USA > New York > New York County> Harlem > Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles > Part 14
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In tracing the history of this section of the Island, the terri- torial limits will be those given in the patent or charter granted the inhabitants of Harlem by the colonial governor Nicolls in 1666, which embraced all the upper portion, from Kingsbridge south, as far as Manhattanville on the west side and Seventy- fourth Street on the east.
Of those who early manifested an interest in this particular section were Wouter Van Twiller, now Director-General of the colony, and his friend Jacobus Van Curler, who bore the title of Jonkheer. They were both young men, from the same place, Nieukerck, and Van Curler, had accompanied the new director hither in 1633. A residence of three years giving them the op- portunity to spy out the land, Van Twiller had improved it by selecting for himself several choice tracts in the vicinity of New Amsterdam, among which was the island lying "over against" the Flats, and known to us as Ward's Island. The Jonkheer, in his rambles, had fixed his covetous eye upon these rich Flats, and, with leave of the director, had pre-empted a goodly section bordering upon the river, opposite the island referred to, and which obtained the name of the Otter-spoor, or the Otter-track. It is scarcely a departure from the literal facts to picture these two dignitaries upon one of their tours of observation up the island; and in fancy we may accompany them. Van Curler well knows the lay of the land, for he loves to scour the woods in quest of game; but one of his feats, which he took some pride in relating, was the killing an hundred and seventy black-birds at a single shot !
Quitting the drowsy little town of New Amsterdam, its
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thatched roofs and its fortress with low turf wall receding from view, we follow the Indian trail leading to Wickquaskeek, or "the birch bark country," which lies beyond the quiet waters of the Papparinamin, as that part of the Spuyten Duyvel was called where it turns the extreme northerly point of Manhattan. Spring is in her loveliest attire. Around and along our pathway she displays in rich profusion her grandest works. Plains scarce trodden by human kind, save by the red man, are clothed in all the beauty of their pristine verdure, while the rock-capped hills and the resonant forest echo back and forth the sounds of wild and savage life. Plumed songsters fill the woods and enliven our journey with their music. Perchance the shrill cry of the eagle, startled from its eyrie, or the plaintive note of the cuckoo, or the busy hammer of the woodpecker, in turn arrests our atten- tion.
"And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree:
And every sound of life was full of glee,
. ..
While hearkening -fearing nought their revelry - The wild deer arched his neck from glades, and then, Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again."
Treading that "central" part of Manhattan, in our day res- cued from mercenary uses and restored again to nature and art, to resume under their culture more than its original beauty, we emerge upon the bluff near that romantic spot since known as McGown's Pass, and before us lie the "Flats of Manhattan." Let us survey the charming panorama which opens to our view, note its more striking features, and point out the several sections of the land, as it is subdivided by the aborigines, under distinc- tive names. At our left a chain of high land extends away to the northward till lost to the eye, but broken at one point by a ravine, beyond which are dimly visible through the entangled foliage the silvery waters of the majestic Mahican-ittuck, or Hudson. In the distance a lesser stream, which flows from the Papparinamin, and is known simply as the Great Kill (its Indian name is undiscovered), comes gently coursing toward the troubled waters of the Hellegat .* Familiar to us as the Harlem River, it has been fitly designated as "one of the sweetest streams that ever gave a charm to landscape." Along the heights through which
. Muscoota, says the History of Westchester County, was the aboriginal name for Harlem River, but various original authorities agree in making it the common Indian term for flats or flatland! After diligent but vain search among our early records to discover some warrant for applying it to the river, we gave it up, when an inquiry addressed to Mr. Bolton, and answered with his usual courtesy, failed to elicit his authority on this point.
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flow its upper waters, the scenery, though less imposing, still rivals that of the classic Hudson in all that is picturesque and pleasing. · On the hither side the banks, rising boldly from a rocky base and clothed with lofty forest trees, present by their very abrupt- ness a fine contrast to the eastern shore, where undulating hills, woodland and meadows form a gradual descent to the water's · edge. Here, aforetime, till its quiet was invaded by the snort of the iron horse, the visitor loved to tarry, wrapt in the con- templation of a scene sublime, and quite forgetful of the outer world, till his reverie was broken by the wild cry of the heron, or the plunge of the kingfisher as it darted from an overhanging bough,-"most celebrated and besung of all other birds,"-species which had ever haunted these waters and nested in the lofty pines. Lingering tenant of these solitudes, the heron was seen at early dawn assiduous at his piscatory work. Taking his gloomy stand in the water's edge, and motionless, as if meditating mischief, he kept his head turned on one side, and eyed the pool intently for an opportunity to strike his prey. If undisturbed, he spent the day, resting when gorged, with his long neck sunk between his shoulders, but retiring long before night to his retreat in the woods. The scene is better depicted by M'Lellan, in "The Notes of the Birds."
" Far up some brook's still course whose current mines The forest's blackened roots, and whose green marge Is seldom visited by human foot, The lonely heron sits, and harshly breaks The sabbath silence of the wilderness : And you might find her by some reedy pool, Or brooding gloomily on the time-stained rock, Beside some misty and far-reaching lake. Most awful is thy deep and heavy boom, Gray watcher of the waters! Thou art king Of the blue lake; and all the wing'd kind Do fear the echo of thine angry cry. How bright thy savage eye! Thou lookest down And seest the shining fishes as they glide; And poising thy gray wing, thy glossy beak Swift as an arrow strikes its roving prey. Ofttimes I see thee, through the curling mist, Dart like a spectre of the night, and hear
Thy strange, bewildering call, like the wild scream
Of one whose life is perishing in the sea."
Hellgate, or Hellegat, as the name was given by the Dutch,
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after an inlet of the West Scheldt, lies in full view at our right, the terror of ancient voyagers, and whose conception of it is well given in these words of an early writer: "Being a narrow pas- sage, there runneth a violent stream both upon flood and ebb, and in the middle lieth some islands of rocks, which the current sets so violently upon that it threatens present shipwreck; and upon the flood is a large whirlpool, which continually sends forth a hideous roaring, enough to affright a stranger from passing further, and to await for some Charon to conduct him through." The Indians, in the last century, had a tradition "that at some distant period in former times their ancestors could step from rock to rock, and cross this arm of the sea on foot."
Beneath us spreads out, as a royal tapestry of velvety green, a section of rich bottom land, known to the Indians by the euphonic term Muscoota, that is, The Flat, as the whites, who adopted the name, rendered it. The hills form its southern limit, with a fresh water run long known as the Fountain, from its spring upon the hillside, and which, passing out to the Great Kill, skirts northerly a point or neck of land opposite Hellegat, its surface slightly elevated, and which the natives call Rechawanes, or, as interpreted, the Great Sands ; since the Benson or McGown prop- erty. It is bounded southerly by a creek and broad marshes, which stretch from the Bay of Hellegat even to Konaande Kongh .*
Beyond the creek of Rechawanes lies Van Curler's grant, reaching away to the Great Kill, a broad and level tract, called in the language of the natives Conymokst, but by the Dutch the Otter-spoor, from the little amphibious animal which sports here- about, burrows, and leaves its foot-tracks (spoor) on the mar- gins of its streamlets and river, and whose furs are so coveted by the Dutch trader. Northerly still lies Schorakin, with a mostly level surface, and stretching along the Great Kill upward toward the hills. It is partly separated from the Otter-spoor by a creek and meadows, and partially hidden from view by the Ronde Gebergte, or Round Hills. One is an abrupt wooded eminence, by modern innovation styled Mount Morris, but which the Dutch called the Slang Berg, or Snake Hill, from the reptile tribes that infested its cleft rocks and underbrush even within the memory
* An Indian term which occurs in a Dutch dorument of 1669 (see under that year), but misread, apparently, by the late Dominie Westbrook, who rendered it King's Highway, the proper Dutch for which is Koning's Hooge Weg. It may come from ko, a fall or cascade, and ononda, a hill; kong signifying elevated place or locality. Hence probably refers to the spring aforesaid, but possibly to a village site (an Indian village, or perhaps the one contemplated in 1661), nunda being the term for village. It approaches in sound nearly to the Iroquois Genunda, or Kannata, Village on the Hill, and from which, says Charlevoux, the name Canada is derived.
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of the living. Southerly from it the gneiss rock crops out in huge, disordered masses. A little way to the right is the other, a lesser height or ridge, and which to the inhabitants came to be known as The Little Hill, when was built opposite to it ( Kings- bridge road only parting them) the goodly Dutch farm-house of Johannes Sickels, still standing in 123d Street. Strewed over the plain, and here and there conspicuous, are rounded boulders of gray, red, and ferruginous sandstone, unlike any rock found here in situ, and whose presence is ascribed to some mighty action of nature in times far remote, by which they had been drifted and deposited here. The hugest of these weather-beaten boul- ders, which lay behind the Sickels house, still lives in memory and in the written romance of the Child of the Singing Rock .*
O'er all this fair domain still roams the haughty Manhattan or Wickquaskeek, as properly called, making forest and waters alike contribute to his subsistence, as though he yet held rights in the soil, notwithstanding the sale, ten years previous, to the West India Company. So the sachems of Mareckaweek, or Brooklyn,-a fact quite remarkable if they were not a band of the Manhattans,-claim the two islands, one before referred to, lying opposite the Otter-spoor and called Tenkenas, since named Ward's Island, and the other called Minnahanonck, now Black- well's Island. But cast the vision across the intervening cen- turies, and it strips this virgin landscape of its almost bewitching charms; its every feature changes like a dissolving view, and the congregated homes of a cultivated people engross these several tracts of many hundred broad acres, forming one of the fairest sections of our great metropolis! Gone is every memento of the aborigine, save a few uncouth names or unearthed relics.t The former, as applied to places within Harlem, we have en- deavored to rescue, because, however unintelligible or difficult of rendering are such Indian terms, they are, as admitted. usually
· The Bachelor's Ward, or the Child of the Singing Rock: a Legend of Harlem, was begun in the New York Sun of September 24, 1860, and extended through twenty- two chapters. It was written by Mr. William E. Pabor, then of Harlem, son of the late Alexander Pabor, whose father, Martin Pabor, by birth a Swiss, came to this country via Bordeaux, about 1803, and died at Bloomingdale, May 16, 1816, aged 48 years.
t A deposit of Indian arrow-heads was found at Harlem, in 1855, in excavating for a cellar on Avenue A, between 120th and 121st street, a spot nearly central of the old Bogert or Morris Rendell farm, and on the ancient Otter-spoor. Being in con- siderable number, of various sizes, and in all stages of manufacture, it shows that here had been the red man's workshop, where, with wondrous patience and skill, he chipped out those little implementa, of equal use to him in peace and war. They were made of a buff-colored flint, resembling the yellow semi-opal of India, but, what is remarkable, unlike any stone to be met with on or about Manhattan Island. Some of these arrow-heads, obtained by him at the time, are in the author's cabinet.
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found to be aptly significant, generally descriptive of the locality, or of some signal event in its Indian legends .*
Here, lying as it were at our feet, is Muscoota,-The Flat,- stretching northward from the elevation we occupy, a fine level plain, shut in westerly by bold heights dressed in the primeval forest, the substratum of gray gneiss, like artificial grass-grown bulwarks, bare and exposed to view along their entire face; its eastern limit a tiny creek that glistens in the sunlight from be- tween its bushy banks as a thread of limpid silver, and which, meeting at flood tide the flow into the ravine through the heights, or the "Clove of the Kil," as afterward called, serves to bisect the island and to bear the canoes of the natives from the Hellegat to the Hudson. Rejoicing in its primitive integrity and beauty, no farm lines, no Harlem Lane or Avenue St. Nicholas yet inter- sect it, nor even a furrow has upturned its deep, rich, vegetable mould, though partially cleared, and tilled by the Indian women with the hoe, in their rude way, for raising scanty crops of maize, pumpkins, beans, and tobacco. This inviting spot has also been appropriated. Its repose must now be broken by the ring of woodman's axe, the noise of saw and hammer, for the first European settlers have arrived, to rear their isolated dwellings. Their story in the Old World has already been told, and will now be continued, with its checkered experiences in the New.
. Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull, of Hartford, the eminent Indian philologist, in a letter of February 3, 1880, with which he has had the kindness to favor me, remarks: "Nothing disguises an Indian name so effectually as a Dutch pen; and few of the names of Northern New Jersey or Southern New York are easily recognized in the shape they come to us in the Dutch records or under Dutch corruptions. The Indian dialect differed very slightly from that of Massachusetts or Eastern Connecticut, but the Dutch spelling transforms them to an unknown tongue, and it is only by compari- son of all the various ways of writing a name, and by a careful study of the locality to which it is appropriated,-and probably wrongfully appropriated, - that one can guess at the original sound, an so, at the meaning."
CHAPTER VII.
1636-1640.
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SETTLEMENTS.
UNDER most flattering auspices, and well supplied with needed stores and house and farm utensils, including arms and ammunition, Henry and Isaac De Forest have at length the satisfaction of treading the strange country, so long the object of mingled hope and solicitude. Equally cheering was this un- expected arrival to the denizens of New Amsterdam, who for some months had seen no new faces from Fatherland; their isola- tion the more keenly felt since the departure together, August 13th, of the ship King David, Captain David De Vries, and a company's ship, the Seven Stars, the first having brought a small accession to the settlers .* The merry salvo from the fort, the grasp of welcome which greeted the new-comers, only betokened the general gladness; while to the old Walloons, who spake but broken Dutch, it gave an opportunity, not often enjoyed, for free · inquiry in their native patois about friends and events in Europe.
It did not take long to fix upon a location, and fully inform themselves of the nature of and best mode of doing the work to be entered upon. But buildings and fences were to be erected, trees felled, and the land prepared to receive the crop. Having come so late in the year, instead of in the spring, the usual time for sailing, they needed to be diligent in order to accomplish this preparatory work in season for the spring planting. Choosing as his future home the rich flats at Muscoota, promising to rival in productiveness the fertile meadows around his native Leyden, and, as memory ran backward, perchance recalling his father's description of the old home in Hainault, the plains, skirted on
. Jacob Walings Van Winckel, from Hoorn, and Peter Casar Albertus, an Italian, from Venice, were of the number, and, we believe, Claes Cornelisz, who certainly came out this year. The first was the ancestor of the Van Winkle family, of Bergen, N. J., the second of those of Alburtis and Burtis. From Claes Cornelisz, the emigrant of 1636, two well-known families have sprung, viz .: that of Wyckoff, through his son Pieter Claessen Wyckoff, a child when his father came over, and that of Van Arsdale, his daughter, Pietertie, born here in 1640, marrying the common ancestor, Simon Jansen Van Arsdalen.
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the one side by the heights of Avesnes, on the other by the gentle Hepre, Henry De Forest at once obtained from Director Van Twiller the grant of Muscoota, then roughly estimated at one hundred morgen, or two hundred acres, and offering no impedi- ment to its immediate occupation, as sometimes occurred where the Indian title had first to be acquired. Here, as the weather favored, De Forest and his assistants began their toilsome work.
The winter had scarcely closed when their hearts were cheered by the arrival of Dr. La Montagne and his family. The voyage, as was not uncommon, had been long and tedious, occa- sioned by their taking a circuitous course by way of the Canary Islands, in order to reach the trade winds. They introduced a little stranger, Marie Montagne, born at sea off the Island of Madeira, January 26th, 1637, and called after its grandmother, De Forest .* Montagne was a welcome and valuable addition to the colonists. Reputed skilful in his profession, he so soon rose in public favor that Governor Kieft, on his arrival, called him to a seat in his council, which appointment, if not by positive instructions from the directors, met with their approval.
Winter and spring had not passed in idleness, as is manifest from the amount of work which had been accomplished in clear- ing land and getting ready for the season of planting. A farm- house was being built, in the Dutch rural style, having an ample ground floor "forty-two feet by eighteen wide, with two doors." The roof was thatched, and, as a protection against the Indians, the house was surrounded by a high, close fence of heavy round palisades or pickets. The inclosure, which was entered by a well-secured gate or gates, was ample for out-buildings, includ- ing a house for curing tobacco; this article, as before hinted, intended to form the principal crop, one to which the soil, "on account of its great fertility, was considered well adapted," and yielding the best returns. It was also "well suited to prepare the land for other agricultural purposes." Fixed in their new home, with the requisite means of defense afforded by their strong stockade and four guns kept ready for use, and with hum- ble trust in a kind Providence, who had hitherto so favored them, the De Forests, with their helpers, Tobias and Willem, addressed themselves industriously to the work of tilling the virgin soil. With no neighbors but the roving Indians, those who had been reared amid the activities of a great city, with its busy, crowded
. This date, with that of Montagne's coming, rests upon a note in Holgate's Am. Genealogy, p. 112, the original authority for which I have inquired for in vain, but I see no reason to doubt its accuracy, while collateral facts are in harmony with it.
·
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marts, must have been strangely impressed by this scene of wild solitude and this lone isolation. The dusky savage, whose trail lay near them, leading from the forests of Wickquaskeek to New Amsterdam, as he passed to and fro on his trading errands, and eyed with ill-disguised suspicion this inroad upon his ancient hunting-grounds, must doubtless have excited, by his uncouth dress and demeanor, his very coyness, a corresponding suspicion and dread in the minds of the toilers .* And when weariness invited repose,-perchance sweet dreams of home and kindred,- how oft were these disturbed by the dismal howl of the wolf or the terrifying scream of the panther, suddenly breaking the death- like stillness of the night!
However, Jonkheer Van Curler now set about improving his fine tract of two hundred acres, called the Otter-spoor, lying next to De Forest's plantation ; but, to describe it in terms now famil- iar, situated north of the Mill Creek, at 108th. Street, and ex- tending from Harlem River to near Fifth Avenue. He erected a dwelling-house and out-buildings, and procured all things necessary for a well-regulated plantation,-domestic animals and farming tools, with the no less needful "boat and fixtures" for passing to and from New Amsterdam. Van Twiller also built upon the larger island, opposite the Otter-spoor, the Indian Ten- kenas, now called Ward's Island, and put there some choice Hol- land stock, all in charge of Barent Jansen Blom, a stalwart Dane, as his overseer or farmer; after which, on July 16th, 1637, the director purchased the Indian title to this island, and also the lesser one "lying westward," called Minnahanonck ( Blackwell's Island), from the sachems, Heyseys and Numers, who took in payment "certain parcels of goods." From Barent Blom, whose huge proportions had gained him the nickname of "Groot Barent," the island whereon he lived received the name of Great Barent's Island. Years later, when Blom had removed to Brooklyn and Van Twiller been dispossessed by the government, the term groot, or great, losing its proper reference to Barent, was applied to the island itself, to distinguish it from the smaller one adjacent
* "The Indians about here," says Capt. David De Vries, who had been a great deal among the Wickquaskeeks and other tribes living around New Amsterdani, "are tolerably stout, have black hair, with a long lock which they let hang on one side of the head. The hair is shorn on the top of the head like a cock's comb. Their clothing is a coat of beaver skins over the body, with the fur inside in winter and outside in summer; they have also sometimes a bear's skin, or a coat made of the furs of wild cats or raccoons. They also wear coats of turkey feathers, which they know how to put together; but since our Netherlanders have traded here, they barter their beavers for duffels-cloth, which they find more suitable than the beavers, and better for the rain. Their pride is to paint their faces hideously with red or black lead, so' that they look like fiends. Then are they valiant; yea, they say they are Manetto,-the devil himself."
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(now Randall's Island), which latter from mere proximity was called Little Barent's Island !*
Illusory is the dream of worldly aggrandizement; how often, alas, the fondest hope of the heart only buds to be blighted! Such was a frequent experience of our early colonists. Suddenly a gloom black as night overshadowed that lone dwelling on the plain ; death had reaped the first harvest. "Henry De Forest died on the 26th July, Aº 1637." Painfully brief, is the record. Had exposure in a new and variable climate proved too much for one reared among the comforts and protecting influences of a city ; or had the over-zealous toiler suddenly fallen under the burden and heat of the day? Was it due to disease or violence? Vain are all surmises. We only know that, far from his native land, from the endeared forms and scenes of other days, saving the presence of some he most loved, the first European settler on these Flats met his fate! He was borne to his last resting-place,-doubtless at New Amsterdam,-with fitting tokens of respect, and the sym- pathizing pastor Bogardus, who but six months agone had greeted and welcomed him on his arrival, performed the last sad ritual, presenting each pall-bearer with a silver spoon as a memento of the departed. These tokens were furnished the dominie by direc-
· Barent Jensen Blom, whose descendants write their names Bloom, was born in 1611, at Ockholm, a town of Sleswick, in Denmark. After quitting Van Twiller's service he settled in Brooklyn, bought, in 1652, a farm near the Wallabout, and there lived till he died, June 5, 1665, from a stab wound in the side, given by Albert Corn. Wantenaer, and at once fatal. As Albert set up the plea of self-defense. the court of Assize, at his trial, October 2, convicted him only of manslaughter. He "was then and there burnt in the hand, according to law;" the further penalties, which were the loss of his property and a year's imprisonment, being remitted by the governor.
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