The 1626 Letter mentioned above referencing the sale of Manhattan was just that - a letter referring to the event. So it isn't a legal document and may or may not be accurate. No bill of sale has ever been found of the transaction and the deed on file in the New York Archives in Albany is a fake apparently produced in 1677. Not only did the Manhattan Indians consider a 'sale' more of a 'lease', they themselves didn't actually leave for some time. To confuse matters further, we don't actually know if they were called 'Manhattan' Indians - no document clearly identifies any individual as such according to Robert Grumet's 'The Munsee Indians'. But hey, the $24 sale makes for a good story....

Many will not agree with you - since you yourself are making ASSUMPTIONS about OLD documents, to support your own UNSUPPORTED POINT OF VIEW!
Although not LEGAL DOCUMENT - it is a RECORD FROM THAT ERA - no reason for it to be A LIE!
Simple calculations - even by a fuzzy thinking leftist - always show that EVEN $24 at the time WERE MORE THAN ADEQUATE price - and it is very consistent with the 5.5% appreciation of the property since !

Well, it may not of been a lie, but it's not unheard of for those living during that time period to embellish situations in writing. Especially in reference to interactions with those they deem as savages.

Also, like you said, there's no reason, which works both ways. So, if there's no reason for it to be a lie, inherently, there's just as much a reason for it to be.

Oh, and what does ones political leaning have to do with anything here at all? No one mentioned anything political. It's pretty obvious you're just out to argue with people. Also, when one's writing is full of grammatical errors, incessant use of the caps lock, personal attacks, and vapid arguments, it's very telling of how uneducated the writer actually is.

Your arguments have technical truth to them, but they are moot. In order for the agreement to have been changed or the possession of the island to have been contested, the Indians would have needed to attempt to dispossess the new owners. And if there was a disagreement, the two parties would have been obligated to settle their difference however they felt fair. This might have included legal or military conflicts.

Having not dispossessed the Dutch colonists in a timely fashion, either through indifference, negligence, weakness, or failure, the Dutch became the proper legal owners of the land. To go back and look for legal justification for this is absurd. At some point, usually within a 100 year time frame, the Indians can no longer lay claim to the island. Modern limitations are often in the 30 year range, if that long.

If the Indians feel they should possess it, they are free to lay their case out in either the legal or military realm, and see if they can take it back. Such is the law of real property as most would understand it. (It is different from chattels.) Your provocative sob story is pointless except as a footnote to the history of Manhattan.

With all due respect, the viewpoint you represent is a cynical hindsight historical view of the matter. The fact is that the Dutch were on the wrong side of history in their deal. The Dutch might have purchased the Island, but it was never clearly recognized as such by the Lanape Indians.

Your assertion that the Indians could have attempted to dispossess the new owners is patently ridiculous. First, even though they were party to a dubious legal agreement, they had not the slightest chance of prevailing in any conflict, civil or military, with the Dutch, who were both economically and militarily mighty.

Characterization of this story as a sob story is despicably cynical and short-sighted. Law and order often translate to law and ordure, especially when one is on the receiving end of aggression from military and economic might.

The point might very well be moot, sadly, because attitudes such as yours prevailed at the time of the Dutch settlement, and those who might be around to protest what happened were slaughtered, marginalized and squeezed out of existence. In this case, what you characterize as real estate was, in fact, genocide.

So you miss the point to make a point?

For shame! The point of my tongue-and-cheek repudiation was to examine the real world from a legal point. The blunt reality of the situation is that if the Dutch were land thieves, then the natives had essentially one redress: kill them.

That's not precisely true, as I previously noted. They could have made some type of legal claim; they could have sought a diplomatic resolution. But the time for those types of solutions are long past. Their primary solution when the Dutch settled... and the primary solution now... is to kill the claimants to the property and take it by manu militari, the timeless principle of war.

So yes, your point is well taken. The Indians could have scarcely overtaken the Dutch. True, that. But it is precisely the point around which the history of Manhattan revolves. The Dutch won it in a bloodless conflict, by most accounts... what little resistance there was notwithstanding. The Indians were too weak to get it back.

You know, the same situation is playing out today. You scrutinize Manhattan. But what of Crimea? African nations? The Middle East? The banana republics of the 20th century? The time is running out in the diplomatic sphere for most of those places. Lands change hands all the time, and all of the crocodile tears for the natives... over a moot point... are just ridiculous. Take the land back by force, or become subject to your new masters.

Conflating a land grab with genocide is flagrant hyperbole. The Dutch didn't annihilate the previous transient owners of the property. Land isn't life. Again, if the natives had been kind and peacelike, they may have been able to co-settle, share some property holdings, and have diplomatic relations with the Old World peoples. But historically, this rarely happened; the native leaders were weak, and their warlike tendencies did them no favors. While we can blame the settlers for every situation, there is plenty of blame that can rest on the shoulders of the natives. Good historians (not the rewriters of history) will generally understand the complex dynamics and just report the facts.

With all due respect, I do not miss the point in order to make one. For shame is examination within the vacuum of legalities, untempered by ethical consideration. That is shameful.

I would also not dispute your numerous citations of different situations where imperial powers prevailed. These things did happen. But to say that the one redress of natives is to "kill them" introduces a fallacy of the first order. This is a false dichotomy.

If what you say is to suggest that the only viable logic is to kill or be killed, there is no doubt, whatsoever, that you engage in extreme false dichotomy. There is any number of in between solutions which might have been and could, in the future, be pursued.

Because something has historical precedent, it is not assured that its recurrence is inevitable. We have brains. Or do we?

While Old World peoples might not have been uniformly peaceful, examination of history reveals that more often than not, the violence in which they engaged was a direct reaction to extreme brutality of settlers whose agenda was a clean sweep, or as the case might have been, a dirty sweep. Let's not forget that British settlers gave small pox-laced blankets to natives in a clearly genocidal move.

As for crocodile tears for natives, to quote Joseph Nye Welch in his dialogue with Senator Joseph McCarthy:

"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

And with all due respect, I say to you "How dare you?" To what bankrupt level of ethics must you descend to view genocide in such an ethically bankrupt, smug and cynical fashion?

These are not mere crocodile tears. This is realization and acknowledgment of a centuries old patter of human fairs that is undeniably ethically bankrupt.

The point of this acknowledgment can be summed up in the statement that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. And as of today, it appears that our nation has chosen to elect a commander-in-chief who arguably could rise to the megalomaniacal stature of that enjoyed by Adolf Hitler in the Third Reich.

We have failed miserably. And it is incumbent upon us to brush ourselves off, pick up the pieces, and undo the extreme damage.

Ok, so the situation is a moral and ethical bugaboo? I still feel you are conflating the Manhattan Island Dutch trade with other situations, indeed, other centuries, and other parties. You know.... like taking a moot point and changing the parameters to make your case using facts not present.

So there is a moral problem, you say. Since you are not being too specific, I am going to guess that the Dutch colonists were immoral for settling/defending the land for which they traded goods.

That's your case? Argue it, then. I don't see it. Because it seems to me that there was some sense of morality in the trade deal. Did they defraud the Indians? Did they set out, with malice aforethought, with an evil ruse, and conspire to trick the Indians out of the land?

Absolutely not.

How about ethics? Are you saying that the Dutch colonists went outside the ethical principles of their day and age, and violated even one principle of higher reason? I can't think of any specific thing. Name one.

I see that the Dutch had a long standing tendency to trade goods for services and land. Not every culture valued the same thing... gold, wood, wine, munitions, tobacco, spices... there were "bargains" aplenty in the New World and elsewhere.

Should we go back, in retrospect, and convict the tobacco traders, the chestnut tree choppers, and the settlers of America? Of moral turpitude?

That would be full-bore historical revisionism. So surely you have some example of a specific moral or ethical violation.

You need to go back and read something about American history. You will discover that the moral and ethical issues written about during the colonial period had mostly to do with Old World folks... There were thieves, murderers, drunkards, embezzlers, and sacrilegious folks back then who were imprisoned, hanged, fined, and kicked out of colonies. They were policing themselves to some degree. They enforced law, order, religion, and morality.

But you paint with large strokes. You say the whole lot of them were morally and ethically deficient.

So name the crime. Say what principles were being eroded in early America. I dare you. I find your ideas repugnant and senseless.

So, for example, the Dutch had a wall. It eventually turned into Wall Street. Is this an example of their illicit and sanctimonious ways? Were walls unscrupulous?

And when you provide your example, it would be great to see some written and famous proscription for whatever immoral/unethical thing they did. Because it should be something which the whole community knew they were doing wrong... something that the pastor would have preached against... something their law books or culture said was wrong or despicable... something their Momma would have told them not to do. Something that dissenters back home would find reprehensible.

I applaud you

As far as a legal principle, the situation of Manhattan would likely be in aequali jure (melior est conditio possidentis), which is Latin... meaning that when neither parties are at fault, the current possessor of the property is granted the legal right to it.

The same is true if both are at fault, which is possibly the case here.

That's why the point is moot.

What's not moot are all of the (post hoc) commentaries.
Too little too late.
Finders keepers, losers weepers.
Don't be an Indian land giver.

I would not dispute legalities. Obviously this is an area of expertise with you. I merely state that a law that is ethically bankrupt should have no legal leg upon which to stand.

Hi I need help with a current event can you be the one to help me

Racist Scum = First against the wall.

This story has been used not for a bargain but for the illustration of the power of compounding effect. 8% annualized compounding effect of $24 back then is now worth more than several times of Manhattan. The compounding of $951 instead of $24 may get you the real estate of the entire United States.