In 1626, Peter Minuit, director of New Netherland, is traditionally said to have acquired Manhattan from local Indigenous people. The transaction remains historically complex and often mythologised. It became a symbolic starting point for the growth of New Amsterdam and later New York.

The Manhattan purchase story fed a long tradition of urban myth, colonial anecdote and satirical retelling. New York's later literary identity grew from this layered colonial past of Dutch, English, Indigenous and immigrant narratives.