…to Manhattan

…to Manhattan. . , Native people from many tribal nations have long come to Manhattan as visitors and workers, artists and diplomats. Many of the city’s skyscrapers were constructed with the assistance of Mohawk steel workers looking down on a city that hardly knew they were there. The 1990 census shows 27,531 Native Americans in New York City. The American Indian Community House, founded in 1969, is a cultural and social support center strengthening Manhattan as a place of native homecoming., The Europeans who came here recognized the island as an ideal trade center, seeking to own the land Delaware people saw as their mother. Dutch, French and English all competed for Manhattan Island. From 1626 to 1664, the Dutch colonized it and called it New Netherlands. Although no deed exists, Peter Minuit, first governor of New Netherlands, reportedly “purchased” the island from native people called “Manhattans” (ironically, probably the Canarsie people from Brooklyn) for sixty guilders worth of trading goods in 1626. The English finally won possession of Manhattan from the Dutch in 1664, but Native people lost the most. battles with Europeans for land and against diseases they brought killed vast numbers of Indian people., Yet American Indians never vanished from Manhattan. Although not as visible as in the seventeenth century, Indian people continue to survive and contribute to the city’s cultural landscape.