USA > New York > Bronx County > The Bronx and its people; a history, 1609-1927, Volume I > Part 7
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years. Many of these deeds overlapped each other, so that some of the land was sold two or three times. This was done without any dishonest intent on the part of the Indians. They never understood, when giving these deeds, what they meant, for 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, and its phraseology was, of course, incomprehensible to them. By their law and custom the ownership ceased when the land was deserted. If the area deeded by them 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, and as the settlers thought dishonestly, that their original rights re- mained vested in themselves, and the purchaser was compelled to repeat his purchase for the purpose of obtaining a quitclaim.
The remuneration named in the deeds consisted for the most part of a few hoes, hatchets, knives, kettles, articles of clothing, rum and "divers other goods." These seem insignificant today, of course, but they ap- peared of considerable value to the Indians and of no small value to the settlers themselves. The Indian's attitude of mind on these things is easily understood. He had no adequate ideas of value. "This coat would make him a king; this knife would be the pride of his life; these trinkets delighted his eyes, or, if a worthier idea influenced him, he re- membered 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 hand on the 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 nominal consent for the white man to occupy the land."
When Hudson sailed from the river he had rediscovered after Verraz- zano, its shores re-echoed with the war-cries of a people whose con- fidence he had abused and whose kindred he had slain. The hostility he had awakened was not mitigated by subsequent events, and when, afterwards, the traders came, mutual suspicion was not long in bring- ing about the clash of arms. As soon as the Dutch had made a set- tlement 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, committing 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 Weckquaesgeck 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 employ of Peter Minuit, the first
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Dutch director. The Weckquaesgeck was accompanied by his nephew, who was a boy, and another Indian. The Dutch were not aware of this outrage till long afterwards. The boy, true to the principles of his race, treasured a revenge which he believed to be his duty to exact in manhood. He awaited no longer than to reach a warrior's age of sev- enteen, when he took-some beaver skins to barter, and, stepping at the house of a Dutchman, he killed him while examining the goods. Hav- ing thus secured the blood atonement demanded by the murder of a relative, he returned to his home. Governor Kieft demanded the sur- render of the offender; but the Weckquaesgecks refused to give him up. There was great excitement in New Amsterdam. Expeditions to ex- terminate the Indians were organized; but they accomplished nothing. Finally, a treaty was concluded between the Dutch and the Indians, 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 an In- dian arrested whose actions had been in strict accordance with the laws and customs of his race. Against the advice of the chief men of · Manhattan, Governor Kieft had sent a company of eighty men against the Weckquaesgecks in March, 1642, and although they did little dam- age, the Indians were greatly incensed. Various causes of irritation had brought the Dutch and Indians into violent collision west of the Hud- son, and finally these Indians made common cause with the Weckquaes- gecks and the Dutch were swept from Westchester, and compelled to take refuge in Fort Amsterdam. "From the swamps and thickets the mysterious enemy made his sudden onset. The farmer was murdered in the open field; women and children, granted their lives, were swept off into long capitivity ; houses and boweries, haystacks and grain, cat- tle and crops were destroyed." The Indians were now satisfied, and on April 22, 1643, they made a treaty of peace, in which it was declared that "all injuries committed by the said natives against the Nether- landers, or by the Netherlanders against the said natives, shall be for- given and forgotten forever, reciprocally promising one the other to cause no trouble the one to the other." But, in September of that year, war broke out again, beginning with the capture by the Indians of two boats descending the river from Fort Orange, and again the Dutch set- tlers were all driven into Fort Amsterdam. The Weckquaesgecks at- tacked the residence of Anne Hutchinson, who had been driven out of New England by the Puritans, and had settled within the present bounds of Pelham, and killed her, as well as her daughter and her son-in-law, carrying her granddaughter into capitivity. The child was kept by the Indians for four years and was then sent back to her friends. She had
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forgotten what of her native tongue she had learnt and was quite un- willing to leave her Indian guardians. Throgmorton's settlement on Throg's Neck was also attacked and its buildings burned, while the people escaped in their boats. The position of the Dutch was perilous in the extreme and had the Indians known their power the whites would have been swept away. Governor Kieft in the circumstances solicited aid from New England, offering a large sum for men and arms, and proposing that New Netherland should be mortgaged to secure the payment of the money. They received the aid, however, of only a few English volunteers. Two companies, one of sixty-five and one of sev- enty-five men, were soon organized, and the work of retaliation com- menced. Quantities of corn were captured upon Staten Island and Long Island and an expedition sailed to Greenwich, in Connecticut, and marched through the eastern borders of Westchester County, but accom- plished little more than the burning of a couple of forsaken castles and some quantities of corn. Prisoners taken in these expeditions were taken to Fort Amsterdam, where they were treated with shocking cruelty, as is recorded in the "Breeden Raedt." A more formidable expedition was then organized. Hearing that a large number 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 eight paces long. The village was surrounded; the sur- prised Indians were shot down as soon as they appeared and the houses were set on fire. The inmates preferred to perish in the flames rather than to fall by their enemy's weapons. In this merciless manner five hundred human beings were murdered, and the figure has even been given as seven hundred. The military power of the Indians was thus broken and thereafter warlike preparations ceased. On August 30, 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 is 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 sown 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 Indians have lived as lambs among us until a few years ago, injuring no one and affording every assistance to our nation.
The earliest contacts with the aborigines in New Amsterdam and the
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region about it were thus of a troubled kind. Unquestionably the new settlers were brutal and unjust, as brutal and unjust in their dealings with each other as Europeans have generally been with each other through all their history. It is painful to read of these slayings and these burnings, but it is hard to see how enmity between the settlers and the Indians could be avoided. The utmost efforts at friendship on the part of the Europeans could only bring about a temporary period of peace. There were sure to be unruly spirits on both sides who would do something to kindle the spirit of war. There seems to be something in animal and in human nature that drives towards conflict, and here on this new soil the conditions were ripe for it. The settlers had had a hard time in Europe. War and oppression they themselves had seen and felt at first hand. Their departure to the new land was in the char- acter of a flight. They needed lands on which to make a home. They could not have those lands without taking them from the Indians. The Indians in deeding the lands had no real sense of the transaction they were making. It would have been wonderful if the settlers could have been at pains to instruct them not merely in this but in all the elements of what civilization they themselves possessed and if the two races could have lived side by side on terms of equality and fraternity. But it could not be done, and all the murder and disorder had to happen, and all we can do at the present day is to regret it, and to marvel what great end is served by all the conflict there is in the world.
There are traditions of the slaughter of large numbers of Indians at other points in and near Westchester and Manhattan, but little evidence has been found to substantiate the fragmentary testimony. Mount Misery, near the Sound, has long been said to have derived its name from the slaughter of Indians there by the Huguenots of New Rochelle. There is no record of such an engagement, and the story has been pro- nounced altogether improbable. 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 Indian wars which rolled so frightfully along the borders of Massachusetts and Connecticut, nor in other wars that followed elsewhere. After their great loss in 1645 the Indians felt that they had no other course but to seek homes elsewhere. Year by year the tide of settlers rolled forward and made the conditions of Indian occupation impossible; and, although considerable numbers continued for a long time to remain upon the lands they had sold to the whites, they gradually wasted away, many of them moving to their friends farther north, and making Stockbridge in Massachusetts the headquarters of the tribe. Ultimately the remnant that remained was removed thence to the State of Michigan. Their exit from the neigh-
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borhood of The Bronx and from Westchester County was very gradual, for they "loved to linger where they loved so well." At some points they settled for a time in groups, and Indian Hill, in Yorktown, became memorable as the last spot in Westchester County inhabited by a band of aborigines. Individual families remained longer in other localities. They left few material evidences here of their long habitation. But the old Indian names of mountain and river and region still remain among us in all their liquid and mysterious beauty, and throw over the robust familiarity of a commercial civilization that is but a stronger extension of the civilization of Europe, a glamour that speaks perhaps more potent- ly to the visiting foreigner than to the native hero of the glamour of our Indian childhood. It is this Indian element in our culture, frail though it be, that gives it its distinctive aspect. It is this that preserves our nomenclature from being a mere gross aping of the familiar nomen- clature of Europe. Let us preserve it, for it is original. The other is a mere caricature, for it has no natural affinity here, and though it were a perfect imitation, it is well to remember that the imitation is always inferior to the original. Let us draw the nomenclature of our localities and our streets rather from the treasury of old Indian names than from associations with titled hoboes over the Atlantic. It is more in keeping with American self-respect and a better indication of character, for even small things like these have meaning, and are significant of our state of mind, whether we admire mean things meanly, or admirable things in an admirable spirit. And after all we owe some tribute of remembrance to the stalwart barbarians whose land we took not because we were better but because we had better instruments of war.
CHAPTER III SETTLEMENT BY EUROPEANS
On August 3, 1639, there was conveyed by the Indian sachems, Tequeemet, Rechgawac, and Pachimiens, to the West India Company, through Secretary Cornelius Van Tienhoven, a tract of land, "called Keskeskeck, stretching lengthwise along the Kil which runs behind the island of Manhattan, mostly east and west, and beginning at the head of said Kil and running to opposite of the high hill by the flat, namely, by the Great Kil, with all right, titles," and so forth. The "Kil behind the island of Manhattan" is the Harlem River; the "Great Kil" is the Hudson ; and the "high hill by the flat" is, probably, the hill at the north end of the island ; the "flat" refers to the plains of Harlem. The boundar- ies of this tract, particularly to the northward, are indefinite; but the tract later became the lower portion of Westchester County, and, later still, the borough. The transfer was made "in consideration of a certain lot of merchandise" with the sachems indicated they had received.
The flats of Harlem had already been occupied as bouweries, or farms, by the Dutch settlers, and it is probable that some of the boers, or far- mers, crossed the river and occupied the new land "upon the Maine." In the year 1640 a second purchase was made of the lands to the eastward of Keskeskeck; and in 1641, Jonas Bronk, or Brunk, made a purchase of five hundred acres of land between the Harlem and the Aquahung rivers. The latter stream soon after lost its Indian name and became known after its proprietor as Bronk's River; the name Bronk's, or Bronx, became also applied to the valley of the river and later to the political division delimited for purposes of government. These early facts intro- duce us to the preliminary processes by which what is now the Borough of The Bronx shuffled off its aboriginal coil and began its career as part of a colony settled by Europeans.
Period of Discovery-There was of course a much more important preliminary history, a broad stream of events of which the particulars just referred to represented a small eddy and backwater. To the resi- dent of New York and The Bronx, as important and interesting an event as is in the history of the State and city is the discovery of New York bay and the great river which flowed into it. This will be the immortal garland in the brow of Giovanni da Verrazano, for though immediate settlement did not follow his explorations of Hudson his visit to the
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inner waters of Manhattan antedated the visit of Hudson by almost a hundred years. Verrazano appears to have had a large experience as a sailor upon the Mediterranean, eventually entering the service of Francis I of France. In 1523 Verrazano was engaged in capturing Spanish ships that brought the treasures of Montezuma from Mexico. In the year that followed he made his voyage to America. His letter addressed to the French king is of unique interest, particularly for the reason that it contains the first known description of the North Atlantic coast, and the first pen-picture of the bay and harbor of New York. The narrative of Verrazano has exerted a commanding influence on historical literature, and for more than three centuries has furnished quotations to the chroniclers. The voyage of Verrazano was projected in 1523. In that year the Portuguese ambassador at the court of Francis I wrote to his master: "By what I hear, Maestro Joas Verrazano, who is going on the discovery of Cathay, has not left up to date for want of opportunity, and because of differences, I understand between himself and his men . . I shall continue to doubt unless he takes his departure." It appears that he first went to sea with four ships, but met with a severe gale and was obliged to return to port, apparently with the loss of two ships. After making repairs he sailed for the Spanish coast alone in the "Dolphin," the captain of the remaining ship leaving Verrazano.
On March 7, Verrazano saw land which "never before had been seen by any one either in ancient or modern times," a statement that he was led into by a desire to claim something for France. Navigating north- ward the Italian navigator reached the neighborhood of the present site of Charleston, South Carolina, describing the country substantially as it appears today, bordered with low sand hills, the sea making inlets, while beyond were beautiful fields, broad plains and vast forests. Touch- ing on Delaware Bay Verrazano coasted northward, sailing by day and coming to anchor at night, finally reaching the bay of New York.
We found a very pleasant situation among some little steep hills, he wrote, through which a very large river (grandissima riviera), deep at its mouth, forced its way to the sea, and he adds: From the sea to the estuary of the river any ship might pass, with the help of the tide, which rises eight feet. This is about the average rise of the Hudson at the present time, and the fact is one that could be learned only by actual observation. It points to the "bar" as then existing, and gives the narrative every appearance of reality. Many things observed were noted in what the navigator called his "little book," and evidently it was from data contained in that book that his brother compiled the map which illustrates the voyage. Verrazano was cautious in the Narrows as he commanded only one ship, writing: As we were riding at anchor in a good berth we would not venture up in our ship without a knowledge of the mouth; therefore we took the boat and entering the river, we found the country on its banks well-peopled, the inhabitants not differing much from the others, being dressed out with feathers of birds of various colors.
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This is very interesting as being the first picture afforded us of the Hudson River and the aborigines on its banks, who on this occasion came first in contact with the white man. It is easy to imagine the wonder of the Red Men as the "Dolphin" moved over the waters in front of them, propelled as it must have seemed to them by some supernatural agency. They showed by their action that their faith in human nature had not yet been spoiled by any foreign treachery or violence. Verra- zano's narrative goes on : "We passed up this river about half a league when we found it formed a most beautiful lake, three leagues in circuit, upon which were rowing thirty or forty small boats from one shore to the other, filled with multitudes who came to see us." This "beautiful lake" (bellissimo lago) was manifestly the bay of New York.
Verrazano passed the bar and anchored at the entrance of the Nar- rows, the position being defined as between "little steep hills," a phrase which describes with accuracy the heights of Staten Island and the shore of Long Island as far as Yellow Hook, the present Bay Ridge. Then far and wide the spacious harbor was surrounded by well-wooded shores, upon which Verrazano and his followers, manifestly the first European to enter the waters, gazed with admiration. Before them lay the island of Manhattan, clothed in dusky brown, touched here and there with patches of evergreen pine. On the shore the smoke of many wigwams was seen by day and the illumination of blazing fires by night. The situation was pleasing, but it did not offer what Verrazano sought, namely an opening to India. He did not tarry long. "All of a sudden," he writes, "as it is wont to happen to navigators, a violent contrary wind blew in from the sea and forced us to return to our ship, greatly re- gretting to leave this region, which seemed so commodious and delight- ful, and which we supposed must have contained great riches, as the hills showed many indications of minerals." Evidently they had exam- ined at close hand the gneiss and mica-schist of the rocky eminences- the sandstones, shales and limestones, once stratified sedimentary beds but then, as now, upheaved and set on edge and by metamorphism converted into compact crystalline strata-not that Verrazano would see all this significance in it any more than he would foresee the great Baby- lon that a dozen generations later would obliterate the landmarks. A glance at the chart shows that the ship lay in the lower bay in a position perilous to a stranger and that in case of a gale she would be driven upon the shore of either Long Island or Staten Island. Verrazano would not take his ship through the Narrows into the harbor on account of his ignorance of the situation, and when the wind set upon the shore from the sea he at once decided to get out of danger. Accordingly he says: "Weighing anchor we sailed fifty leagues to the east, the coast
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stretching in that direction, and always in sight of it." Thus he coasted along the shore of Long Island, and "discovered an island in triangular form, some ten leagues from the mainland, in size about equal to the island of Rhodes." This was Block Island. All this makes it perfectly clear that Verrazano was the first visitor to New York and that he cor- rectly described the coast.
Hudson in the River-During the century that followed the coast of America had numerous visitors from Europe and there can be very little doubt that the waters around New York carried some of them, but it was not till Hudson's voyage in the first decade of the seventeenth century, that the exploration of the river and land was taken up with a view to settlement. Hudson's voyage bore fruit at once in trading voyages begun in the very next year; in colonizations on the banks of the river within five years after Hudson's detailed description of it was given to the world; and finally in the permanent occupation of the valley. The "Half-Moon" cast anchor in "a great lake of water" on Sep- tember 2, 1609. To the northward were seen high hills, "a very good · land to fall in with, and a pleasant land to see." The hills were the Navesinks, and the lake the Lower Bay. Hudson remained in the vicinity a longer time than Verrazano. He remained in the Lower Bay for about ten days, shifting his position occasionally, sending out boats cautiously to sound the broad expanse of waters and ascertain the chan- nel, and dealing distrustfully with the savages that flocked around his ship. At one time the boat was sent between the Narrows to explore the bay beyond; but it was a fatal mission resulting in the death of Coleman, one of the crew, whether by accident or design, shot through the throat with an arrow. At last, on September 12th, the "Half-Moon" was steered into the opening between the "small, steep hills" which Verrazano had described, and went up two leagues, which, if it were measured exactly from the Narrows, would have brought her about opposite to the Battery. Drifting with the tide as it went up the river and anchoring when it ebbed the next day eleven and a half miles were gained, and anchor was cast not far above Spuyten Duyvil Creek.
We thus find Hudson and The Bronx in juxtaposition and thus Man- hattan and the mainland behind it were opened up almost simultaneously to the world. From the position near the creek a "high point of land" was seen "which shewed out to us bearing north by east five leagues off us," and the Hook Mountain, which towers over the village of Nyack, may thereby be identified. On September 14, a favorable wind was first obtained and it carried the "Half-Moon", thirty-six miles up stream, past the beetling walls of the Palisades, and to the very portals of the Highlands. "The land grew very high and mountainous." Twenty
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