I seriously don’t understand your problem with the $24 figure after all my information. Maybe I’m dense.
Hello,
This is the first zombie thread I’ve resurrected, but I think my necromancy was warranted in this situation:
I’m reading Piers Morgan’s The Procrastination Equation, and at one point he claims that had only the Native Americans invested the cash value of the beads they got, they would have been able to buy back all of Manhattan today on interest accrued. His cite was a blog on saving and investing (link) who in turn cites the cost of the beads from this article here on the Straight Dope. Basically, given an assumption as to what the beads cost, if they could average 7 percent annual interest compounded monthly, they could have made out better for having sold Manhattan.
Realistically though, I’m wondering, what are the chances of having gotten a 7 percent return over 300 years? What would be a more reasonable figure over those years? Any thoughts or guesses?
British Consols ( government perpetual bonds ) paid around 3% from the 18th to 20th centuries [ they now pay less than that ]. Our ancestors considered anything paying around 7-8% as inherently risky, and possibly fraudulent.
They would have considered the venerable Madoff’s promise of 12% as a rascal tempting loons.
Well, in that case, they got ripped off, as they would have made a [paltry?] 14.5 million dollars. Of course, as stated further up the page, that presupposes that it was a given all those high rises were going to be built there.
I always imagined that the exchange took place like this:
Indian: You’re new here aren’t you?
Peter Minuit: Yep, I just got off the boat.
Indian: You’re just the guy I’m looking for. You see, I’m in a desperate need for cash, and I’m willing to sell you that bridge right over there. You put a toll booth on one end, and you’ll make a mint!
Peter Minuit: You mean the Brooklyn Bridge? What do you think I am? Stupid?
Indian: All right, you got me. What about if I sell you the whole island?
Peter Minuit: All I have is about $26 in beads and furs…
Indian: It’s a deal then!
…it does seem like we are missing one important point here, namely, that any investment that can only be cashed in and enjoyed after 100 years is, er, going to be of limited, er, utility. Our heirs might disagree some, but we probably won’t have to listen to much of their complaining.
All this assuming that the tribe that sold, sold their land and not their neighbour’s land.
The question of the current value of the supposed $24 is interesting, but not all that meaningful. This sort of stuff does come up in modern Indian land claim litigation (yes, some of that still goes on; claims to part of NY State, although not Manhattan, have been working through the courts for years). But a bigger number usually is the supposed lost value of the use of the land, the usufruct (it’s been years since I’d been able to use that word). What was the rental value of Manhattan over the last several centuries?
I actually have a book here (in Finnish) that states that the sellers were Canarsees, who did not live there but were only passing by. I doubt that Canarsees had a meaningful concept for owning land, so it was from there point of view just a case of helping some idiots to get rid of their glass beads for nothing. But if another tribe lived in the area it is from our perspective too. If you want to buy land from people who don’t know wahat owning land means, you should look for the people who own it.
See Exapno’s post #2 about the Canarsie Indians. I still haven’t obtained a copy of Shorto’s book, but the story of the Canarsie Indians must be in there. I’ve heard this story that “they bought the land from the wrong Indians” elsewhere, and I’m distrustful of it.
I have dealt with indian land purchases myself – I analyzed a number of New Jersey land purchases from the Indians, and they usually specify the goods traded to them, and what the current value (to the purchasers) was. we don’t have the deed (heck, we don’t have a lot of deeds from the 18th and even 19th centuries), but a contemporary report, as Exapno notes, gives the 60 guilder figure, which I’ve read in other histories.
Well, for only $26, the title was not included.
I don’t know what the Dutch intended (and I doubt that they had thought much about such niceties), but British law was fairly specific as to what interest the Crown obtained from the the natives. In modified form, the English law was continued by the new United States and in rare cases comes up to this day.
Basically, the Crown was assumed to own, i.e., have title to, all of the land by right of discovery, but the Indians in possession of the land had what is usually called aboriginal title, which was a right of occupancy good until such time as they abandoned it or conveyed it to the Crown. This meant that only the Crown, or someone whom it approved, could take Indian land (legally, at least). The right to the underlying title was also sometimes referred to as the right of the soil or, more often, the right of preemption.
There was also the little issue of taking title by right of conquest, but generally the Brits were very legalistic in dealing with property titles, including Indian land. You might say this is all well and good, but why would the Indians buy into this system? The answer is that they didn’t, at first. Heck, the very idea of land ownership was a bit fuzzy, but they learned to understand the British view soon enough, and eventually they were sufficiently weakened that they had little choice. And often, at least in the short run, the system afforded them certain protections. Intrusions on their lands by private settlers and speculators were ferocious, but since the white squatters could get good title only from the government there was at least some – not a lot, for much of this was violated – restraint.
The US carried on with this legal fiction after independence, but in the period between independence and the Constitution it appears that the preemption right was with the states, the confederal government having doodly-squat for power. Post-constitution, almost all authority over Indians and Indian lands was, and is, vested in the federal government. As for states other than the original thirteen, though, forget about the above. In most western states the federal government has title to reservation land (although there are private holdings within reservations, which is a whole 'nother story), which it holds in trust for the tribes.