The true version is, that Oloffe Van Kortlandt bargained for just so much land as a man could cover with his nether garments.

The terms being concluded, he produced his friend Mynheer Ten Broeck, as the man whose breeches were to be used in measurement.

The simple savages, whose ideas of a man's nether garments had never expanded beyond the dimensions of a breech clout, stared with astonishment and dismay as they beheld this bulbous-bottomed burgher peeled like an onion, and breeches after breeches spread forth over the land until they covered the actual site of this venerable city.
This is the true history of the adroit bargain by which the Island of Manhattan was bought for sixty guilders; and in corroboration of it I will add that Mynheer Ten Breeches, for his services on this memorable occasion, was elevated to the office of land measurer; which he ever afterwards exercised in the colony.
FOOTNOTES: [33] MSS.

of the Rev.John Heckwelder: New York Historical Society..