Origin and History of Manors in the Province of New York and in the County., Part 1

Author: Edward Floyd De Lancey
Publication date: 1886
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 171

USA > New York > Westchester County > Origin and History of Manors in the Province of New York and in the County. > Part 1

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US 15513.10.9Bd. April, 188%. *

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Darbard College Library

FROM The Author. :

22 Jan. 1887. 1

1 1

#381.33

HARVARD COLLEGE

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF

MANORS IN

NEW YORK

AND THE

COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER.

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ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF

MANORS

IN THE

PROVINCE OF NEW YORK

AND IN THE

COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER.

EDWARD FLOYD DE LANCEY

NEW YORK: 1886.

125.25 #38-33 US 15513.10.9

HARVARD COLLEGA JAI. 22 1867 LIBRARY.

Tre tution

Library of Human University author -

PREFATORY NOTE.

THIS volume is a separately-printed chapter contributed to "Scharf's History of Westchester County, New York." Its subject, therefore, has been treated with reference to its being but a part of that large and handsome work, and not as fully in every respect as it really merits, or as the writer would desire. It is sufficient, however, to give a general idea of a matter of history of which very little is known in America. . This chapter

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CONTENTS.

PARTS:

PAGE

1. THE INDIAN OWNERS OF NEW NETHERLAND AND WESTCHESTER 31

2. HOW THE INDIAN TITLE VESTED SUCCESSIVELY IN THE DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY, THE BRITISH CROWN, AND THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF NEW YORK 35

3. THE DUTCH IN NEW NETHERLAND 37

4. THE COLONIZATION BY THE WEST INDIA COMPANY 42

5. THE NATURE OF THE DUTCH SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT AND LAW ESTABLISHED IN NEW NETHERLAND, AND OF THE PATROONSHIPS 57

6. THE PATROONSHIP OF COLEN DONCK 66

7. THE CAPTURE OF NEW NETHERLAND FROM THE DUTCH, AND THE ERECTION OF THE ENGLISH PROVINCE OF NEW YORK 73

8. THE ENGLISH SYSTEM UNDER THE DUKE OF YORK AS LORD PROPRIETOR 78

9. THE MANORS IN NEW YORK, WHAT THEY WERE NOT, AND WHAT THEY WERE 85

10. THE FRANCHISES, PRIVILEGES AND INCIDENTS OF MANORS IN THE PROVINCE OF NEW YORK, AND IN THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER, AND THE PARISHES IN THE LATTER 90

11. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND PAROCHIAL ORGANIZATION IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY, AND ITS RELATIONS TO THE MAKORS 99

12. THE MANORS AND THE COUNTY IN THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS, AND THE ORIGIN AND FORMATION OF THE LATTER 108

13. THE MANOR OF CORTLANDT, ITS ORIGIN, SPECIAL FRANCHISES, DIVISION, FIRST LORD AND HIS FAMILY, PARTICULAR HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY 115

14. THE MANOR OF SCARSDALE, ITS ORIGIN, LOCAL HISTORY, ADJOINING PATENTS, ITS FIRST LORD AND HIS FAMILY, DIVISION, AND TOPOGRAPHY 141

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THE

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF MANORS

NEW YORK

AND IN THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER.

The Indian Owners of Westchester.

The Europeans who, it is certain, first beheld any part of what is now the County of Westchester, were Henry Hudson, and his mixed crew of Hollanders and Englishmen. They sailed up the great "River of the Mountains" in the yacht Half-Moon of Am- sterdam, flying the orange, white and blue flag of the United Provinces, on the thirteenth and fourteenth days of September, 1609.1

They were the earliest civilized men to gaze enrap- tured on the beautiful land of Westchester. They saw before all others, her lofty hills, rich valleys, and deep magnificent forests, glowing in the transparent air and warm sun of Autumn beneath the bright blue sky of America.2

They sailed up the river as far as the site of Albany and then slowly returned. On the second of October, they anchored at the historic inlet of Spyt-den-Duy- vel, their progress being checked by a strong flood tide. Here, they first met the tawny, well formed, brown eyed, people, clad in skins and adorned with feathers, who then ruled over Westchester; and most unhappily as enemies. The cause was this. While still in the lower bay the Half-Moon, on the 9th of

September, was threatened by some canoes full of savages. Hudson therefore detained two Indians as hostages, "putting red coats on them." Six days later, when she had got into the Highlands, the two Indians escaped through a port and swam ashore. When she stopped at Spyt-den-Duyvel on her return, one of the escaped Indians, and others, in a canoe, with some more canoes of Indians, tried to board her. Being repelled, they made an attack with bows and arrows, supported by about a hundred more Indians on shore. The fire-arms of the crew drove them off with a loss of nine or ten killed.3

Such was the unfortunate beginning of the inter- course of white men with the Indians of Westchester. These Indians, as well as all the others with whom Hudson came in contact, belonged to a great aborigi- nal nation, or stock, termed the Lenni-Lenape. This was the name of that great confederacy of Indian tribes, which, as Heckewelder states, extended from the mouth of the Potomac northeastwardly to the shores of Massachusetts Bay, and the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont, and westwardly to the Alleghanies and the Cattskills," and were afterwards known as the Delawares. Beyond the Lenni-Lenape, still further to the northeast, and extending to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and up the magnificent river of that name to the Great Lakes, was a second great na- tionality or confederacy of Indian tribes, that of the Hurons or Adirondacks, sometimes called the Algon- quins. The term "Algonkin " or " Algonquin " is

1 Juet's Journal of Hudson's Voyage, I. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll. Second Series, 325. These colors were those of William I, Prince of Orange- Nassau. The orange bar waschanged to red after the death of William II. in 1650. As thus altered the flag of Holland continues to this day. de Jonge, cited in I. Brodhead, 325 n.

2 That any earlier navigator sailed up the Hudson, as has lately been alleged, is, as yet, without sufficient proof.

3 Juet's Journal, I. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., Second Series, 324, 326, 330.

" Moulton's Hist. N. Y., 95 and 226.

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

used, however, by many writers to describe all the aborigines east of the Mississippi and south of the St. Lawrence, from the singular and very striking fact, that but one language was spoken throughout this entire region which was styled the " Algonquin ", or "Algonkin." All the Indians within these limits understood each other. There were only compara- tively slight local variations. They required no in- terpreters, except to communicate with white men.

West and northwest of the Lenui-Lenape, extend-

A SUSQUEHANNA OR DELAWARE CHIEF. (From Smith's " History of Virginia.")

ing from the western slopes of the Cattskills and the Helderbergs south of the Mohawk, and north of it, from the banks of the upper Hudson and the waters of Champlain to the shores of Lake Erie, and thence through the region south of that lake to the Missis- sippi, was the dominion of the third, and, perhaps, the most famous of the three great nationalities or races of confederated Indians, the Five (and later Six), Na- tions or Iroquois, and their affiliated tribes.

These were the three great stocks of aborigines, who were in possession of North America from the Poto-

mac and Ohio on the south, to Canada on the north, and from the Atlantic Ocean on the east, to the Fath- er of Waters on the west, at the time of Hudson's discovery of the great bay of New York and the mag- nificent river which bears his name.

Each of these three confederacies embraced numer- ous distinct tribes, sub-tribes, and smaller tribal di- visions, or cantons, and chieftaincies, all having sep- arate names, but united more or less closely by the bond of a common origin. Each tribe, or sub-tribe, possessed its own locality and specific region as its own property, which was never lost, except by volun- tary migration or by conquest.

There also existed a distinguishing characteristic of a different nature in all these great Indian confed- erations. This was the clan or family distinction. Each confederacy was divided into tribes, families, or clans, designated by the name of some living creature, which they called their totem, or badge, the represen- tation of which was painted upon their persons and upon their lodges. This tie, as members of the same confederacy, or even of the same totemic family, was not of itself sufficient to prevent them warring with each other in all cases. Like more civilized people they took up the hatchet against a tribe of the same stock, if occasion arose, as freely as against an enemy of another race. Conflicting claims to lands, dis- puted boundaries, and the rivalries of neighborhoods, not unfrequently gave rise to enmities and wars. Thus in 1609, the tribes on the western side of the bay of New York and the lower Hudson, and those on the eastern side, were bitter enemies,1 although all were tribes and sub-tribes of the Lenni-Lenape or Dela- ware stock.

Among the Lenni-Lenape there were but three clans or families, designated from their totems or badges, as the Unamis, or Turtle (or Tortoise) clan, the Unalachtgo or Turkey, and the Minsi or Wolf, clans,' to one, or the other of which, belonged every tribe or minor sub-division of the Delaware stock. The tribes east of the Hudson, and all the sea coast tribes on both sides of Long Island Sound belonged to the Turkey clan, the tribes between the Hudson and the Alleghanies to the Minsi (sometimes termed Moncey) or Wolf clan, and those on the Lower Dela- ware, Lower Susquehanna, and Potomac to that of the Turtle (or Tortoise) clan.

The first writer on New Netherland, was Johan (John) de Laet, a learned man, a native of Antwerp, but a resident of the city of Leyden. He wrote in 1622, and first published in 1625, sixteen years only after the discovery, through the Elzevirs at Leyden a "History of the New World," which contains the first historical account of what is now New York. He was a director of the Dutch West India Company, subsequently one of the first patroons of New Nether-

1 De Laet's New World, I. N. Y. Hist. Society's Coll., 2d Series, 297.

* Ruttenber's Hist. River Indians, 47. Moulton Hist., N. Y., 35.

THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE MANORS.

land, and a personal friend of Hudson, whose private journal, as he tells us, he had before him when he wrote and from which, the extracts in his pages, are all that exist of Hudson's own account of his great discovery. At that time, de Laet says, the Indians on the west side of the Bay and River were called "Sankhicanni." or Sanhicans, and those on the east, " Mahicanni," or Mahicans, Mohicans, or Mohegans, the latter being Connecticut spelling of the word. The Dutch termed them "Mahikanders," and the natives on both sides of the Hudson collectively, the "River Indians." The Dutch word, however in gen- eral use, when speaking or writing of them was, "the Wilden," literally the wild men, or the savages.

The Long Island Indians the Dutch called Matouwacks. They were Mohicans and were divided into twelve or thirteen sub-tribes or chieftaincies. All bore differ- ent names and possessed distinct, and different, localities. The ruling tribe were the Montauks who possessed the eastern extremity of the island. They owed their supremacy to the abundance of clams in their waters, from the shells of which they made the seawant or Indian money. This great abundance of the clam-shells ena- bled them to supply the Indians of all tribes westward almost to the great lakes with seawant, and thus Montauk became the seat of financial power, not only of Long Island, but of a region larger even than the Dutch Province of New Nether- land.

All the natives of the main between the Hudson and the Connecticut, from the Sound on the south to the Green, and the White, mountains on the north, were Mohicans, and their great council fire was established on the Hudson, in the present town of Greenbush, nearly opposite Al- bany. The name of the Hudson was " Mahicannituck," or River of the Mahic- ans; just as the Delaware was called by them "Lenape-whi-hi-tuck," or the rapid river of the Lenape; on the right bank of

The Iroquois name of the Hudson, according to John R. Bleecker, the old Indian interpreter and sur- veyor of the middle and latter part of the last century, was "Cahotatea."" Judge Egbert Benson in his "Memoir" says, on the authority of a Palatine set- tler on Livingston manor, that the Hudson was also called "Shatemuc" by the Indians of that locality.3

The Indians of Westchester County were therefore Mahicans, or Mohicans, as it is easier to call them, of the Turkey tribe or clan of the Lenni-Lenape, or Delaware, stock of North American aborigines. They were divided into several sub-tribes, cantons, or chieftaincies, each ruled by a Sacchima, as the Dutch called the title, or Sagamore, or Sachem, and owning its own specific location.

Upon the island of New York, and in Westchester west of the Bronx, and as far north as Yonkers, were seated the Manahatas, as de Laet calls them, or the Manhattans; those of them in Westchester were also

DELAWARE INDIAN FAMILY. (From Campanius' " New Sweden.")

which, near where Philadelphia was afterward built, | termed the Reckewacks, or Reckgawawancks, their was the place of the Great Council Fire of the Lenni-Lenape confederacy.1

territory, Keskeskick, and their chief village, Nap- peckamak, was situated on the Nepperhaem, now Neperan, or Sawmill river, where it flows into the Hudson, the site of the present city of Yonkers." The next tribe were the Wickquaeskecks, or Wickquaes- gecks, or Wickerschreecks, so called from their village of that name which De Vries, writing in 1640, thus describes,-" Opposite Tappaen is a place called Wickquaesgeck. This land is also fit for corn, but too stony and sandy. We got there good masts. The

1 Moulton, 34 and 35.

2 I. N. Y. Hist. Coll., 2, 3.

3 Memoir, N. Y. Ilist. Soc. Coll., II. series, vol. 2, p. 85.

+ Rut @ nber, 78. II. Col. Hist. N. Y., 2nd Series, 5.

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

land is mountainous." This "place " was the site of the present village of Dobbs Ferry. A few miles further up the Hudson was another town of the same tribe called Alipconck, or place of Elms, now Tarry- town. This tribe seems to have held the centre of the County from the lands of the Siwanoys on the east to the Hudson on the west. Adjoining them on the north were the Sint-sinks possessing two villages, Ossingsing now Sing-Sing, and Kestabuinck, the latter of which was inland and a little south of the Croton river.

From the Kicktawanc, or Croton, extending up the river to Anthony's Nose, and what is now the north line of the County, dwelt the Kicktawancks, or Kitchawongs, whose chief village was just above the mouth of the Croton river, on the isthmus connecting Senasqua, or Teller's Point, with the main land, and near the old Van Cortlandt Manor House. East- wardly their lands appear to have extended to Con- necticut and the lands of the Siwanoys. The Indians in the northern part of the county were also called the Tankitekes, which seems to have been a general

DELAWARE INDIAN FORT. (From Campanius' "New Sweden.")

name for all dwellings north of the Wickquaeskecks. These last were said by Tienhoven in 1651, to have extended east to the Sound, but this being in conflict with de Laet's account of 1624, is believed to be an error. From Hellgate along the Sound, including the whole eastern side of Westchester County, and Connecticut, as far as Norwalk and its islands, and inland to the valley of the Bronx and the head waters of the Croton, a single and numerous tribe possessed all the land. These were the Sewanoes, or Siwanoys, as de Laet writing in 1624, the earliest and most trustworthy authority on New Netherland history, distinctly states.1 They had several towns in this territory, some of which were fortified. One of the latter occupied the beautiful height in the township of Westchester overlooking the Sound, on which still stands the old seat of the Wilkins family, which from it has always borne, and still bears, the name of "Castle Hill." A village, and also a burial-place, existed on Pelham Neck, another on Davenport's

Neck in New Rochelle, still another on Heath- cote Hill and Nelson's Hill, at the head of Mam- aroneck Harbor. A fifth, and a very large one, was on the attractive banks of Rye Lake in the northern end of the town of Harrison. Besides these there were scattered collections of a few lodges in other places chiefly resorted to in the fishing and hunting seasons. One of these was at Throg's Point, another at the extreme point of Pelham Neck, another on de Lancey's Neck at the narrowest point at the mouth of the Harbour, where a small creek running into the Harbour from the west, and a round field of upland adjacent to it, are still known as the Indian creek, and the Indian field, and the point itself as Indian Point. A fourth existed on Milton Neck, and a fifth on Manussing Island, both in the town of Rye. This account of the Westchester In- dians is based upon a study of de Laet, de Vries, Van der Donck, O'Callaghan, Brodhead, Moulton, Schoolcraft, Ruttenber, and an examination of many Indian deeds, and records of councils.

From the Sakimas, Sagamores, or Sachems, of these various tribes, and some of their chief men and women, have come by deeds of conveyance the Indian titles to all the lands in Westchester County. There is no part of America of equal area, in which the Indian title was so fully and fairly extinguished. And none where in proportion to its size more Indian deeds have been given, preserved, and recorded.

There was a peculiarity in the customs of the Indians in relation to sales of lands which should always be remembered, and to their observance of which is to be ascribed the discredit sometimes attached to them in these matters. "Oh ! you are an Indian giver" is sometimes heard, expressive of the idea, of giving a thing and then taking it back, which has its origin in this custom. They sometimes sold and deeded the same land more than once, in whole, or in part. This was in pursuance of a custom which with them was a law. It is thus stated by Ruttenber in his " History of the River Indians," page 80. " Lands held by them were obtained by conceded original occupation or by conquest. If conquered original right ceased and vested in the conquerors; if re-conquered, the title returned to its original owners. This rule they applied also to the sale of lands to the Dutch. [And to the English also.] As often as they sold to the latter and subsequently drove off the settlers, so often was re-purchase neces- sary, and if it was not made, a cause of grievance and future war remained." It was in fact, nothing but the application of their idea of the right of eminent domain. Of course there were instances of fraudulent deeds by Indians who had no power or right to con- vey, or who were drawn into sales when intoxicated or prisoners by designing whites. And there were some where rival Sachems claimed and deeded the same lands to different parties ; but these exceptions were rare.

1 De Laet's New World, ch. VIII.

THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE MANORS.

In Westchester County the Indian title was first extinguished by purchase from the Indians pursuant to a license from the Dutch or English authorities, then Manors and Grants, by patents were obtained in the manner directed by the Dutch or English laws. And usually in the case of the Manors and larger patents, deeds of confirmation were subsequently obtained from the Indians, merely as a matter of precaution, notwithstanding the fact that the Indian title had, pursuant to the laws both of the Dutch and the English, been always extinguished by deed or deeds beforehand.

The North American Indians claimed that they sprung from the earth-that they were Antochthoni, produced from the earth itself, and hence they boasted their title to the lands could never be ques- tioned and was indefeasible. This belief was the underlying foundation of the many curious, grotesque, and absurd, accounts of their origin given by different tribes, and different writers at different times. This is not the place to discuss the origin of the Indians, nor any of the many theories that have been broached to account for it.

But the belief above mentioned, in some form or other, always existed among themselves. Never was it more forcibly, or more eloquently expressed than by the great Tecumseh at the Council of Vincennes held by General Harrison, afterwards the ninth President of the United States, at that place in 1811. The chief of some tribes attended, to complain of a purchase of lands which had been made from the Kickapoos. The harshness of language used by Tecumseh in the course of the conference caused it to be broken up in confusion. In the progress of the long "talks," which took place, Tecumseh, having finished one of his speeches, looked around, but see- ing every one seated, while no seat was prepared for him, a momentary frown passed over his countenance. Instantly General Harrison ordered that a chair should be given him. Some person presented one, with a bow, saying, " Warrior your father General Harrison offers you a seat." Tecumseh's dark eyes flashed. "My father !" he exclaimed with indigna- tion, and extending his arm towards the heavens, burst forth "The Great Spirit is my father and the earth is my mother; she feeds and clothes me, and I recline on her bosom."1

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Origin and History of Manors in the Province of New York and in the County., Part 1

Author: Edward Floyd De Lancey Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Number of Pages: 171

Author: Edward Floyd De Lancey
Publication date: 1886
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 171