Shorakkopoch and the Legend of the Manhattan Sale

At the edge of the ball fields near 214th Street in Inwood Hill Park sits a boulder with a bronze plaque. It is labeled Shorakkopoch, and it says that, according to legend, this is where Peter Minuit bought Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626. The plaque's own word, legend, is the right one. No historical record places the transaction here, and historians have linked it to sites in Lower Manhattan instead. What is documented is the tree that once stood on this spot: a great tulip tree, long considered the largest on the island, which grew here for roughly 280 years before it died in the 1930s. In 1954 the Peter Minuit Post of the American Legion set the rock and plaque where the tree had been. The Lenape did live in these woods; remains of old campfires and other artifacts have been found in the park's rock shelters.