It would have been better all round to leave Manhattan to the Indians. The mistake dates from 1626, when Peter Minuit threw his twenty-four dollars down the drain. Should have been suspicious of someone with a name like Peter Midnight: midnight is the witching hour. Peter Minuit was proud as punch to have swindled the Algonquins, palming them off with a few glass beads in exchange for their island. But it was the Indians who swindled the Pale Faces. The glass beads were seeds which, planted in the earth, grew into a city of glass less substantial than a teepee.