As part of their settlement of Manhattan, the Dutch purportedly purchased the island from the Native Americans for trade goods worth 60 guilders. More than two centuries later, using then-current exchange rates, a U.S. historian calculated that amount as $24, and the number stuck in the public’s mind. Yet it’s not as if the Dutch handed over a “$20 bill and four ones,” explained Charles T. Gehring, director of the New Netherland Research Center at the New York State Library. “It’s a totally inaccurate figure.” He pointed out that the trade goods, such as iron kettles and axes, were invaluable to the Native Americans since they couldn’t produce those things themselves. Moreover, the Native Americans had a completely different concept of land ownership. As a result, they almost certainly believed they were renting out Manhattan for temporary use, not giving it away forever. Due in part to such cultural misunderstandings, the Dutch repeatedly found themselves at odds with various Native American tribes, most notably in the brutal Kieft’s War of the 1640s. “The Dutch were instructed by their authorities to be fair and honest with the Indians,” said Firth Haring Fabend, author of “New Netherland in a Nutshell.” “But you can’t say they were much better [than the other European nations colonizing the Americas.] They were all terrible.”
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