Manhattoe
Manhattoe/Manhattoes is a term describing a place and, mistakenly, a people. The location was the very southern tip of the
As was common practice early in the days of European settlement of North America, a people came to be associated with a place, with its name displacing theirs among the settlers and those associated with them, such as explorers, mapmakers, trading company superiors who sponsored many of the early settlements, and officials in the settlers' mother country in Europe.
Because of this early conflation there is enduring confusion over whether "Manhattoe/Manhattoes" were a people or a place. There is certainty it was a place, at the very tip of Manhattan Island, so referred to by the Dutch,
Period accounts maintain that Manhattan island was used as a hunting ground by two tribes, the Canarse (Canarsee, or Canarsie) of today's Brooklyn at its southern one-quarter and the Weckquaesgeek the rest, each having no more than temporary camps for hunting parties.
Manhattoes/Manhattans (place)
Manhattoes was the name of a Dutch settlement in
The terms Manhattans and Manhatans were also used for the Manhattoes by some Dutch, giving rise to Manhattan island's contemporary name and conflation with a people (the Wecquaeskgeek) who neither occupied that part of the island nor went by that name.
Manhattoe/Manhattan (people)
Manhattoe, also Manhattan, was a name erroneously given to a
as a hunting grounds.The people - Wecquaesgeek - became conflated with a place - the Manhattoes, regardless that it was the only part of the island they did not occupy. Over time that term became "Manhattan" and "Manhattans" for those who hunted the vast majority of the island, as well as the name of the island.
Notes
References
- ^ a b Letter from Stephen Goodyear to Peter Stuyvesant, 19 July, 1652, addressed to him at "The Manhattoes", Correspondence 1647-1653, Charles Gehring, The New Netherlands Institute, p. 189
- ^ a b c The Standards of the Manhattoes, Pavonia, and Hell-Gate, David B. Martucci, 2011, p. 786
- ^ a b "The $24 Swindle", Nathaniel Benchley, American Heritage, 1959, Vol 11, Issue 1
- ^ Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam, John S. C. Abbott, 2004. "The next morning, which was Saturday, Colonel Nicholls sent a delegation of four men up to Fort Amsterdam, with a summons for the surrender of "the town situated on the island commonly known by the name of Manhattoes, with all the forts thereunto belonging."
- ^ "He sits by his fireside in the ancient city of the Manhattoes...," Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies, Washington Irving, p. 19
- ISBN 0-910746-98-2
- ^ Moby Dick, Herman Melville, Chapter 1, reprinted in "Melville Depicted City of ‘Manhattoes’ Lured by the Sea,", New York Times, July 5, 1976, p. 13
- ^ "Brooks, ponds, swamps, and marshes characterized other portions of the island of the 'Manhattoes'", The Memorial History of the City of New York, James Grant Wilson, New York, 1892