A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 7

Author: Ross, Peter. cn
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1188

USA > New York > A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 7

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The Dutch colonists appeared to have lived in almost continued apprehension of the Iro- quois. On the 26th of June, 1663, Gov. Stuy- vesant informed the church of Brooklyn that the Esopus [Ulster county] Indians, who were then in league with the Iroquois, had on the 7th of that month attacked and burnt the town of Esopus [Kingston], killing and wounding a number of the inhabitants and taking many prisoners, burning the new town and desolating the place. July 4, 1663, was observed as a day of thanksgiving on account of a treaty of peace with the Indians, the re- lease of prisoners and the defeat of the English attempt to take the whole of Long Island.

But the northern Indians were not the only ones who rendered life miserable to the abor- igines on Long Island. Dr. Prime, in his "History" (1845), gives the following addi- tional details of events which happened shortly after the Mohawks' raid, in which the Narra- gansett (Rhode Island) Indians played havoc with the Montauks, against whom they car- ried on war for several years:

In one of these assaults, led on by Nini- craft, the chief of the Narragansetts, Wyan- danch (Grand Sachem) was surprised in the midst of a marriage feast while he, with his braves, was celebrating the nuptials of his only daughter. Their wigwams were fired, their granaries rifled or destroyed, their principal warriors slain, and, to complete the triumph of the enemy and the misery of the unfortu- nate chief, the youthful bride was carried away captive, leaving the bridegroom, who had just

plighted his troth, weltering in his own blood. It was for procuring the ransom of this be- loved daughter that Wyandanch, in the last year of his life, gave to Lion Gardiner a con- veyance of the territory now constituting the principal part of Smithtown. [The deed is now in the possession of the Long Island His- torical Society.]

The conduct of the Long Island Indians towards the whites is without a parallel in the history of this country. It was to be ex- pected that individual acts of aggression should occur on the part of a barbarous people, for real or supposed injuries. But even these were rare, and the Indians always showed themselves willing to submit to an impartial investigation and just decision of alleged wrongs.

One of the first occurrences of this kind was the murder of a woman at Southampton in 1649, which instantly spread fearful appre- hension of a general insurrection against the white settlements. The magistrates of that town immediately sent a messenger to Mon- tauk and summoned Wyandanch to appear be- fore them. His councillors, fearing that he would be summarily condemned to death by way of retaliation, advised him not to obey the summons. Before he expressed his own opinion he submitted the case to Mr. Gardi- ner, who happened to be lodging in his wig- wam that same night. By his advice he set out immediately for Southampton, Mr. Gardi- ner agreeing to remain as hostage to the tribe for the safety of their beloved chief. With

amazing celerity he not only accomplished the journey of twenty-five miles, but actually ap- prehended on his way and delivered to the magistrates the murderers of the woman, who, instead of being his own subjects, proved to be two Pequot Indians from the main [Con- necticut], some of whom were generally lurk- ing on the island for the purpose of promoting disturbances between the natives and the new settlers. These men, being sent to Hartford, were tried, convicted and executed.

It is a remarkable fact which should be re- corded to the eternal honor of the Long Island Indians that they never formed a general con- spiracy, even of a single tribe, against the whites. The only apparent exception to this remark, it being the only instance in which the natives stood upon their arms against their new neighbors, was the ever-to-be-lamented battle of Fort Neck; and although the origin of this unfortunate rencounter is veiled in ob-

THE INDIANS AND THEIR LANDS.

scurity, there were circumstances connected with the event which induce the belief that if the whole truth could be developed, instead of implicating the poor natives in the guilt of that transaction they would appear entitled to the universal respect and gratitude of the set- tlers. It was generally believed at the time that the dissatisfaction and aggression in which this affair originated were instigated by the Dutch Government with a view to expel the English from Long Island and Connecti- cut. The fact is on record that some of the Long Island chiefs sent a messenger to Con- necticut with the information that the Dutch Fiscal had offered them arms and ammunition and clothing on condition of their joining in the destruction of the English ; and it is added that strong efforts were made to induce the western tribes to renounce their allegiance to the Montauk chief, who was known to be the stanchi friend of the English settlers. These statements were, indeed, indignantly denied by the Dutch Governor and an examination invited, for which commissioners were ap- pointed. But they broke up without accom- plishing their object or allaying the suspicions which had been previously excited.

These threatening rumors spread fearful apprehension to the extreme end of the island, and every town adopted measures of defense. An application was made to the commissioners of the United Colonies of New England for aid, and, although it was defeated by the op- position of Massachussetts, the Legislature of Rhode Island, alone, resolved to send help to their brethren in this emergency. They ac- cordingly commissioned their officers to pro- ceed to Long Island, with twenty volunteers and some pieces of ordnance, and it is not the least deplorable circumstance in this expedi- tion that the chief command was committed to Capt. John Underhill, of Massachusetts noto- riety, who, to say nothing of his moral char- acter, had learned the mode of dealing with Indians in New England, and not on Long Island.

When matters came to the worst it appears that only a part of the Marsapeague tribe, with a few dissatisfied individuals from other tribes, whose hostility the Dutch had aroused and could not now control, assembled in hos- tile array. They entrenched themselves in the town of Oyster Bay, on the south side, in a redoubt or fort in extent about fifty by thirty yards, the remains of which are still visible and have ever since borne the name of Fort

Neck. Here, without having made any ag- gression on the surrounding country, they were attacked by the English, who, after slay- ing a considerable number, completely dis- persed the residue. [Hubbard says that Un- derhill, "having 120 men, killed 150 Indians on Long Island and 300 on the main land."] This action, which constitutes the first and the last battle between the Long Island Indians and the white settlers, took place in the sum- mer of 1653, and under all the circumstances of the case there is much reason to question whether there was any real necessity for the chastisement inflicted.

From this time forward the Long Island Indians gave the whites no cause for alarm; and though in 1675 the Governor of New York, under the apprehension that they might be seduced or. compelled by the Narragansetts to engage with them in King Philip's war, ordered all their canoes from Hurlgate [Hell- gate] to Montauk to be seized and guarded, they tamely submitted without the smallest act of resistance or aggression.

What has been written above is supple- mented by the following, written by Samuel Jones, of Oyster Bay, and printed in Vol. 3 of the collections of the New York Historical Society :

After the battle of Fort Neck, the weather being very cold and the wind northwest, Capt. Underhill and his men collected the bodies of the Indians and threw them in a heap on the brow of the hill, and then sat down on the leeward side of the heap to eat their break- fast. When this part of the county came to be settled the highway across the neck passed directly over the spot where, it was said, the heap of Indians lay, and the earth in that spot was remarkably different from the ground about it, being str ngly tinged with a reddish cast, which the old people said was occasioned by the blood of the Indians.

This appearance formerly was very con- spicuous. Having heard the story above sixty years ago, that is, before the year 1752, I fre- quently viewed and marked the spot with astonishment. But by digging down the hill for repairing the highway, the appearance is now entirely gone.

Notwithstanding Dr. Prime's pacific de- scription of the Indians, there is little differ-

HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

ence between the story of their relations with the white intruders upon Long Island and the story as told of other localities. The Dutch seem to have regarded them with contempt as natural enemies from the very first, and so brought down upon themselves their hatred. The English met the Indian question with more diplomacy. The story of their treatment of the red men in Massachusetts and Connecticut is sickening, even revolting in its details, but on the English settlements on Long Island, west of Oyster Bay, they used more diplomacy and honesty, probably because they saw that in the friendship of the aborigines lay one of their best protections against the Dutch. The Long Island Indians took up arms with so many thousands of their race against Governor Kieft, one of the most unprincipled scoundrels who ever disgraced a colonial outpost's author- ity, but they soon made peace. "In 1643," we read in Winthrop's "History of New Eng- land," "the Indians of Long Island took part with their neighbors on the main, and as the Dutch took away their corn, so they took to burning the Dutch houses, but these, by the mediation of Mr. [Roger] Williams, were paci- fied and peace re-established between them and the Dutch; at length they came to an accord with the rest of the Indians. These Indians having cleared away all the English upon the main as far as Stamford, they passed on to Long Island and there assaulted the Lady Moody in her house divers times, for there were forty gathered there to defend it; they also set upon the Dutch with implacable fury and killed all they could come by; burnt their houses and killed their cattle without restraint, so as the Governor (Kieft) and such as escaped betook themselves to their fort at Man- hattan, and there lived and eat up their cattle."

The Rev. Isaac Jogues, the Jesuit mission- ary who was treacherously murdered by In- dians at Caughnawaga in 1646, has left an in- teresting document describing the new Neth- erlands in 1644, which is printed in "Docu- mentary History of New York," Vol. IV, and contains many interesting data drawn from

personal observation during his pilgrimage here. In the course of it he mentions a cam- paign against the Indians in 1644, in which he says :

Some (Indian) nations near the sea having murdered some Hollanders of the most distant settlement, the Hollanders killed 150 Indians, men, women and children; the latter having killed at divers intervals forty Dutchmen, burnt several houses and committed ravages estimated at the time I was there at 200,000 lives. Troops were raised in New England and in the beginning of winter, the grass being low and some snow on the ground, they pur- sted them with 600, men, keeping 200 always on the move and constantly relieving each other, so that the Indians, pent up in a large island and finding it impossible to escape on account of the women and children, were cut to pieces to the number of 1,600, women and children included. This obliged the rest of the Indians to make peace, which still con- tinues.

Thus it will be seen, as has already been declared, that there was really no difference but in degree in the relations between the white man and the red man on Long Island and the relations which existed in other parts of the country. At the east end of the island the in- fluence of the Gardiner family over the Mon- tauks prevented many of the abuses which the English settlers in New England perpetrated on the people whose lands they took, and as- sisted in preserving some sort of decency and order in the relations between the races. In the middle and western sections, however, the Indian was regarded as little better than a nat- ural enemy with all that such regard implies.

Nor do we think that the claim put forth by Prime and others that the Long Island Indians were a quiet and gentle and affection- ate people has been made good. They were in fact pretty much like the rest of their race. The Rev. Samson Occom, one of. the earliest of the native converts and preachers, said of them (and he knew thiem intimately by long residence among them) : "They believe in a plurality of gods and one Great and Good

THE INDIANS AND THEIR LANDS.

Being who controls all the rest. They like- wise believe in an evil spirit." The writer of a description of New Netherland published in a work on the New World at Amsterdam in 1671, and which is translated and printed in "Documentary History of New York," Vol. IV, says on the same subject :

No trace of divine worship can hardly be discovered here. Only they ascribe great in- fluence to the moon over the crops. The sun, as all-seeing, is taken to witness as often as they take an oath. They pay great reverence to the devil, because they fear great trouble from him when hunting and fishing; where -. fore the first fruits of the chase are burned in his honor, so that they may not receive injury. They fully acknowledge that a God dwells beyond the stars, who, however, gives Himself no concern about the doings of devils on earth because he is constantly occupied with a beautiful goddess whose origin is un- known. *

* Regarding the souls of the dead, they believe that those who have done good enjoy every sort of pleasure in a temperate country to the south, while the bad wander about in misery. They believe the loud wailing which wild animals make at nights to be the wailings of the ghosts of wicked bodies.

From the same description we get several other points of information anent the Indians in New Netherland which may safely be re- garded as applying to those on Long Island. As to the dwellings of the Indians we are told :

Their houses are for the most part built after one plan; they differ only in the greater or smaller length; the breadth is invariably twenty feet. The following is the mode of construction : They set various hickory poles in the ground according to the size of the building. The tops are bent together above in the form of a gallery, and throughout the length of these bent poles laths are fastened. The walls and roof are then covered with the bark of ash, elm and chestnut trees. The pieces of bark are lapped over each other as a protection against a change of weather, and the smooth side is turned inward. The houses lodge fifteen families, more or less, according to the dimensions.

Their forts stand mostly on steep moun- tains beside a stream of water. The entrance is only on one side. They are built in this wise: They set heavy timbers in the ground with oak palisades on both sides planted cross- wise one with another. They join timbers again between the cross-trees to strengthen the work. Within the enclosure they common- ly build twenty or thirty houses, some of which are 180 feet long, some less. All are crammed full of people. In the summer they set up buts along the river in order to pursue fishing. In the winter they remove into the woods to be convenient to the hunting and to a supply of firewood.

Regarding the character of the Indian the same writer tells us:

Great faults as well as virtues are remarked in the inhabitants, for, besides being slovenly and slothful, they are also found to be thiev- ish, headstrong, greedy and vindictive. In other respects they are grave, chary of speech, which after mature consideration is slowly uttered and long remembered. The under- standing being somewhat sharpened by the Hollanders, they evince sufficient ability to distinguish carefully good from evil. They will not suffer any imposition. Nowise dis- posed to gluttony, they are able patiently to endure cold, heat, hunger and thirst.

So much for Dutch evidence. From a New England source, Hubbard's "General History of New England," we get the following :

The Indians on Long Island were more fierce and barbarous, for our Captain Howe, about this time, going with eight or ten men to a wigwam there to demand an Indian that had killed one Hammond, an Englishman, the Indian ran violently out (with knife in his hand wherewith he wounded one of the com- pany), thinking to escape from them ; so they were forced to kill him upon the place, which so discouraged the rest that they did not at- tempt any revenge. If they had been always so handled they would not have dared to have rebelled as they did afterward.

There are many such citations as to the treachery of the Long Island Indian in Gov- ernor Winthrop's (1637) Journal, but there is hardly need to produce the details here. Some

HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

interesting passages regarding the Indians is Danker's and Sluyter's "Journal of a Voyage to New York," etc., which was translated and edited for the memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society by the late Henry C. Mur- phy in 1867. Under date of Saturday, Sep- tember 30, 1679, the Journal says :

We went a part of the way through a woods and fine, new-made land, and so along the shore to the west end of the island called Najack [Fort Hamilton, then probably sur- rounded by water and marsh]. Continuing onward, we came to the plantation of the Na- jack Indians, which was planted with maize, or Turkish wheat. We soon heard a noise of pounding, like threshing, and went to the place whence it proceeded and. found there an old Indian woman busily employed beating Turkish beans out of the pods by means of a shell, which she did with astonishing force and dextrity. Gerrit inquired of her, in the Indian language, which he spoke perfectly well, how old she was, and she answered eighty years ; at which we were still more astonished that so old a woman should still have so much strength and courage to work as she did.

We then went from thence to her habita- tion, where we found the whole troop together, consisting of seven or eight families and twen- ty or twenty-two persons, I should think. Their house was low and long, about sixty feet long and fourteen or fifteen feet wide. The bottom was earth, the sides and roof were made of reeds and the bark of chestnut trees; the posts or columns were limbs of trees stuck in the ground and all fastened together. The top, or ridge, of the roof was open about half a foot wide from one end to the other, in order to let the smoke escape in place of a chimney. On the sides or walls of the house the roof was so low that you could hardly stand under it. The entrances, or doors, which were at both ends, were so small and low that they had to stoop and squeeze themselves to get through them. The doors were made of reed or flat bark. In the whole building there was no lime-stone, iron or lead. They build their fire in the middle of the floor, according to the number of families which live in it, so that from one end to the other each of them boils its own pot. and eats when it likes, not only the families by themselves, but each In- dian alone, according as he is hungry, at all hours, morning, noon and night. By each

fire are the cooking utensils, consisting of a pot, a bowl or calabash, and a spoon, also made of a calabash. These are all that relate to cooking.

They lie upon mats with their feet toward the fire, on each side of it. They do not sit much upon anything raised up, but, for the most part, sit on the ground or squat upon their ankles. Their other household articles consist of a calabaslı of water out of which they drink, a small basket in which to carry and keep their maize and small beans, and a knife. Their implements are, for tillage a small sharp stone and nothing more; for fish- ing, a canoe without mast or sail and without a nail in any part of it, though it is some- times full forty feet in length ; fish hooks and lines, and scoops to paddle with in place of oars. I do not know whether there are not some others of a trifling nature.

All who live in one house are generally of one stock or descent, as father and mother, with their offspring. Their bread is maize, pounded in a block by a stone, but not fine. This is mixed with water and made into a cake, which they bake under the hot ashes. * * * These Indians live on the land of Jacques Cortelyou, brother-in-law of Gerrit. He bought the land from them in the first in- stance, and then let them have a small corner for which they pay him twenty bushels of maize yearly, that is, ten bags. Jacques had first bought the whole of Najack from these Indians, who were the lords thereof, and lived upon the land and afterward bought it again in parcels. He was unwilling to drive the Indians from the land, and has therefore left them a corner, keeping the best of it himself. We arrived there upon this land, which is all good and yields large crops of wheat and other grain.

In a note on this passage the editor of the Long Island Historical Society's volume, the late Henry C. Murphy, said :

Jacques Cortelyou came from Utrecht to this country in 1562 in the quality of tutor to the children of Cornelius Van Werckhoven, of that city (who that year also came to America), first patentee direct from the West India Company, of Nyack, or Fort Hamilton. He married Neeltje Van Duyne, and died about 1693. The Indians received six coats, six kettles, six axes, six chisels, six small looking-glasses, twelve knives and twelve

THE INDIANS AND THEIR LANDS.

combs from the West India Company for all the land extending along the bay from Go- wanus to Coney Island, embracing the present town of New Utrecht. Van Werckhoven went to Holland, after attempting a settle- ment at Nyack, but with the intention of re- turning. He died there, however, in 1655, and Cortelyou, who remained in possession of Nyack as his agent, obtained permission, in 1657, from the Director and Council to lay out on the tract the town of New Utrecht, so named in compliment to the birthplace of Van Werckhoven.

The journalist mistakes in supposing the first purchase of Nyack from the Indians to have been by Cortelyou ; but is probably cor- rect in stating a second purchase by him, which might have been made for the purpose of aiding him with a title by possession against the heirs of Van Werckhoven, who actually did subsequently claim this inheritance.

Long Island seems to have afforded the Indians plenty of hunting, and its waters abounded with fish, so that the red man had little occasion to cultivate the soil except to scratch its surface here and there to raise enough grain to make bread. He was an adept fisherman, and a canoe formed a striking part of his individual or family wealth.

One feature of the resources of Long Isl- and which, while it made it popular with the aborigines, invited trouble with outside tribes, and caused more wars, misery and havoc than we have any adequate knowledge of, was the abundance of the shells which passed current among them for money. To this subject ref- erence is made at length in another chapter of this history.

One of the most curious passages in the early European-Indian history, if we may use such an expression to describe events which took place in the Indian story when the white men first began to make their homes on this side of the sea, is the manner in which the land passed from the aborigines to the in- truders. All such transactions were held to be strictly regular, to have been carried on in accordance with the exact requirements of law; and yet to us it seems strange to read, as in the passage just quoted, of the Fort

Hamilton Indians dispossessing themselves of their lands to Cornelius Van Werckhoven for a few tools and trinkets, and then being glad as a matter of charity to be permitted to live on and cultivate a few of the poorest acres ; for the passage referred to informs us that Van Werckhoven's agent retained the best for himself, and informs us also that the same agent even kept the whole ultimately for his own use to the exclusion of the heirs of his master, the first European "proprietor."

The keynote of the common talk of the just and equitable treatment of the Indians is found in Silas Wood's "Sketch of First Set- tlement of Long Island" (1828) :

Both the English and Dutch respected the rights of the Indians and no land was taken up by the several towns, or by individuals, until it had been fairly purchased of the chief of the tribe who claimed it. Thus the Dutch on the west and the English on the east end maintained a constant friendship with the In- dian tribes in their respective neighborhood ; and while they were friendly with each other, the Indians from one end of the island to the other were friendly with both. It may have been partly in consequence of the destruction of their warriors in their recent wars and of their military spirit being broken by their sub- mission to successive conquerors, but it was principally by cultivating the friendship of the chiefs, particularly the sachem of the whole, by uniform justice and kindness, by preventing excitement by artificial means, and by render- ing success hopeless by withholding the means necessary to insure it, that the whites were ex- empted from any hostile combination of the Long Island Indians. There is no reason to believe that this exception from Indian hos- tilities was owing to a better disposition or milder character of the natives of the island.

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A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 7

Author: Ross, Peter. cn Publication date: 1902 Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1188

Author: Ross, Peter. cn
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1188