Modern Mythographer

You know that story about how Indians traded Manhattan to the Dutch for a bunch of beads worth not much? The Mythographer has that one on long-term surveillance. This past weekend Inwood Hill Park–legendary site of the unfair trade–hosted “Drums Along the Hudson”, apparently the largest Native American pow wow in New York [...]

The sale of Manhattan for beads and trinkets has become a truism, memorialized in a painting by Alfred Fredericks .
The value of said trinkets, reportedly “60 guilders,” does have a verifiable source, though the exact materials assigned the value does not.  Meanwhile “60 guilders” has accrued an aura of shame and betrayal right up there [...]