Description
The Canarsee (also Canarse and Canarsie) were a band of Munsee-speaking Lenape who inhabited the westernmost end of Long Island at the time the Dutch colonized New Amsterdam in the 1620s and 1630s. They are credited with selling the island of Manhattan to the Dutch, even though they only occupied its lower reaches, with the balance the seasonal hunting grounds of the Wecquaesgeek of the Wappinger people to the north. The Canarsee were among the peoples who were conflated with other Long Island bands into a group called the Metoac, an aggregation which failed to recognize their linguistic differences and varying tribal affinities.
Language
Munsee is an endangered language of the Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian language family, itself a branch of the Algic language family. Munsee is one of the two Delaware languages.
Culture
It is the "Canarse", who only utilized the very southern end of Manhattan island, the Manhattoes, as a hunting ground, who are credited with selling Peter Minuit the entirety of the island for $24 in 1639. A confusion of possession on the part of the Canarsees who failed to tell the Dutch that the balance of island was the hunting ground of the Wecquaesgeek, a Wappinger band of southwest Westchester County.