History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 5

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1354

USA > New York > Westchester County > History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I > Part 5

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ORNAMENTAL POTTERY. Found in Pelham in Indian grave.

It is not knowu that there were formal ceremonies for burying the dead. The bodies were usually in- terred iu a sitting posture, facing the southwest. With the dead were buried their arms, ornaments, useful utensils, wampum and parched corn for food.

Of the religious belief of the Mohegans we have very little testimony, aud eveu such as we have can- not be considered reliable. In the compass of human

1 This is of doubtful origin ; found deeply buried in a spring near the Indian path "Succabonk," in Bedford.

THE INDIANS.

thought there are no ideas requiring so elear an ex- pression to be correctly understood as those pertain- ing to religion. The Indian endeavored to express these in a language imperfectly understood by the whites, and naturally the hearers interpreted these expressions according to their own predileetions. It is not strange, therefore, that very little has come to us that can be implicitly accepted. But all our wit- nesses unite upon this important point,-there was no kind of idolatry practiced among the aborigines here. They believed in one all-wise, all-powerful and beneficent Being, whom they called the Great Spirit, and to whom they offered prayer. They also believed in an evil spirit. The former they knew under the name Cantantowit, and the latter under that of Hob- bamoeko. The former had sent them their corn and beans. A erow first brought a grain of eorn in one ear and a bean in the other, from their heaven, which they ealled the happy hunting-grounds, located in the far southwest. Their highest conceptions of a place of blessings were associated with the southwest, because the wind from that quarter is soft and balmy and an indicator of fair weather. The dead were buried with their faces toward the abode of the blessed.

They believed in rewards and punishments here- after, and they held that after death the souls of the good went to the liome of Cantantowit, far away in the good southwest. There they were delivered from every sorrow and preserved from all suffering. The pleasures they there enjoyed were similar in eharae- ter with those they had known here, but their perfec- tion was more complete and their abundance exhaust- less. The wicked knocked also at the same door, but were denied admittance, and, being turned away, they wandered forever in a state of horror and rest- less discontent.

It is extremely difficult to form a eorreet estimate of the Indian's character before that character be- eame changed by contact with the Europeans. His- tory teaelies us how quickly an inferior race becomes impressed by the traits of a stronger people coming among them. Unfortunately, that which is evil is much more quickly imitated than the noble and good. Before the European became sufficiently ae- quainted with the Indian to be capable of judging of his character, that character had been changed by contact with the observer himself, so that he saw, in part, the reflection of himself in the subject before him. At best, there was presented only a dissolving view that was transformed before the observer's gaze. The Indian was immediately ealled a drunkard, and yet he had no beverage whatever that could intoxi- eate, and no drug that answered any similar purpose. The first Indian who felt the influence of alcohol found it in the cabin of the " Half-Moon." So, also, with other viees. True, the Indian was a barbarian. He showed no evidence of having been in any way better or more civilized in the seventeenth century

than he may have been in the tenth or fifth. With him, might made right. He imposed upon his wo- men and made them his slaves. He had no intellec- tual exercise, and possessed not even the rudest cul- ture. He was selfish, took pride in the lowest cun- ning and had no idea of honor, and, of course, no word for expressing it. And yet, bad as he was, on the one hand, he should not be held responsible for the European vices that were engrafted upon him, nor upon the other, should he be judged by standards resulting from centuries of a foreign civilization, or held responsible for the violation of laws of which he had no knowledge.

With the coming of the white man came the fatal sorrows of the Indian. All his world was overthrown. New vices eame to his eharacter and new dangers surrounded his home. The one fixed, unchanging and unehangeable factor in his existence, upon which he eould implicitly rely, was the land; and now this was snatched from him by devices of which he was totally ignorant. The term "title" con- veyed no meaning to his understanding. Acting under the laws of his fathers, and doing only what he had always been taught was right, he found him- self accused of gross wrongs under another set of laws of which he had never heard, and whose elaim to equity he could not understand. Under the pretense of right, he found himself most grievously wronged, and we cannot wonder that, between sueh opposite rules of action, the collision of principles quickly re- sulted in collisions of arms. The contest was inevit- able, and, whether it was carried on under the name of war or in the more quiet forms of peace, it was a contest of raees, a eontest of civilization against bar- barism, and the result was inevitable,-the Indian disappeared from the land.

When the " Half-Moon " lay at anchor off the vil- lage of Nappeckamak, the Indians soon overcame the terror that naturally accompanied so strange an apparition, and, putting off in their canoes, went on board in large numbers. Their curiosity knew no bounds, and was only restrained by their dread of the supernatural powers the strangers might possess. By Hudson's own statement, he himself first violated faith with them. He detained two of their number on the vessel, and, although they soon jumped overboard and swam to the shore, his aet was nevertheless an outrage upon the universal rules of hospitality. He recorded that, when they reached the shore, they ealled to him "in scorn." Hudson ascended the river to Albany, holding communication with the In- dians along the way ; and so kind was their disposi- tion toward him, that he wrote of them as " the lov- ing people." On his return he came through the Highlands on the 1st of October, and anchored below the village of Sackhoes, on whose site Peekskill has been built. Here "the people of the mountains " eame on board and greatly wondered at the ship and weapons, the color of the men and their dress. De-

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

seending the river, Hudson found that the Indians at Yonkers were prepared to resent his treatment. The young men whom he had attempted to kidnap came out with their friends in canoes and discharged their arrows at the " Half-Moon," "in recompense whereof six muskets replied and killed two or three of them." The Indians renewed the attack from a point of land (perhaps preceding the vessel to Fort Washington), but "a faleon shot killed two of them and the rest fled into the woods ; yet they manned off another canoe with nine or ten men," through which a falcon shot was sent, killing one of its occupants. Three or four more were killed by the sailors' muskets, and the " Half-Moon " " hurried down into the bay clear of all danger."

Hudson returned to Holland, and reported his discoveries to his employers, the Dutch East India Company. During the following ten or twelve years many voyages were made to the shores of the Hud- son and the Sound for purposes of trade with the Indians, for their furs and to explore the country. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was incor- porated. Two ycars afterward it formed trading-sta- tions at New Amsterdam and at Fort Orange, and considerable settlements were made on the sites of the future cities of New York and Albany. In 1626 Manhattan Island was sold by the Indians. In 1639 the first sale of land in Westchester County was made. It included the northern shore of Spuyteu Duyvil Creek. Other sales were made by the Indians to the Dutch until, on the 8th day of August, 1699, the Sachems Sackima, Corachpa, Wechrequa, Monrechro and sundry other Indians gave a general deed confirming numerous smaller sales made to Stephanus Van Cortlandt and others, and conveying the lands that were afterward known as Cortlandt's Manor.

In the mean time the Indians were beset on the eastern side of the county as well as the western. The English settlers in Connecticut gradually pushed westward, and coveted the lands of our eastern bor- der. On the 1st of July, 1640, Ponus, sagamore of Toquams, and Wascussue, sagamore of Shippan, sold to Nathan Turner, who acted for the people of New Haven, the tract known to the Indians as Rippo- wams, and which included the greater portion of what is now Fairfield County, in Connecticut, and a con- siderable area of the adjoining lands of Westchester. On the 11th of August, 1655, Ponus and Onox, his eldest son, confirmed this sale to the inhabitants of Stamford. Subsidiary to this great sale, numerous others were made,-some of lands included in the above, and others of lands adjacent thereto, like the one made to Thomas Pell, of Fairfield, Conn., in 1654, and to Edward Jessup and John Richardson, in 1663, of tracts adjoining those sold to the Dutch in the southern part of the county. By these sales the Indians disposed of the entire area of West- chester County, except a few insignificant reserva-

tions and the right to plant corn upon certain por- tions for a term of years. Many of these deeds over- lapped each other, so that some of the land was sold two or three times. This was done without any dis- honest intent on the part of the Indians. They never understood, when giving these deeds, what they meant. As has been already said, they had no comprehension of what we call the title to land. They understood the right of occupation and use, and nothing more. The written deed had no special force in their eyes. Its phrases were incomprehen- sible. By their law the ownership ceased when the premises were deserted. If the land was not at once occupied, they could sell it again to others. If they drove the new purchasers away by force, they thereby regained ownership. Therefore, in many cases, they insisted, the settlers thought dishonestly, that their original rights remained vested in themselves, and the purchaser was compelled to repeat his purchase for the purpose of obtaining a quit-claim.

It is not necessary here to specify the considera- tions named in the several deeds, as this matter was the work of the settlers, and will be more fully con- sidered in their connection. They consisted of a few hoes, hatchets, knives, kettles, articles of clothing, rum and "divers other goods." These seem very insignificant to us; but, in justice to the settlers, it must be remembered that values were very different then from what they are now. But the Indian's position is easily understood. He had no correct idcas of value. This coat would make him a king; this knife would be the pride of his life; these trin- kets delighted his cyes, or, if a worthier reason influ- enced him, he remembered how the squaws had toiled in cultivating the corn with a miserable clam- shell, and he rejoiced at the thought of their labor being lightened by the iron hoe that was offered him. By simply placing his mark upon this meaningless paper, all these were secured. At best he but made a virtue of necessity, and was happy to secure these coveted trinkets, the nominal price for giving a nom- inal consent for the white man to occupy the land.

When Henry Hudson sailed away from the river he had discovered, its shores rc-echoed with the war- cries of a people whose confidence he had abused and whose kindred he had slain. The hostility he had awakened was not mitigated by subsequent events, and when, afterward, the traders came, mutual sus- picion and distrust were not long in bringing the clash of arms. So soon as the Dutch had made a settlement, their cattle were allowed to run at large for pasturage, and "frequently came into the corn of the Indians, which was unfenced on all sides, com- mitting great damage there. This led to complaints on their part, and finally to revenge on the cattle, without sparing even the horses." In 1626 a Weck- quæsgeek Indian, from the vicinity of Tarrytown, while on his way to Fort Amsterdam to exchange his furs, was robbed and killed by men in the em-

THE INDIANS.

ploy of Peter Minuit, the first Dutch Director. The Weekquæsgeek was accompanied by his nephew, who was a boy, and another Indian. The Dutch were not aware of this outrage till long afterward. The boy, true to the principles of his race, treasured a revenge which he believed it to be his duty to exact in manhood. He waited no longer than to reach a warrior's age of seventeen, when he took some beaver- skins to barter, and, stopping at the house of a Dutchman, he killed him while examining the goods. Having thus secured the blood atonement required for the death of a relative, he returned to his home. Governor Kieft demanded the surrender of the of- fender; but the Weckquæsgeeks refused to give him up. There was great excitement in New Amsterdam. Expeditions to exterminate the Iudiaus were orgau- ized; but they accomplished nothing. Finally, a treaty was concluded between the Dutch and the Iu- dians, the former agreeing to some matters required by the latter, on condition that the murderer should be surrendered. But the treaty was never fulfilled by either party. It was a very difficult matter to have au Indian arrested whose actions had been in strict accordance with the laws aud customs of his race. Against the advice of the chief men of Man- hattan, Governor Kieft had sent a company of eighty men against the Weckquæsgeeks in March, 1642, and although they did little damage, the Indians were greatly incensed thereby. Various causes of irritation had brought the Dutch and Indians into violent collision west of the Hudson, and finally those Indians made common cause with the Weck- quasgeeks, aud the Dutch were swept from West- chester, and compelled to take refuge in Fort Amsterdam. "From swamps and thickets the mys- terious enemy made his sudden onset. The farmer was murdered in the open field; women and children, granted their lives, were swept off into long captiv- ity; houses and bowerics, hay-stacks and grain, cattle and crops were all destroyed." The Indians were now satisfied, and on the 22d of April, 1643, they made a treaty of peace, in which it was declared that "all injuries committed by the said natives against the Netherlanders, or by the Netherlanders against said natives, shall be forgiven and forgotteu forever, reciprocally promising oue the other to cause no trouble the one to the other." But, in September of that year, war again broke out, beginning with the capture, by the Indians, of two boats descending the river from Fort Orange, and again the Dutch settlers were all driven into Fort Amsterdam. The Week- quæsgeeks attacked the residence of Anne Hutchiu- son, who had been driven out of New England by the Puritans, and liad settled withiu the present bounds of Pelham, and killed her, her daughter and her son- in-law, and carried her young granddaughter into cap- tivity. She remained with the Indians four years, and was then sent to her friends. She had forgotten her native tongue, and was unwilling to leave the Indians.

Throgmorton's settlement, on Thirog's Neck, was also attacked and its buildings burned, while the peo- ple escaped in their boats. The position of the Dutch was perilous in the extreme, and had the In- dians known their power the whites would have been swept away. Governor Kieft now solicited aid from New England, offering a large sum for men and arms and proposing that New Netherland should be mort- gaged to secure the payment of the money. They received the aid, however, of only a few English vol- uuteers. Two companies, one of sixty-five and one of seventy-five men, were soon organized, and the work of retaliation commenced. Quantities of corn were captured upon Staten and Long Islands and an expedition sailed to Greenwich, in Connecticut, and marched through our eastern borders, but accom- plished nothing beyond the burning of two forsaken castles and some corn. From these expeditions prisoners were taken to Fort Amsterdam, where they were treated with shocking cruelty, as is recorded in the " Breeden Raedt." A more formidable expedi- tion was then organized. Hearing that a large num- ber of Indians were assembled at their village on the Mehanas, near the present village of Bedford, the force was taken in sailing-vessels to Greenwich and then marched through the snow to their destination, which was reached about midnight. The village consisted of three rows of houses ranged in streets, each eighty paces long. The village was surrounded, the surprised Indians were shot down as soon as they appeared and the houses were set on fire. The in- mates preferred to perish in the flames rather than to fall by their enemy's weapons. Iu this merciless manner five hundred human beings were butchered. Other statements carry the number to seven hundred. The military power of the Indians was now broken and thereafter warlike operations ceased. On the 30th of the following August, 1645, a general treaty of peace was concluded between the Dutch and the Indians of the Lower Hudson, and signed by their respective chiefs-Aepjen, the grand sachem of the Mohegans, representing his people. This treaty was an equitable agreement and was carefully respected. Thus was ended a war which had been carried on for over five years and in which, it was said, over sixteen hundred Indians perished. The Dutch recorded : " Our fields lie fallow and waste, our dwellings and other buildings are burnt, not a handful can be planted or sowu this fall on all the abandoned places. All this through a foolish hankering after war, for it is known to all right-thinking men here that these In- dians have lived as lambs among us until a few years ago, injuring no one and affording every assistance to our nation."

There are traditions of the slaughter of large num- bers of Indians at other points in the county, but they are believed to be unfounded. Mount Misery, near the Sound, has long been said to have derived its uame from the slaughter of Indians there by the

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

Huguenots of New Rochelle. There is no record of such an engagement, and the story is altogether im- probable.

The Indians of Westchester took no part in the Esopus wars of the succeeding years farther up the Hudson, nor did they engage in the French and In- dian Wars which rolled so frightfully along the bor- ders of Massachusetts and Connecticut, nor in other wars that followed elsewhere.

The last appearance of Mohegan Indians under arms in Westchester County was during the Revoln- tionary War, when a company under their chief, Nimham, joined Washington's forces. On the 31st of August, 1778, they took part in the engage- ment at Tibbet's Brook, on the Van Cortlandt's es- tate, in Yonkers. They fonght bravely and over forty of their number were killed. When Nimham saw that they were surrounded by the British horse, he called to his followers to fly, exclaiming, "I am old and will die here." Ridden down by Colonel Simcoe, he wounded that officer, and was on the point of pulling him from his horse, when he was shot by Simcoe's orderly.

After their great loss, in 1645, the Indians felt that they must inevitably seek other homes. Year by year the increasing tide of settlers was incompatible with Indian occupation, and, although considerable numbers continued for a long time to remain npon the lands they had sold to the whites, they gradually wasted away, mauy of them moving among their friends farther north, and making Stockbridge, in Massachusetts, the headquarters of the tribe, and fi- nally the remnant that remained was removed thence to the State of Michigan. Their exit from Westchester County was very gradual, for they " loved to linger where they loved so well." At a few points they re- mained for a long time in considerable numbers, and Indian Hill, in Yorktown, became memorable as the last spot in Westchester County iuhabited by a band of aborigines. Yet individual families remained still longer elsewhere.

The Indians vanished from Westchester as noise- lessly as the morning mists disappear before the ad- vancing day, inclosed valleys and hidden nooks re- taining remnants after the great body had gone. They left behind them so few material evidences of their existence here that we find them only by accident or by careful search. But many of the names applied by them to mountains, streams and localities have been fortunately retained by the white settlers and their descendants, and in their associations and ap- propriateness add an interesting variety to our local nomenclature.

CHAPTER III.

THE DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT OF WESTCHES- TER COUNTY.

BY JAMES WOOD, A.M.

President of the Westchester County Historical Society.

EUROPEANS first came to the section of coun- try now kuown as Westchester County in the vain endeavor to find an easy sea-way to India and Cathay that received so much of the attention of maritime nations in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seven- teeuth centuries. The wealth of those far-distant lands had for many ages been borne by slow caravans across the weary stretches of Central and Sonthern Asia, and had built prosperous cities wherever their rich spices and costly fabrics and precious jewels had found a trading-place. These visible realities had been supplemented by extravagant fables of the riches of the East, until the minds of navigators were inflamed with an eager desire to reach these inexhaustible treasures aud bring them quickly home in their ships of the sea, instead of upon the "ships of the desert," as they had so slowly come before. This desire led to great events. It developed naviga- tion into a science. It took the Portuguese arouud the southern extremity of Africa, to which they gave its auspicions name, because it furnished a good hope of reaching India by sea. It brought Columbus across the Atlantic to discover a new world. It brought great and intrepid navigators to explore the coast of North America from Greenland to the Gulf of Mexico, and, finally,.in 1609, it brought Henry Hudson into the river that bears his name, and re- vealed our beautiful hills and fertile valleys to the gaze of civilized men.

Europeans were very slow to reap a profit, in any intelligent manner, from the discovery of America. Spain first sought to gain some advantage to herself, and, in the blindest way, filled her coffers with treasure and destroyed the peoples who produced the wealth. Caring only for immediate gain, she de- spoiled the Incas and overthrew the institutions of the Aztecs, and everywhere turned prosperity into ruin. Later, she made a settlement in Florida, whose monuments still remain. The daring fishermeu of France sought the shores of Newfoundland in the pursuit of their vocation, and were followed into the St. Lawrence by the flag and arms of their country, where they so tenaciously remained. England waited for the reign of Elizabeth for the enterprise that developed her greatness in every direction aud planted colonies in North Carolina and Virginia, and later, showed her energy and colonizing power in the planting of New England. It was reserved for the people of the youngest nation in Enrope to occupy the territory between the English settlements which Hudson had first discovered, and here to trade in equity with the aborigines, and to form a set-

THE DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT.

tlement of sturdy and intelligent people whose descendants and institutions still remain. In making their settlements, Spaniards, Frenchimen and Eng- lishimen made lofty professions of their desires to couvert the heathen to the Christian faith, and, with the utmost inconsistency, they employed the musket and the sword to accomplish their purposes. The Dutch professed only a desire for trade with the In- dians, with the same propriety that the most Chris- tian nations to-day seek to extend their commerce, and by treating them with a reasonable show of justice, they found uo severe difficulties in their enterprise, while they put to shame the hollow pre- tensions of their ambitious neighbors.

The long and harassing war by which the Nether- land provinces achieved their independence of the Spanish crown had been one of the most remarkable in the world's history. The wealth and power of Spain were considered almost boundless. The revolt- ing provinees were small in area and in population. The contest seemed most unequal, but the same energy, per- sistence and skill that had wrested their fertile land from the sea defeated the armies of Spain and wore out the endurance of her sovereigns, until, on the 9th of April, 1609, the protracted struggle ended and the independence of the Netherlands was practi- cally acknowledged. During all the contest the Dutch had shown their superiority upon the oecan. Their vessels carried on a profitable commerce in every sea and pushed into that rich trade with the East which had been especially denied them by Spain. To carry on this importaut trade the East India Company had been incorporated in 1602. Profitable as were their voyages around the Cape of Good Hope, they yet dreamed there might be a shorter route for their vessels, and one in which they would be less exposed to attack. The long-cherished possi- bility of a northwest passage to the Indian seas was still entertained. Opportunely, an English navigator, Henry Hudson, who had made two voyages to this ever disappointing field of discovery, offered his ser- viees. The offer was accepted, and a yacht of eighty tons burden, the Half-Moon, was equipped for a voyage, manned by a mixed crew of Dutch and Eng- lish sailors, uumbering twenty, and sailed from Am- sterdam on the 4th of April, 1609, five days before the truce with Spain was signed. Striking the Americau coast at Nova Scotia, Hudson skirted the shores of Maine and Cape Cod and next reached the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, aud, turning northward, passed the coast of Maryland and entered Delaware Bay. Again standing northward, on the 2d of September he sighted the highlands of Navesinck, " a very good land to fall in with and a pleasant land to see," and on the following day he rounded Sandy Hook and eutered the lower bay. Hudsou spent ten days in exploring the adjacent waters. Then, proceeding up the majestic river that opened before him, on the 13th the Half-Moon was anchored opposite the

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History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 5

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co. Number of Pages: 1354

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1354