Selling Manhattan

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

$24.00 Worth of Glass Beads

The poem opens with not just a financial slight but with a racist slight: “All yours, Injun, twenty-four bucks’ worth of glass beads” (Line 1). By using the racist word “Injun,” the line reveals the disdain with which the Dutch settlers held the Indigenous population.

Within the long and often tragic history of the treatment of Indigenous tribes at the hands of European settlers, nothing more aptly symbolizes that victimization than the sale of what would become the island of Manhattan for $24.00 worth of glass beads. That such a transaction ever actually happened is disputed. But the story, whatever its historical accuracy, symbolizes the predatory relationship between European settlers and Indigenous peoples.

At $24.00, the Dutch purchased this prime port location for just over $1.00 per square mile. To give some concept of the sheer magnitude of this “transaction” (and given the bargain struck, the word demands quotes), the Dutch purchased the equivalent of 14,000 acres at a time when an acre sold for just over $1.00. Because the Lenape, the Indigenous tribe negotiating the treaty, actually had no word, much less an understanding, of the term “land transfer,” the Lenape most likely believed they were agreeing to share the land with these new settlers, a gesture of trust and community.

The $24.00 then symbolizes the disdain white settlers had for the Lenape and their assumption that the Lenape were easily duped and had no right to land that these newly-arrived settlers deemed theirs. The paltry sum symbolizes the greed of the settlers and their lack of moral rectitude. The $24.00 price tag also symbolizes how these white settlers regarded the land as something to be purchased, owned, and used.

The Salmon

The poem compares the disappearance of Indigenous nations to the vanishing of the wild salmon as they migrate out to the ocean. At a tipping point moment in Stanza 5, the speaker directly challenges the greed of the white settlers by asking how many acres will be enough. Given that the swindling of the Lenape in the sale of Manhattan occurred in 1626, the answer would be sobering. How much is enough? The doctrine of Manifest Destiny would eventually give white settlers the right to take it all, from coast to coast and then some. It is a terrifying image for those cultures who had lived for centuries on the land that the white usurpers now proposed to simply take.

In focusing on an Indigenous voice asking the anything-but-rhetorical question, the poem suggests that given the grasping covetousness of the settlers and their determination to take the land, the Indigenous peoples are doomed. Their freedom, after centuries of life on the North American continent, will now “vanish” (Line 23), as over the next two centuries their peoples will be relocated or butchered. The Indigenous peoples will vanish like schools of salmon heading out to the vast sea, leaving behind no trace, no evidence they had ever existed, while the Europeans who have no respect for the earth will take it all. It is ironic, however, that the Atlantic salmon head out to sea annually as part of their survival mechanism. The open ocean offers a far more abundant food supply than fresh-water rivers. If salmon head out to sea to survive, however, the Indigenous peoples head into oblivion.

The Grasshopper and the Buffalo

In Line 25, the speaker mentions the ghosts of grasshoppers and buffalo, which symbolizes a way for the disappearing Indigenous cultures to tap into immortality. At the center of the conflict between the white settlers and the Lenape culture is their differing perceptions, specifically the difference between soul and spirit. The white settlers brought with them their Christian faith, with its conception of an individual soul gifted from an ever-watching Creator-God, to be judged, saved, or damned after death. The Lenape culture and others, however, did not conceive of such an individually-driven theology. The earth and everything in it were the expression of an all-encompassing great spirit that animated the birds, the animals, the waterways, and the peoples who shared that bountiful and beautiful living landscape. Indigenous peoples had no conception of a God dispatching individual souls off to an afterlife of either joy or terror.

Thus, in Stanza 6, itself a single line, the speaker acknowledges that even as their tribal nations are decimated, destroyed one after another, their spirit will live on in the vitality of nature itself: “I will live in the ghost of grasshopper and buffalo” (Line 25), an assertion of the resilience of the Indigenous peoples, even as they face the reality of their cultural extermination.

This respect for the living earth is the reason why the Lenape and other nations were such poor negotiators, why they were able to be taken advantage of by the mercenary Dutch. These Indigenous populations were neither “savage” nor simple-minded, in contrast to what the Dutch assumed. Rather, their ancient culture could not understand the concept of owning a piece of the earth—its evident abundance, its beauty, a plenty there for everyone to share. Historians believe that the infamous deal that the poem commemorates reflected the Lenape culture: They assumed the document they signed was a promise to share this magnificent land with these white-skinned people.