Harold Moldenke, age 9, of Decatur, I11., for his question:
DID NEW YORK REALLY SELL FOR ONLY $24 ORIGINALLY?
Before white settlers came to the New York region, two large and powerful Indian groups controlled the area. One group was the Algonquin family of Indians and the other was the fierce and greatly feared Iroquois.
In 1625, a group of Dutch colonists began building a fort and laying out a town on Manhattan Island. The governor, a man by the name of Peter Minuit, had actually made a deal with the Indians. He purchased the entire island for goods worth 60 Dutch guilders. Converted to the value of American money, that price was about $24.
Earlier an Englishman named Henry Hudson, who was employed by the Dutch, sailed up the river that now bears his name. His voyage gave The Netherlands a claim to the territory covering much of present day New York, New Jersey, Delaware and part of Connecticut.
From the start, the new territory was called New Netherland. And the settlers on Manhattan Island named their village New Amsterdam.
The Dutch established many trading posts and prosperous settlements in the Hudson Valley. And they also built up a profitable and friendly fur trade with the Indians.
But the new territory wasn't destined to remain under Dutch control for very long.
Many English colonists were settling in Massachusetts, Connecticut and on Long Island, and gradually they started opposing the Dutch. King Charles II of England decided to take over all of New Netherland. He gave his brother James, who was the Duke of York, a charter for the entire territory.
In 1664, the English fleet seized New Netherland as the warships dropped anchor in the harbor of New Amsterdam. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor then, surrendered the settlement without a fight.
The English renamed the territory New York after the Duke of York, who later became King James II.
At first the New York colony prospered under English rule, but later dishonest governors kept the territory from developing rapidly. And soon the French started taking an interest in parts of New York.
From 1689 until 1763, the region suffered severely through four wars, known as the French and Indian Wars. The French received aid from the Algonquin Indians in the wars, but the Iroquois helped the English.
England and France finally signed a peace treaty in Paris in 1763. But the wars cost France almost all its possessions in North America.
The next phase for New York was the Revolutionary War. The provincial congress of New York met in White Plains on July 9, 1776 and approved the Declaration of Independence which the Continental Congress had adopted on July 4.