Peter Minuit
Peter Minuit (
1580 -
1638), born in
Wesel, Duchy of Cleves (present-day
Germany), was the first general director of the Dutch colony of
New Netherland. He is most famous for the purchase of the island of
Manhattan from the
Native Americans.
Peter Minuit's
Huguenot family was one of many that escaped the Spanish government of the
Netherlands and found refuge in German
Protestant parts of the empire.
Peter himself was born in a time of great upheavals and struggles by Protestants against the Catholics, which culminated in the
Thirty Years' War and finally led to an exhausted
Peace of Westphalia a century later.
Minuit was appointed director general of New Netherland by the
Dutch West India Company in December
1625 and arrived in the colony
May 4th 1626.
On
May 24th of the same year he is credited with the purchase of the island from the natives -- perhaps from a Metoac tribe known as the Canarsees[2] -- in exchange for trade goods valued at 60 guilders. This figure is known from a letter by Peter Schagen to the board of the Dutch West India Company: a traditional conversion to $24US using 19th century exchange rates is not particularly meaningful. The trade goods are sometimes identified as beads and trinkets, but that may also have been an embellishment by 19th century writers. If the island was purchased from the Canarsees, they would have been living on
Long Island and maybe passing through on a hunting trip.
In
1631 or early
1632, Minuit was dismissed from his post and recalled to Europe. In
1636-
1637 he made arrangements
with
Samuel Blommaert and the Swedish government to conduct the first Swedish colony of
New Sweden on the lower
Delaware River, within the territory claimed by the Dutch, landing in spring
1638 (at what is now
Wilmington, Delaware). He reportedly perished in the summer of
1638 during a
hurricane at
St. Christopher in the
Caribbean.
Today, Peter Minuit is commemorated by Peter Minuit Plaza, a small park at the foot of
Manhattan,
New York City; by a granite flagstaff base in Battery Park, which shows the historical purchase; by the Peter Minuit School (Public School 108); and the Peter Minuit Chapter.
External links and references
- Project Gutenberg's Narrative New Netherland, edited by J.F. Jameson, includes a footnote about the life of Minuit, but gives an improbable birth date of 1550.
- The Canarsees - http://www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/nativeamericans/meotac.htm