The story of Peter Minuit buying Manhattan for $24 in 1626 comes from an 1840s historian who converted 60 guilders at his own era’s exchange rate; adjusted for buying power, the goods were worth roughly $1,000 to more than $15,000. The Canarsie people who received them did not control the whole island and likely saw the exchange as an alliance granting shared seasonal use. New Netherland began when Henry Hudson, hired by the Dutch East India Company in 1609 to find a northwest passage, found the Hudson River and its beaver trade. From 1621 the Dutch West India Company ran the colony as a profit seeking outpost, with forts like Fort Orange and Fort Amsterdam, and it needed workers from anywhere.
The colony’s first recorded non-Native resident was Juan Rodriguez, a trader from Santo Domingo who arrived around 1613, and as many as 18 languages were spoken in New Amsterdam’s harbor. Enslaved Africans owned by the company from 1625 could testify, sue and marry in church, and some received half freedom with land north of the town. Director Willem Kieft demanded tribute from local tribes and, against the advice of the Twelve Men, ordered a night massacre of about 130 refugees, sparking Kieft’s War. Peter Stuyvesant arrived in 1647, conquered New Sweden in 1655 and tried to suppress Quakers and Jews. In August 1664 residents refused to fight four English frigates, and Richard Nicolls took the city without bloodshed.
- Flushing residents who were not Quakers signed the 1657 Flushing Remonstrance drafted by Edward Hart, who was then arrested.
- The company overruled Stuyvesant’s demand to expel Jewish refugees, citing Jewish shareholders.
- Article 8 of the 1664 surrender guaranteed liberty of conscience in religion.
- The Dutch retook the city in 1673 as New Orange before returning it to England in 1674.
- Martin Van Buren spoke Dutch as his first language, and the Roosevelts trace their line to a New Amsterdam immigrant of about 1650.
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