Canarsee


The Canarsee were a band of Munsee-speaking Lenape who inhabited the westernmost end of Long Island at the time the Dutch settled New Amsterdam in the 1620s and 1630s.
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. This was the case of the "Canarsee" people, whose name, to the extent they identified with one, is lost in history.
It is the "Canarse" , who only utilized the very southern end of Manhattan island, the Manhattoes, as a hunting ground, who are credited with selling Peter Minuit the entirety of the island for $24 in 1639. A confusion of possession on the part of the Dutch which failed to realize that the balance of island was the hunting ground of the Wecquaesgeek, a Wappinger band of southwest Westchester County.
The Canarsee were among the peoples who were conflated with other Long Island bands into a group called the Metoac, an aggregation which failed to recognize their linguistic differences and varying tribal affinities.