The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky Read Free Book Online Page B

Dutch guilders. But items such as wampum and iron fishhooks were worth considerably more to the Lenape than to the Europeans, just as beaver and otter pelts were worth considerably more to Europeans. In 1846, a New York historian calculated that sixty 1626 Dutch guilders was worth twenty-four 1846 U.S. dollars.
    But the terms were also appraised differently by the two groups. Minuit thought he had purchased the land and began settling large tracts of the island. But in Lenape culture, and in most North American cultures, the concept of owning land did not exist. Land was used and a tribe could negotiate with another tribe on rights to use the land. Land was created by God and could not be owned any more than someone could buy a piece of the ocean, lay claim to the sky, or purchase a star. Perhaps this was why, although the Lenape had periodic outbreaks of violence, they never had true wars of the kind Europeans were prone to. The Wappinger Confederation accepted the tribute from the Europeans in exchange for supporting their claim to use the land. This meant that the Wappingers would defend Dutch rights in Manhattan. To them it was a treaty, an alliance. The Indians lived among a great many competing groups and alliances were a way of life.
    Other sales followed. In 1630, Minuit purchased Staten Island from the Tappans for metal drill bits, wampum, and axes. Some Jew’s harps were also thrown in. Kiliaen van Rensselaer bought a thousand acres near Fort Orange and established Rensselaerwyk. The same year, 1630, an island known in Lenape as Kioshk or Gull Island was bought by the Dutch and renamed Little Oyster Island. In the eighteenth century, it would be renamed after its then owner Samuel Ellis. In 1652, the Dutch bought several sections of Brooklyn, including what is now called Bay Ridge, from the Nyacks. A settlement began in the Brooklyn woods called
Vlackebos,
Dutch for “wooded plain.” The name would eventually be pronounced by the English as “Flatbush.” In all, twenty-two such sales were negotiated, the last being between the English and the Canarsee tribe, selling a section of Brooklyn in 1684.
    The Europeans believed that they needed a bill of sale to take possession, and they were generally extremely scrupulous about this. It was not until after Minuit “bought” Manhattan that he officially began the settlement of New Amsterdam, with its thirty wooden houses and one more substantial stone building for the company headquarters, as a capital for New Netherlands. Two windmills at the tip of the island powered a lumber mill. The Dutch also dug canals and started building a little Amsterdam.
    But they observed a strange phenomenon and were not certain what the best response to it should be. After the sale, the sellers never left. Manhattan continued to have a large Lenape population and many temporary visitors who camped at their customary campsites and hunted the forests and marshes, fished the streams and rivers, and harvested oysters.

    The Dutch West India Company
always regarded good relations with the Indians as of utmost importance. Isaack de Rasière, company agent, wrote, in a 1626 letter to Amsterdam, “I find it important that the natives are treated well, each according to his station and disposition, and that when two different nations are present one chief is not shown more favor than the other.” Laws were decreed making swindling or other forms of mistreatment of Indians illegal.
    Behind most wars lie cultural misunderstandings. The Dutch knew that they did not understand the People. In 1611, Dutch captains Adrieaen Block and Hendrick Christeaensen took back to the Netherlands for study, in reality kidnapped, two Indians whom they renamed Orson and Valentine.
    The Dutch appeared to learn little from Orson and Valentine. Misunderstandings followed miscalculations. In 1626, the same year that Manhattan was “sold,” a small group of Wieckquaesgeck, from what