Inwood, Manhattan Inwood, Manhattan Inwood is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, at the northern tip of Manhattan Island, in the U.S. state of New York. On May 24, 1626, according to legend, Peter Minuit, the director general of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, bought the island from the Lenape Indians for 60 Dutch guilders and, the story goes, some trinkets. On the southern tip of the island Minuit founded New Amsterdam. A plaque (on a rock) marking what is believed to be the spot of the sale is in Inwood Hill Park, the only natural forest
Lenape the Algonquian tribes of New England across Long Island Sound, such as the Pequot. Wood (and earlier settlers) often misinterpreted the Indian use of place names for identity as indicating their names for "tribes." Over a period of 176 years, European settlers progressively crowded the Lenape out of the East Coast and Ohio and pressed them to move further west. Most members of the Munsee-language branch of the Lenape left the United States after the British were defeated in the American Revolutionary War. Their descendants live on three Indian reserves in Western Ontario, Canada. They are descendants of those Lenape