A Walk Through the History of New York City

In the 19 years since my book “The Island at the Center of the World,” about the Dutch settlement that preceded New York, came out, I’ve changed the way I think about the history and geography of New Amsterdam, which occupied the southern tip of Manhattan Island in the 1600s.

In recent years, as the culpability of our forebears has come into focus, I’ve come to see the “Dutch” period as comprising three constituencies: the European settlement (which was only about half Dutch); the Native Americans, who were steadily displaced yet remained a force; and the enslaved Africans, who were brought here against their will but employed agency and ingenuity to their situation.

In preparation for next year’s 400th anniversary of the Dutch colony, I’m hitting the streets as I put together a walking tour that will tell a complex story of New York’s beginnings. It’s a story of settlement, conquest, peace, strife, promise, prosperity, enslavement and freedom. Here’s how you can follow.

The obvious start of such a tour is at the tip of Battery Park, looking into the harbor. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island speak to the city’s ideals of freedom and promise and its long relationship with the water, from clipper ships to World War II battleships to commuter ferries. But in my mind’s eye I see the waterscape incised by silent canoes. Several groups of Munsee people inhabited the wider region for centuries — a homeland stretching from Connecticut through New York and New Jersey to Delaware — and moved seasonally from the mainland to the island they called Manahatta, which translates roughly as “place of wood for making bows,” to fish and hunt.

I envision, too, Henry Hudson’s small wooden sailing vessel, the Half Moon, appearing on the horizon in September 1609, as he charted the area for the Dutch, setting in motion a historic transformation. Then, in 1624, another Dutch vessel arrived, bearing the first settlers of the colony of New Netherland.

Custom House

Cross Battery Park, which is all landfill, and you come to the original shoreline of Manhattan. The plaza in front of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House is probably where, in 1626, Dutch settlers under the command of Peter Minuit made the infamous purchase of the island from a branch of the Munsee. What each side thought was going on in this exchange is an interesting question. The Dutch knew that the Native Americans had no notion of property transfer. Both sides believed they…