Selling Manhattan

The poem opens with not just a financial slight but with a racist slight: “All yours, Injun, twenty-four bucks’ worth of glass beads” (Line 1). By using the racist word “Injun,” the line reveals the disdain with which the Dutch settlers held the Indigenous population.

Within the long and often tragic history of the treatment of Indigenous tribes at the hands of European settlers, nothing more aptly symbolizes that victimization than the sale of what would become the island of Manhattan for $24.00 worth of glass beads. That such a transaction ever actually happened is disputed. But the story, whatever its historical accuracy, symbolizes the predatory relationship between European settlers and Indigenous peoples.

At $24.00, the Dutch purchased this prime port location for just over $1.00 per square mile. To give some concept of the sheer magnitude of this “transaction” (and given the bargain struck, the word demands quotes), the Dutch purchased the equivalent of 14,000 acres at a time when an acre sold for just over $1.00. Because the Lenape, the Indigenous tribe negotiating the treaty, actually had no word, much less an understanding, of the term “land transfer,” the Lenape most likely believed they were agreeing to share the land with these new settlers, a gesture of trust and community.