Minuit is generally credited with orchestrating the purchase of Manhattan Island for the Dutch West India Company from representatives of the Lenape, the area's indigenous people.

[5] Peter Minuit was born in Wesel, Germany between 1580 and 1585[6][7] into a Calvinist family[8] that had moved from the city of Tournai (presently part of Wallonia, Belgium) in the Southern Netherlands controlled by Spain, in order to avoid Spanish Catholic authorities, who were not favorably disposed toward Protestants.

[7] Minuit is credited with purchasing the island of Manhattan from Native Americans in exchange for traded goods valued at 60 guilders.

[13] According to researchers at the National Library of the Netherlands,[citation needed] "The original inhabitants of the area were unfamiliar with the European notions and definitions of ownership rights.

A contemporary purchase of rights in nearby Staten Island, to which Minuit also was party, involved duffel cloth, iron kettles, axe heads, hoes, wampum, drilling awls, "Jew's harps", and "diverse other wares".

"If similar trade goods were involved in the Manhattan arrangement", Burrows and Wallace surmise, "then the Dutch were engaged in high-end technology transfer, handing over equipment of enormous usefulness in tasks ranging from clearing land to drilling wampum.

[15][16] He arrived back in Europe in August 1632 to explain his actions, but was dismissed[7] and was succeeded as director by Wouter van Twiller.

Minuit and his company arrived on the Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel at Swedes' Landing, which is present-day Wilmington, Delaware, on 29 March, 1638.

Minuit left the colony on 20 May, 1638 and sailed to the Caribbean island of St. Christopher, where he arrived on 15 June to barter salt, a ship's cargo of wine and liquor for tobacco to make the voyage profitable.

Two years later, Swedish Lt. Måns Nilsson Kling, whose rank was raised to captain, replaced Minuit as governor.