andy burtis

Set in the colonists’ earliest days on Manhattan and its environs, ‘Land of Tribute’ chronicles the lives of both colonists and native peoples. 

Based on many actual lives and events, we see through their eyes what gross abuses in power can do to bonds made in years of peaceful co-existence. This is a tale of perseverance amidst needless massacres which spawned terrors almost unimaginable to most of us. It is a story of sacrifices made by both the settlers, whom the Algonquians called ‘swanekin,’ and those Algonquians called by the Dutch ‘wildenfolk.’ 

To the Venetian mariner and settler Pieter Alberti, Machequa was the epitome of all that was noble in her Metoac people of Manhattan and Long Island. It was she who gave meaning through her shell-beads to every event in her people’s lives. It was she and others like her who ‘minted’ the only ‘money’ available then to both Dutch and English settlers. 

This story centers upon his love for Machequa, and his first love after she finally arrived after many years. How this is reconciled in the end speaks to the challenges inherent in such a place as New Netherlands where the long-intermingling of such diverse cultures made war particularly devastating.