Keep the Change: The Beads that Bought Manhattan

November 29, 2016 7:31 AM

The story of the purchase of Manhattan is one of the most contentious and oft-disputed stories in American history. That modest sale has gone down in history as the biggest swindle ever perpetrated.... But what may be the most surprising fact about the whole transaction is that in 1626, and for a long time afterward, both parties were very happy with it.

The complexities of navigating the economics of desire, an excerpt from Aja Raden's Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World [Amazon].
posted by filthy light thief (12 comments total)

Of course they were happy. The transaction kept the Dutch very nicely quarantined.

The Indians had gardens, the Dutch had pigs. The Hudson and East Rivers worked much nicer than any fence the Indians would care to build, for keeping the pigs out of the Indians' bean patches. Meanwhile, it got them trading partners with iron and the chance to acquire mad skillz of all sorts, just a canoe paddle away.

That was a lot more important than whether the beads they got in exchange for the island were rare or abundant.
posted by ocschwar at 7:36 AM on November 29, 2016 [15 favorites]

Here's where I admit that I first learned of the sale of Manhattan from Stan Freberg:

But how am I going to get people to live on a solid concrete island?

Who would want to? Nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live here.

But seriously, this was a very good article, particularly the point about Manhattan not being that valuable at the time, for either the Lenape or the Dutch.
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:46 AM on November 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

There discussion about value was a good one, but it overshadows one of the other important points:

"But the Lenape Indians with whom Minuit negotiated were most likely under the impression that they were just selling the right to live on the island, or use its resources, as they themselves did—not the right to own the land itself forever, much less the right to prevent other people from using it."

In other words, it wasn't a sale but a lease. I suspect the concept of actually owning an island exclusively was not how the natives viewed the exchange.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:07 AM on November 29, 2016 [11 favorites]

I was taught in my NY history classes (yes, that is a social studies class kids take in the NYC school system) that the beads thing was a myth and that Manhattan was actually purchased for assorted trade goods worth (in modern currency) tens of thousands of dollars, and that both sides considered it a pretty good deal by what few records we have. There's some very interesting reading to dig in to here.
posted by Itaxpica at 8:11 AM on November 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Small consolation, but at least they asked instead of just taking it by force, as was done in other parts of the world.
posted by dazed_one at 8:13 AM on November 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

I sailed to a new land where I dazzled the natives with my box of unopened Bandai Stadium Events cartridges. Eventually I traded it for a beautiful island on which I made my home and built a mansion. Soon they came knocking: "This game isn't even that good! We are most dissatisfied."
posted by freecellwizard at 8:43 AM on November 29, 2016 [8 favorites]

CheeseDigestsAll, you reminded me of the apocryphal Chief Seattle's Letter [pdf]

The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

posted by matrixclown at 8:54 AM on November 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is the story of Colonialism in a nutshell: Large scale deals, made through perfectly ordinary channels, with vastly unequal knowledge and widely divergent value systems, followed by small but vicious wars of consolidation and enforcement.
posted by hob at 9:26 AM on November 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

In other words, it wasn't a sale but a lease. I suspect the concept of actually owning an island exclusively was not how the natives viewed the exchange.


Use-It-Or-Lose-It was pretty much the principle behind land tenure among native nations. Which made sense in a society without detailed written records, with a material culture that did not create landmarks that were both ubiquitous and long-lasting, and with a style of horticulture that relied on long term fallowing of gardens.

So, it really could not have been more than a lease, albeit one of indefinite tenure.
posted by ocschwar at 10:24 AM on November 29, 2016

To take the story a step further, the Hollanders gave up their North American foothold up to the British at the Treaty of Breda in return for the English giving up any claim to the island of Run, one of the Banda islands, sole source of nutmeg.

Again, both sides satisfied, more or less, at least for the time being.

(Europeans, nutmeg, and the Banda islanders is another story entirely, and a very interesting one at that.)
posted by BWA at 11:18 AM on November 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

Nutmeg: : smells of holidays from a history of battles and massacres (previously)
posted by filthy light thief at 1:41 PM on November 29, 2016

I love this sort of historical detail-- thank you so much for posting it. Just the addition of the key bit 'Oh, BTW, glass beads were used as a universal trade good' suddenly makes the traditional telling of this story make sense.
posted by mrdaneri at 3:01 PM on November 29, 2016