USA > New York > Rockland County > The history of Rockland County > Part 2
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The wind had been sown, it remained for the colonists to reap and the fruit of the harvest was a whirlwind. For a few days the stupefied savages believed they had been attacked by their old enemy, the Mohawks, then a knowledge of their foe came to them and the duplicity of the " Swannekins " was made plain.
The effect was immediate. Eleven heretofore peaceful tribes rose to a man. fell upon the frightened colonists, and showed to them the mercy they had meted out. For a brief space, two months later, the slaughter was stayed through the exertions of De Vries. The tribes near Vriesen- dael, the Tappaens, the Haverstraws and the Hackinsacks, through Oratamin the chief of the latter tribe, agreed to a treaty of peace with Di- rector Kieft on April 22, 1643, and exchanged the customary presents of such occasions. But this treaty was only a hollow truce that gave the In- dians time and opportunity to attend to their harvest. In August the Wappingers seized several traders' boats and killed the crews, and by Sep- tember the war again raged with violence. On all sides arose the smoke of burning buildings. With a dreadful vengeance crops and stocks were destroyed, and the few worn and haggard fugitives that reached the fort, brought tidings of an indiscriminate but very thorough massacre.
Within that fort were confusion, terror and insubordination. Kieft, now that the result of his blunder was seen, cowered beneath the invective heaped upon him and fain would place the blame upon his Council. The Council gave him the lie ; he blamed the settlers, and they, through their dominie, Bogartus, who had opposed the attack, answered by sardonic taunts ; he accused the men who had advised him, and the servants of one of them attempted his assassination.
While chaos reigned within the last refuge of the Dutch, the foe having made a clean sweep of the surrounding country, now stood without the fort and menaced any one of the garrison who dared to appear. Truly the words of Kieft had been fulfilled, the savages "wiped their chops," but not till they had been filled to repletion on the product of the settlers' labors.
At length those within the fort ceased their internecine strife and com- bined in thought and action for their salvation. Successful expeditions against some Long Island and Connecticut tribes broke the spirit of all but the river Indians. The arrival of the vessel, Blue Cock, from Curacoa with one and thirty soldiers, still further encouraged the settlers; and the building of a wall across Manhattan Island at the present Wall Street, per- mitted the safe cultivation of a little soil. The following year, 1645, saw a more universal desire for peace among the Indians ; one after another the tribes concluded treaties with the whites, and finally on August 30, 1645,
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the pipe of peace was smoked and quiet reigned. Sixteen hundred savages had been killed and the power of the Algonquin race forever broken ; but there was not a settlement in all New Netherlands, except Rensselaerswyck and the military post on the Delaware River, that had not been attacked and generally destroyed. Vriesendael, as we have seen, had been saved from spoliation once through the efforts of a friendly Indian, but the passions of anger had been too excited to permit of long continued mercy, and before the close of the war, the establishment of the first settler in this County had perished from the face of the earth.
Among the chiefs from those savage tribes that were represented at Fort Amsterdam on that August day, and who, in the presence of the whole community and the Mohawk ambassadors, entered into an agree- ment of peace, were : Oratamin, sachem of the Hackinsacks; Willem and Sesekemu, chiefs of the Tappaens and Haverstraws ; Maganwetinnemin, who answered for the tribe of Marechkawiecks, of Brooklyn, Nyacks, of Long Island, and their neighbors; and a Mohegan chief, Aepjen, for the Wappings and the Wiquaeskecks, Sintsings and Kichtawanghs, of West- chester. The treaty contained clauses, pledging both Dutch and Indians not to enter upon a war for real or fancied wrongs, without first mutually consulting the Governor of the colony and the Sachems of the tribes; and if any one of either race should be murdered, the slayer should be promptly delivered to justice; the Indians were not to come among the Dutch on Manhattan bearing arms, nor were the whites to go to them with guns, unless having previously warned them of their intention.
The destruction of Vriesendael ended all attempts to colonize this County for a period of six and forty years. Twice had De Vries seen his settlements swept away at their very outset and now-he was ruined. If he, who had always been friendly with the Indians, did not care to take further risk; it is certain that the miserable remnant of the colony would hesitate long before trusting again to the amity of the red men. That remnant remained close to the fort, and a section so wild and forbidding as our County, was left to the prowling of wild beasts or the stealthy tread of the scarcely less wild aborigine.
At different times during those three decades, the Sachems of the tribes inhabiting this territory appeared in New Amsterdam, and either rendered complaints of trespass by the white men upon their rights, or excused the trespass of their followers, confirmed the existing treaty, or acted as mediators for other tribes. Once more, in 1655, while Governor Stuyvesant was away on an expedition against the Swedes on the Dela- ware and New Amsterdam was left defenceless, the Indians became restive
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and desirous of war. In this movement the Tappaens joined, in spite of the wiser councils of their old men, and took part in the brief struggle of that year. Little harm, when compared with other settlements, was done in New Amsterdam ; for one day the savages spread terror through the town, and were only expelled after several of them had been killed; but those outlying boweries, that the long period of quiet had led the more cour- ageous colonists to start on Long and Staten Islands and the Jersey shore, were devastated and many of their occupants killed. The return of Stuy- vesant, however, checked and awed the savages, and a peace was made, which ever after protected the inhabitants of New Amsterdam from Indian invasion.
In the wars with the Esopas tribes from 1660 to 1664, the chieftains of the tribes residing in this County and northern New Jersey, acted as negotiators between the beligerents, and succeeded in obtaining treaties time after time. Oratamin, Sachem of the Hackinsaeks, always appears as the principal Indian figure in these numerous conferences, and was evi- dently regarded by his race as possessing more than ordinary ability. In- deed, if we judge from the trust that the Dutch imposed in him, he was a superior man. It was by his efforts, on more than one occasion, that war was prevented ; and it was due to his influence, when the Esopas savages had dug up the hatchet, that the tribes of Westchester, Rockland and Bergen counties remained neutral ; and, when at length the treaty of May 15, 1664, was made with the Esopas people, a resolution was drawn up and signed by Oratamin and Matteno, in which they pledged themselves as security for the keeping of the covenant, agreeing that they would lead their tribes against whichever party first violated its provisions.
One source of irritation between the white and red men, was the sale of brandy to the Indians. In spite of restricting laws forbidding such bar- ter and the offer of generous rewards for the arrest of the offenders ; in spite of reiterated permission and requests to the Sachems for the seizure of all dealing in this traffic ; and in spite of the severe punishment -banishment from the colony with confiscation of property-meted out to those who were captured, the sale of liquor stiil continued. In exchange for it the savage gave whatever was demanded, and in a short time found him- self stripped and hungry. To such alarming proportions did this nefar- ious trade grow, that whole tribes were impoverished by the crafty trader, who took their wampum, their guns and the skins they had brought to barter, and left them nothing save a remorseful awakening. Liquor at all times aroused the fiercest passions of these wild natures; but when the savage woke robbed as well as suffering, his vindictive disposition led him
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to brood over his injuries till a desire for revenge became dominant, and then, when again mad with drink, to glut his vengeance on the first white he met. In this manner occurred most of the outrages that terminated in the conflicts between the races.
After the experience of two wars, the Dutch were more careful about permitting the Indians to approach the settlements. Hence, when the chief of a Westchester tribe asked permission for his people to fish near Harlem, the request was granted on the condition that the savages should be unarmed ; and, for their protection from the Dutch, as well as the set- tlers' assurance that the fishing party were not Esopas Indians, the chief was given cards with a stamp of the Dutch seal upon them, which were to be shown to the whites whenever demandcd. Four of these cards were for the use of the Haverstraw tribe.
At what period the sale of guns to the lower river tribes began is un- known. So many had been captured in the wars of 1643 and 1655, that there was probably no attempt made to longer continue the restriction. By 1663, the use of firearms among the tribes of this County was general, and no effort was made to conceal them. In one of their conferences with the Dutch, the Indians asked that their muskets might be repaired ; and shortly after, Unsicken, a Tappaen warrior, lost his gun, having pawned it to gratify his fondness for brandy, and then entered a complaint at New Amsterdam against Van Cowenhoven for cheating him.
The disappearance of the native from our soil was gradual and the exact date of his departure, from the land of his fathers from time unknown, is not certain. The last recorded conference between the Tap- paen Indians and the authorities of New York, was on September 13, 1673, and took place to confirm and continue the existing treaty. In 1666 Bal- thazar De Harte purchased land at Haverstraw from the Indians ; in 1671, Claes Jansen purchased a tract of land at Nyack from the Indians; in 1686, the Orangetown patent was purchased from the Tappaen tribe, and in 1694, the Quaspeck, two years later, the Kakiat, and in 1703 the Wa- wayanda patents were obtained from the savages.
So far can we trace the existence of the aboriginal owners of the soil in Rockland County by documentary evidence, and then the record abruptly ceases. " There were traditions among the early farmers, of localities where the remnants of the once powerful tribes lingered, subsisting on what game and fish they could find in the woods and streams they had sold. One of these spots is situated north of Nanuet, and another is in a large tract of swampy, untillable land about two miles west of Tappan. This is described as 'a vast and almost unknown region, patches of forest;
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exist in almost their primeval condition ; huge trees, brought to the earth by the unrelenting and resistless hand of time, lie decayed to a shapeless and pulpy mass. Near the center of this tract, in what is called the Green Woods, and on the shore of what was once an immense beaver pond or lake, is a sandy knoll which is called, in the dialect of the early settlers, the Wilder mons kerk-hoff-the wild man's burying place. It is said that the last remnants of the Tappaens sought this wild, untillable region for a home, and remained for a long time living in the same state as they were accustomed to, and raising corn on patches of land yet pointed out as the Wilder mons Maise Lout.'"
But for more than a century, the Indian has been foreign to our bound- aries and but little trace remains to show that he has been. An occa- sional locality, which tradition has marked as his last dwelling place. A few arrow, spear and axe heads; remains of old fire places, and here and there a lonely grave, are the only visible evidences of his existence. Strange mystery of history ; whence the native came, whither he has gone. Standing very low in the intellectual growth of the human family, contact with civilization did not elevate, it exterminated him. No evi- dence is found to show that religion or culture made the least impression on his life. With little or no belief in a controlling spirit, he was found and he disappeared, making no sign that that belief had become less shadowy.
The construction of his weapons and utensils of stone, which he had roughly chipped into form, was the highest advance he ever reached. From his white neighbor, he learned of and obtained the weapons of civil- ization and by that act forever lost his inventive faculty.
The improvidence and personal uncleanliness of the savage rendered him peculiarly susceptible to the ravages of disease, and his mode of life tended to spread contagion. The deadly plague of small pox found him awaiting its ravages and decimated his people. Never rallying from the staggering blow dealt him in the wars with the whites; he was still more rapidly exterminated by epidemics, and in the ceaseless struggle for exist- ence dropped from the race.
For many years after the natives had disappeared from the County, our shores were visited by up-river Indians on their journeys to the abor- igines living on Long Island. The last visit from them was in compara- tively recent years-after 1817. On this occasion six canoe loads camped for a time under the old willow still standing on Mr. Harmon Snedeker's place at Upper Nyack, and on their return home the same party remained for a week on the point north of the Bight in South Nyack, occupying their time in making and selling baskets.
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Authorities referred to :- Documents relating to the Colonial History, S. N. V., vols. I, II, XIII, XIV. Documentary History S. N. Y. N. V. Historical Society Collections, vol. 1 new series, III second series. Byrant's History U. S. History of New York, by Martha J. Lamb. History of New England, by J. G. Palfrey. ] have been much pleased and instructed by the papers of R. H. Fenton, published in the City and Country.
Relics of Indian life are not rare in this County, and many are still found by skillful searchers. The finest collections I have seen are in the possession of Mrs. Harmon Snedeker, Mrs. Nellie Hart, and the heirs of Mr. E. L. Gedney, of Nyack. With scarcely an exception these relics are of a flinty stone not found in this section of the country, and this has given rise to much specula- tion as to how the Indians obtained the enormous quantities necessary for a hunter's use. We must not forget that other materials were used by the savages. Arrow and spear heads were often made of bones or with the claws of birds of the larger species, while fish hooks were fash- ioned of sharpened fish bones. As these would decay in the course of time, little or no trace of them would come to us.
I am aware that my statement regarding the absolute absence of religious ideas among the Indians at the first arrival of white men, is contrary to generally accepted belief, and have thought it necessary to give my reasons for the statement. The first Dutch visitors among the savages were traders, who themselves were not overburdened by religious convictions, but who were keen observers of savage nature. If these men had scen any indication of a religion among the aborigines, they would have been the first to abuse it for their gain, and in a short time the fact would have been known at New Amsterdam. Absolutely no mention of religious belief is made in a journal of New Netherlands and its inhabitants, written in 1641, 1642, 1643, 1644, 1645 and 1646, but to the contrary, it is stated, that there was none. New York Colonial Ms., vol. I, p. 179. From the narrative of the captivity of Father Isaac Jaques among the Mohawks in 1642, '43, we learn of the same lack of spiritual faith. Vide op. cit. vol. XIII, Appendix A." " They are a people without any religion, or knowledge of any God," wrote Ed- ward Winslow, and the truth of this statement is borne out by both the carly French and English explorers. If we look at the question in another way : Cotton, when preaching to the savages in their own language, could find nothing that would indicate a Supreme Being in that language, and had to use the English word God, and Eliot, in his translation of the Bible into the Indian tongue, was driven to a similar expedient. If we view the subject from still another standpoint, there was found no place for worship, no form of service, no priestly order ; in fact no, if I may use the expression, machinery of religion. With peculiar inconsistency the white race has passed two centuries in exterminating the Indians because they were barbarous savages, and in weaving around their memories a romance that it will now take years to clear away. The Ameri- can savage was about as low as regards habits in the social scale as any people yet discovered, and so little removed from tbe higher creation of beasts in intellect, that it is difficult to separate him from the brute existence.
CHAPTER II.
PATENTS.
VAN WERCKHOVEN APPLIES FOR A PATENT AT TAPPAN-CLAES JANSEN PATENT-PAULSEN AND DOWSE HARMANSE PATENTS-DE HARTE PATENT-ORANGETOWN PATENT-WELCH AND MARSHALL, OR QUAS- PECK PATENT-HONAN AND HAWDON, OR KAKIAT PATENT-EVANS PATENT-WAWAYANDA PATENT-CHEESECOCKS PATENT-LANCAS- TER SYMES PATENT-STONY POINT PATENT-ELLISON AND ROOME PATENT-KEMPE, LAMB AND CROM PATENT-PATENTS FOR LANDS IN RAMAPO-LOCKHART PATENT.
The establishment of feudalities by the Dutch West India Company, in 1629, almost immediately caused trouble. A few of the College of Nineteen were prepared for the passage of that act, and at once acquired enormous tracts of the most valuable land in the colony. Van Rensselaer located his purchase at the head of navigation on the Hudson. Michael Pauw purchased the present Hoboken, Pavonia and Staten Island, while others made haste to obtain vast landed property on the South, now Dela- ware River. These acquirements led less grasping members of the com- pany to object strenuously, and their complaints, combined with the fact that colonization under the proprietorship of the Patroons was not as rapid as expected ; influenced the College, in 1640, to so modify their act in regard to grants, as to permit future purchasers only one mile frontage along a river, with a depth of two miles, while no two tracts of land could be taken on both sides of a navigable stream opposite each other.
From the destruction of Vriesendael, in 1643, no attempt to purchase land in this County was made till 1651. Then Cornelis Van Werckhoven, an ex-Schepen of Utrecht, applied for two pieces of land, one at Neve- sinck, the other at Tappan, stretching northward through the Highlands. Difficulty in regard to the first of these grants occurring with Baron Van der Capellen, who had purchased part of the Nevesinck land just previous to Van Werckhoven, and Governor Stuyvesant having entered a protest against the loose wording of the Tappan grant, which gave an unlimited stretch of boundary to the petitioner; the Directors of the West India Company called attention to the rule in regard to land grants in the fol- lowing words addressed to Stuyvesant. " Your Honor has misunderstood our intention in regard to the colonies of the Honorable Van Werckhoven, whose two grants for colonies your Honor supposes to extend twenty miles in a straight line, or your Honor has not read the exemptions care- fully, for all colonists are not to receive more than four miles on one side of
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a navigable river, or two miles on each side." The difficulty in this case was settled by Van Werckhoven declining to occupy either of these grants. Instead, he took up land at Nyack on Long Island, situated near the present village of Fort Hamilton on Gravesend Bay.
In April, 1659, there sailed from Holland in the ship Beaver, a wheel- wright, Claes . Jansen from Purmerend, with his wife, servant and child. For a time he lived below the present Jersey City, but in 1671, April 16, he obtained from the Duke of York, to whom Charles II had given the proprietorship of this with other provinces, a tract of land "lying on the Hudson River at the north end of Tappan, at a brook, thence northeast- erly along the river 40 chains, thence northwesterly 60 chains to the foot of the mountains, thence south, southwest above the mountains 40 chains, thence south, southeast to the river at the point of the beginning, contain- ing 240 acres. Also another tract lying on the north side of the above, running northerly along the river 80 chains, then west, northwest 50 chains to the top of the mountains, thence south, southwest over the moun- tains 80 chains, thence south, southeast to the river 50 chains, to the place of beginning." This property, covering largely what is now the corporate limits of South Nyack from the Bight to near De Pew's brook, was the first settled tract of land in Rockland County after the departure of De Vries.
Between this date, 1671, and October 20, 1678, two other purchasers, Tunis Paulsen and Harmanus Dows, who had sailed from Friesland with his wife and four children in 1658, by the ship Brownfish, had bought land in the present village of Nyack. The latter owned what is now the busi- ness portion of the village, while the former extended from his north line to Verdrietige Hook. In 1687, Harmanus Dows, or as he was originally called, Dowse Harmanse, added to his property by purchasing 250 acres west of the Nyack hills, bounded as follows : on the east by the land of Claes Jansen and Dowse Harmanse, south by the land of Daniel Clarke & Co., west by the middle of the Hackinsack River, and north by the top of a certain hill called Essawetene. And in 1694, Cornelius Clasen, son of Claes Jansen, makes record : that he had bought from Tunis Paulsen a portion of land in the present Upper Nyack, extending to the top of Ver- drietige Hook, and had inherited from his father the land obtained by the patent of 1671.
On April 10, 1671, Philip Carteret granted to Balthazar De Harte, a tract of land and meadow in Averstraw, bounded on the west by a creek called Menisakeungue-Minisceongo -- on the east and north by Hudson River, on the south by the mountains, estimated to contain about four
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hundred acres. It is claimed that De Harte purchased this tract from the Indians previous to 1666. On December 19, 1685, this patent was con- firmed to Jacobus De Harte, brother of Balthazar, by Governor Thomas Dongan.
Of this first patentee in the present village and township of Haver- straw, Valentine's History of New York gives the following account : " Balthazar De Harte was a wealthy merchant who commenced trade here about 1658. * he was a bachelor but left at his death several illegitimate children in this city for whom he provided liberally out of his large estate. Among other extensive tracts owned by this gentleman was the land called Haverstraw on the Hudson River which he purchased originally from the Indians. He died in 1672. He had three brothers who left numerous descendants."
In 1686, the following patent situated partly in this State and partly in New Jersey, was purchased by a party of sixteen individuals. "Thomas Dongan, Capt, Generall Governor in Cheife, and Vice Admirall in and over the Province of New York and territorys. Depending thereon in America under his most sacred Majesty, James the Second, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scottland, ffrance and Ireland, Defender of the faith, &c., To all whom these Presents shall come, Sendeth Greeting, Whereas it appears to mee that have Lawfully Purchased from the Native Indian Proprietors a certain Tract of Land lying on the west side of Hudsons River in the County of Orange on the north side of Tappan Creek, Bounded as hereafter is Exprest (viz.) beginning at the mouth of Tappan Creek where it falls into the Meadow, and runing from thence along the North side of the said Creek to a Creeple bush, and falls into Hackensack River Northerly to a place called the Green bush, and from thence along said Green bush Easterly to the Land of Claes Janse and Dowe Harmanse, and from thence Southerly along said Land upon the Top of the Hills to aforemenconed mouth of Tappan Creek, where it falls into the meadow aforesaid. And Whereas the said
* * have made Applycacon unto me that I would Grant and Confirme the said Tract of Land unto them, their Heirs and Success- ors, and Erect the same into one Township by Pattent under my Hand & the Seale of the Province. Now Know Ye that I, the said Thomas Dongan, by Virtue of the Power & Authority Derived unto me from his Most Sacred Majesty, and in Pursuance of the Same in Consideracon of the Quitt Rent hereinafter Reserved to his Most Sacred Majesty afore- sd, his Heirs, Successors and Divers of a Good and Lawfull Considera- cons me thereunto moveing, have Given, Granted, Rattified, Released
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