Peter Minuit

• Born: c. 1580
• Birthplace: Wesel, Duchy of Cleves (now in Germany)
• Died: June 1, 1638
• Place of death: Caribbean Sea

Dutch colonist and administrator

Minuit reorganized the Dutch colony of New Netherland, purchasing Manhattan Island and founding New Amsterdam as its capital. Also, he led the expedition that established a Swedish colony in the New World.

Early Life

The parents of Peter Minuit (mihn-wee) were Walloons, French-speaking Protestants who fled the Spanish Netherlands (from an area now in Belgium) to escape Spanish armies. He grew up in a German area close to the Dutch border, speaking both languages and probably French as well, as Walloons were notorious for their tenacity in retaining their native tongue. His surviving letters are in Dutch, but Minuit preferred the French spelling and pronunciation of his surname.

In 1613, he married the daughter of the burgomaster of Kleve (Clèves). The two moved to the Dutch city of Utrecht in 1615, where Minuit trained as a diamond cutter, a trade he soon abandoned. Later, he returned to Wesel and served as ruling elder of the Walloon Reformed Church.

Life’s Work

In 1624, Minuit arrived in Amsterdam and volunteered to accompany an expedition of the Dutch West India Company to its colony, New Netherland, in North America. Minuit sailed for New Netherland in January, 1635, explored the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, and returned to Holland later that year to report his observations. On May 4, 1626, he was back at the colony, where the colony’s council appointed him director general, replacing the previous governor, whose leadership was unsatisfactory.

New Netherland faced a crisis in its relation with the American Indians. The commander of Fort Orange (later called Albany) had unwisely aided the Mahicans in a losing battle with the Mohawks. The Mohawks won the battle, killing the commander and three of his soldiers. Minuit sent an agent north, who succeeded in repairing relations with the Iroquois tribes. He decided to concentrate the colony population for greater safety. The first settlement plan had spread colonists over the three rivers the Dutch claimed, placing families at Fort Orange on the upper Hudson River, at trading posts on the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers, and on Nut (Governor’s) Island at the mouth of the Hudson. Minuit reduced Fort Orange to a garrison that would protect fur traders. Posts on the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers were occupied only during the summer fur-trading season. Because Nut Island was too small for Minuit’s purposes, he moved the settlers to Manhattan Island (now New York City), founding New Amsterdam, where farmers would be protected by a fort. Following standard Dutch practice, Minuit arranged in mid-May to buy Manhattan Island from the indigenous peoples who lived there for trade goods valued at sixty guilders.

The purchase of Manhattan has given rise to one of the most persistent myths in U.S. history—that Peter Minuit cheated the American Indians by buying the most valuable tract of land in North America for twenty-four dollars worth of beads and trinkets. Determining the present value of sixty guilders is close to impossible; the twenty-four dollar figure, first suggested in 1846 and repeated since, is as meaningless as the thirty-one billion dollar sum calculated in 1986 (what sixty guilders would amount to if it were kept invested at six percent compound interest from 1626 to 1986). The price Minuit paid did not differ significantly from what the Dutch paid each other for unimproved acreage in the early seventeenth century. Furthermore, the American Indians did not settle for “beads and trinkets.” Trade goods regularly accepted by the local population included desirable European textiles and metal objects that they could not produce themselves: heavyweight woolen cloth valued for blankets and clothing, kettles, knives, axes, hatchets, hoes, and drilling awls.

By 1628, New Amsterdam boasted a stone warehouse for the Dutch West India Company’s goods, two typical Dutch windmills for grinding grain and sawing lumber, and more than two hundred settlers living in thirty wooden houses clustered around the fort. In 1627, Minuit established friendly relations with Plymouth Colony to the north. The first ordained Dutch Reformed pastor arrived in April, 1628, and appointed Minuit an elder of his newly organized church. In 1630, the pastor became hostile and denounced Minuit as morally corrupt, accusing him of cheating the company.

The directors of the West India Company disagreed about the future of the colony. One faction wanted to encourage settlement using patroonships—large land grants that would be profitable only if the owner imported farmers to plant crops. The other faction wanted to concentrate on the fur trade and send traders and soldiers only to New Netherland. Minuit believed the colony needed more people, so he sided with the pro-patroon faction, which lost the struggle for control of the company. In 1631, the company recalled Minuit and spent several months examining his conduct before discharging him as director general in the summer of 1632.

When Minuit heard that Sweden had become interested in international trade and colonization, he wrote to the Swedish chancellor in June, 1636, proposing that Sweden plant an outpost on the west bank of the Delaware River, across from the Dutch seasonal fur-trading post. Minuit also hoped to encourage agricultural settlement, knowing there were many peasant refugees produced by the ongoing Thirty Years’ War who would welcome a chance to start over in the New World.

The Swedes adopted his proposal, and in December of 1637, Minuit led a fleet of two Dutch ships carrying Swedish soldiers. To avoid notice by the Dutch, he sailed up a tributary stream of the Delaware to the site of what is now Wilmington. Minuit erected a fort there to protect the fur traders and farmers he planned to bring to the outpost on the next voyage. In March, 1638, acting in the name of the queen of Sweden, Minuit purchased from the American Indians a tract of land extending some 67 miles along the Delaware River. The life of New Sweden was short, however. After a brief seventeen-year existence, Peter Stuyvesant annexed the colony to New Netherland in 1655.

Leaving a garrison of twenty-four soldiers, Minuit sailed for the Caribbean Sea in June of 1638, hoping to trade for tobacco, a commodity highly desired in Sweden, before heading home. He stopped at the island of St. Christopher, where he and his ship’s captain visited a vessel from Rotterdam that was anchored in the harbor. Diarists in New England and London noted in their journals that a record storm hit St. Christopher in the summer of 1638. While Minuit was on board the Rotterdam boat, the hurricane blew it out to sea, and Minuit was never seen again. His own ship received little damage and was able to return to Europe with news of his demise.

Significance

Historians have repeated the legend that Minuit swindled the American Indians by buying Manhattan Island for a handful of beads and trinkets. This myth is often the only thing people know about him. His successful effort to maintain friendly relations with the Iroquois, however, saved the Albany trading post for the Dutch West India Company; by concentrating the scattered settlers on Manhattan, he provided the Dutch with a secure base for future expansion. Although the British would conquer the colony and end the role of the company and the Dutch government in North America, the Dutch population would remain a significant element in marking the ethnic diversity that began in New Amsterdam, characterized New York City from its start, and ultimately typified the entire nation.

The major cultural impact of New Sweden occurred long after Minuit’s death. Finns, encouraged to settle in New Sweden, brought with them a skill particularly adapted to a forest environment—they knew how to build log cabins. Wood was too precious a commodity in deforested Holland and Britain to be used as logs; early colonists from both countries built sawmills in the forests to turn trees into boards. Once the Finns had shown the way, the log cabin was widely copied and became emblematic of the North American frontier.

By setting New Netherland on a firm footing and beginning New Sweden, Peter Minuit helped to form the diverse ethnic and cultural life of what would become the United States.

Bibliography

Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Contains an excellent, illustrated account of the history of New Amsterdam.

Francis, Peter, Jr. “The Beads That Did Not Buy Manhattan Island.” New York History 67 (January, 1986): 4-22. Refutes the myth that Minuit bought Manhattan Island for twenty-four dollars worth of beads.

Hoffecker, Carol E., Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara E. Benson, eds. New Sweden in America. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995. A collection of articles, several of which discuss Minuit’s contributions to the development of the colony.

Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Praises Minuit’s leadership of New Amsterdam.

Weslager, C. A. A Man and His Ship: Peter Minuit and the Kalmar Nyckel. Wilmington, Del.: Kalmar Nyckel Foundation, 1989. Contains much useful biographical detail, based on extensive consultation of Dutch and Swedish sources.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Swedes and Dutch at New Castle. Wilmington, Del.: Middle Atlantic Press, 1987. This work covers the Dutch-Swedish rivalry for control of the Delaware Valley from 1638 to 1664. Includes an excellent sketch map of the Delaware River area.