A contract recording the sale of land along the Hudson River from Mahican Indians to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 1630.

This document includes a typed translation on the second page. This document records the sale of a large piece of land near present-day Albany, New York, by a group of Mahican Native Americans to Kiliaen van Rensselaer. Van Rensselaer was a diamond merchant and leading officer of the West India Company. Van Rensselaer used this land to establish the patroonship of Rensselaerwyck, one of the most successful patroonships, or settlements, in New Netherland. The document was signed by Peter Minuit, director of New Netherland, and other colonial administrators. The original document is in Dutch and the translation was provided by A.J.F. van Laer and Charles Gehring and made available by the New York State Library.

Additional individuals mentioned in this document include Bastiaen Janssen Crol, the commander at Fort Orange, the fur trading fort near present-day Albany; Wolffert Gerritsz, who had been appointed by van Rensselaer to help secure and administer his patroonship; and Gillis Hosset, a West India Company agent who led a short-lived Dutch settlement on the Delaware Bay. The document includes the phrase tanquam actor et procurator in rem suam et propriam, latin for “as an actor and his business manager,” and the word schout, which was a colonial administrative title. Manhattan is referred to as Manhatas.