade and settlement, which would become a serious bone of contention between the Dutch and the British for the rest of the century. 1626 was also the year that the famous “purchase” of Manhattan took place, a transaction for which no record has survived. Peter Minuit, the Director-General of New Amsterdam, paid out sixty guilders’ worth of trade goods like cloth, kettles, tools, and wampum—an amount that’s come down in history as being worth $24. While that sounds perversely low today, accountant types like to speculate with this amount, if the Lenni-Lenapes had invested it at a 10% interest rate over the centuries, it would today be worth $117 quadrillion—enough to buy present-day Manhattan many, many times over. Many such purchases took place, but because Native Americans and Europeans had very different concepts of what it meant to “own” or “sell” land, misunderstandings—and violence—would frequently break out on both sides. Minor (and often unsubstantiated) thefts of property could ignite the colonists’ wrath, resulting in such bloody skirmishes as the Pig War (1640) and the Peach Tree War (1655), named for the items allegedly stolen. When the West India Company, which presided over Dutch trade in the Americas, was created in 1621, the little settlement at the tip of Manhattan began to both grow and falter. When Willem Kieft arrived as director in 1638, it was already a sort of den of iniquity, full of “mischief and perversity,” where residents were given over to smoking and drinking grog and beer. Under Kieft’s reign, more land was acquired mostly through bloody, all-but-exterminating wars with the Native American population, whose numbers also dwindled at the hands of European-borne diseases. Ultimately, of course, conflict between England and the Netherlands across the Atlantic brought about changes that affected the New World and led to the English taking over New Amsterdam and renaming it New York City. Indeed, Dutch possessions in North America only lasted about 50 years, but by then, they had paved a path for New York to become a diverse financial center. New Amsterdam: The History of the Dutch Settlement Before It Became New York City chronicles the origins of the settlement and profiles the indigenous people who were there. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about New Amsterdam like never before, in no time at all.
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