06:19 AM ET 09/22/99

Manhattan `Purchase' in 1626 Letter

 	   NEW YORK (AP) _ A 1626 letter containing what is believed to be
 the only known mention of the Dutch purchase of Manhattan for $24
 has been put on display at the New York Historical Society
 	   No deed or official document of Manhattan's sale to the Dutch
 from the Lenape Indians exists. The creased yellowed letter,
 written by a ship captain to the governors of the Dutch West India
 Company, briefly mentions the transaction.
 	   ``They (the Dutch settlers) have bought the island of Manhattes
 from the wildmen for the value of sixty guilders,'' it reads. The
 letter, put on display Monday, continues with a laundry list of
 items being sent to Amsterdam including beaver, rat, and mink
 skins.
 	   Herbert Kraft, anthropologist and director of the Seton Hall
 University Museum, said the land transfer might not have been that
 big a deal, particularly because many of the Lenape lived in what
 is now New Jersey.
 	   ``At the time it was not a great piece of property,'' Kraft said
 of Manhattan. ``There were loads of mosquitoes and it was very
 rocky.''
 	   Jim Rementer, a Lenape descendant and head of the Lenape
 Language Project in Bartlesville, Okla., said the Indians who
 ``sold'' Manhattan to the Dutch did not share European notions of
 land ownership.
 	    	   

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