Peter Minuit Peter Minuit Peter Minuit, Pieter Minuit, Pierre Minuit, or Peter Minnewit (between 1580 and 1585 – August 5, 1638) was a Walloon from Wesel, in present-day North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, then part of the Duchy of Cleves. His surname means "midnight" in French. He was the 4th Director of the Dutch North American colony of New Netherland from 1626 until 1631, and 3rd Governor of New Netherland. He founded the Swedish colony of New Sweden on the Delaware Peninsula in 1638. Minuit is generally credited with orchestrating the purchase of Manhattan Island for the Dutch from the Lenape Native Americans. Manhattan
Lenape Ontario. The name Lenni Lenape, also Leni Lenape and Lenni Lenapi, comes from their autonym, ', which may mean "genuine, pure, real, original," and ', meaning "Indian" or "man" (cf. Anishinaabe, in which ', cognate with ', means "man" or "male"). Alternately, "" may be translated as "man." The Lenape, when first encountered by Europeans, were a loose association of related peoples who spoke similar languages and shared familial bonds in an area known as Lenapehoking, the Lenape traditional territory, which spanned what is now eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, southern New York, and eastern Delaware. The tribe's common name "Delaware"