ple, as may be inferred from Kregier's account of them. Their chief, in 1663, was known as Long Jacob. Mahak Niminaw sachem in 1682.2 Above the Katskills came the Mechkentowoons of the Mahicans, but with boundary undefined.

6th. The Minnisinks. West of the Esopus country, and inhabiting the Delaware and its tributaries were the Minsis proper of whom a clan more generally known as the Minnisinks held the south-western parts of the present counties of Orange and Ulster, and north-western New Jersey. Van der Donck describes their district as "Minnessinck of 'tLandt van Bacham," and gives them three villages: Schepinaikonck, Meochkonck, and Macharienkonck, the latter in the bend of the Delaware opposite Port Jervis, and preserved perhaps in the name Mahackemeck.3 On Sauthier's map, Minnisink, the capital of the clan, is located some ten miles south of Mahackemeck, in New Jersey. Very little is known of the history of the clan as distinguished from the tribe of which they were part, although the authorities of New York had communication with them, and the missionary, Brainerd, visited them. Tradition gives to them the honor of holding the capital of the tribe in years anterior to the advent of the Europeans. Defrauded and maltreated, they subsequently exacted a terrible compensation for their wrongs. VI. The IROQUOIS.

Ist. The Mohawks. The territory occupied by the Mohawks has already been sufficiently described, as well as that of their associate tribes of the Iroquois confederacy. The Mohawks had no villages immediately upon the Hudson, although they

1" Examined the Squaw prisoner and inquired if she were not acquainted with some Esopus Indians who abode about here? She answered that some Katskill Indians lay on the other side near the Sager's kill, but they would not fight against the Dutch.”—Documentary History, IV, 48.

"Mahak Niminaw shall have, as being sachem of Katskill, two fathoms of duffels and an anker of rum when he comes home."— Deed to Wm. Loveridge.

3 On the east bank of the Neversink river, three miles above Point Jervis, on the farm now or late of Mr. Levi Van Etten, exists an Indian burial ground, the

Their

claimed title to the lands north of the Mohawk river. principal villages or castles, in 1677, were on the north side of the Mohawk, in the present counties of Montgomery and Herkimer, and were: 1. Cahaniaga, or Gandaougue, by the Dutch called Kaghnewage, and more modernly known as Caghnawaga; 2. Gandagaro, or Kanagaro; 3. Canajorha, or Canajoharie, and 4. Tionondogue or Tionnontoguen. The first contained. twenty-four houses; the second, sixteen; the third, sixteen, and the fourth thirty.' Tionondogue was the capital of the tribe. It was destroyed by the French in 1667, and rebuilt about one mile further west. It was again destroyed by the French in 1693, but does not appear to have been rebuilt, as soon after that time Canajoharie is spoken of as the "upper Mohawk castle."2 It was at the latter that Hendrick and his brother Abraham resided, as well as Joseph Brant. The house occupied by the former, and also by the latter, was situated near what is now known as "Indian castle church," in Danube, Herkimer county. Caghnawaga was the scene of early conflict between the Mohawks and the Mahicans; it was destroyed by the French in 1693, and subsequently by the Americans. It was long known as the "lower Mohawk castle," and occupied the site of the present village of Fonda, Montgomery county. Gandagaro passed out of existence with the second French invasion, or at least is lost to the records after 1693. In 1690, a new castle was erected at the mouth of Schoharie creek and called Tiononderoge, after the name of the ancient capital of the tribe, but was more generally known as "the castle of the praying Maquas." It was situated on the site of what was subsequently known as Fort Hunter. Its occupants were called the Schoharie Indians. It was among them that several families of Esopus Indians were settlers in 1756. After the revolution the Mohawks had neither castles nor villages in their ancient territory.

2d. The Oneidas, etc. The Oneidas had, in 1677, one town, "the old Oneida castle," as it was called, containing one

Colonial History, III, 250; Brodhead's New York, 11, 129. Pierron, the Jesuit missionary, it is said, visited every week

seven Mohawk villages, but they are not located.

2 Colonial History, vi, 850.

I

hundred houses; the Onondagas, a palisaded town of one hundred and forty houses, and a village of twenty-four houses; 1 the Cayugas three towns, and the Senecas four.2

The capital of the confederacy was the village of Onondaga, on the lake of that name, the principal settlement of the Onondagas. Bishop Cammerhof, who visited it in 1751, says, Onondaga, the chief town of the six nations, situated in a very pleasant and fruitful country, and consisting of five small towns and villages, through which the river Zinochsaa In the Relations of the Jesuit missionaries it is said: "The word Onnota, which signifies in the Iroquois tongue, a mountain, has given the name to the village called Onnontaé, or as others call it, Onnontagué, because it is on a mountain; and the people who inhabit it consequently style themselves Onnontaé-ronnons, or Onnontagué-ronnons."

CHAPTER V.

THE INDIANS UNDER THE DUTCH THE MANHATTAN WARS FROM THE DISCOVERY TO THE PEACE OF 1645.

ROM the first hour of Hudson's appearance in the waters of the Mahicanituk, to the last of the domination of Holland, there was an antagonism between the Dutch and the Indians with whom they came in contact in the vicinity of Manhattan island, and a conflict which was apparently irrepressible. While in the territory of the Mahicans proper Hudson met "loving men," in that of the Wappingers and the Minsis, he dyed the waters of the river which he had discovered with the blood of those who were encouraged by his overtures to a violation of laws to which they were strangers, and his exit was amid the terrifying war-cries of a people enraged by the slaughter of kindred, and clouds darkened by their quivering arrows.'

Subsequent events in no degree mitigated the hostility which was then awakened. When the traders followed Hudson they paused not until they had reached the jurisdiction of those with whom his intercourse had been friendly. There they maintained kindly relations with the Indians, and around their trading posts, Fort Nassau, and subsequently Fort Orange,2 hed neutral ground between the contending Mahicans and Mohawks.3 But this alliance of friendship did not relieve the Dutch from apprehended attacks on the part of those whom Hudson had

Hudson's Journal; ante, p. 11.

The first, or Fort Nassau, was erected on what was called Castle island, now known as Boyd's island, a short distance below the Albany ferry. It was a building twenty-six feet wide and thirty-six feet long, enclosed by a stockade fifty-eight feet square, and the whole surrounded by a moat eighteen feet wide. Its armament consisted of two large guns and eleven swivels, and the garrison of ten or twelve men. The location proved

unfortunate, in consequence of the exposure to the spring freshets, and in 1618 it was removed to the banks of the Tawalsontha creek, now called the Norman's kill, from whence it was soon after removed further north and located in the

vicinity of what is now South Broadway, Albany, and called Fort Orange, by which name, and that of Beaverwyck, the small settlement which gathered around it, it was known until 1664.

3 Ante, p. 54.

offended, and it was deemed prudent to erect a fort on what was then known as Prince's island, and to garrison it with sixteen men for the defense of the river below.'

2

Contemporaneous circumstances contributed to keep alive this feeling. One Jacob Eelkins, who had been in superintendence of the trade at Fort Nassau, in the summer of 1622 ascended the Connecticut to traffic, and while there treacherously imprisoned the chief of the Sequins on board his yacht, and would not release him until a ransom of one hundred and forty fathoms of wampum had been exacted. The offense was resented by all the tribes, and by none more so than by the Mahicans. To appease them, Eelkins was discharged, and apparently in further overture to them, Krieckbeck, the Dutch commander at Fort Orange, in 1626, joined them, with six men, on a hostile expedition against the Mohawks.3

Other causes of grievance were not wanting. The sale of fire-arms to the Mahicans and Mohawks at Fort Orange and the refusal to sell to the chieftaincies in the vicinity of Fort Amsterdam was a constant irritation, to allay which the Dutch traders treated the Indians at the latter place with great familiarity, invited them to their houses, admitted them to their tables, and gave them wine, until they came to regard such civilities as their due and to resent their absence. Then the cattle of the Dutch roamed at large, "without a herdsman," 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

1 Wassenaar, Documentary History, III, 35. The location of this fort has never been positively ascertained.

Wassenaar, Documentary History, III, 45; Brodhead, 1, 146, 168.

3 Brodhead, 1, 168. The expedition

was not successful. Krieckbeck and three of his men were killed, and the Mahicans put to flight. The Mohawks did not resent the alliance further than to roast and eat one of the Dutch soldiers, a man named Tyman Bouwensen; but Minuit deemed it prudent, during the continuance of hostilities, to remove the Dutch families to Fort Amsterdam, and to direct the garrison at Fort Orange to

observe strict neutrality in the future.

Precisely to what extent the Indians in the vicinity of Fort Amsterdam were supplied with arms in 1643, does not appear. It is said by the Eight Men, in October of that year: "These Indians are, on the contrary, strong and mighty; have, one with the other, made alliances with seven different tribes, well supplied with guns, powder and ball." (Colonial History, 1, 190); yet there is not a single case of the use of fire arms by the Indians recorded. Even in their most desperate defenses bows and arrows are alone spoken of as their weapons.