[Edward Manning Ruttenber (1872)] vantage of the country and its people," had not attempted to enforce redress.1 Granting that the offenses recited had been committed, they only prove that they were in retaliation for outrages inflicted on the Indians, for the testimony in all simi lar cases is that the latter were not wanton murderers.2 The wrongs which they suffered found no fitting record at the hands of the Dutch, but their acts of retaliation were detailed with horror, and were exceeded, when opportunity offered, in the cold-blooded vengeance which was inflicted upon them. Hostilities were not long delayed. A squaw, detected in stealing peaches from the garden of Hendrick Van Dyck, at New Amsterdam, had been killed by him, and her family deter mined to avenge her death. Availing themselves of the or ganization of a war party of Wappingers, then about to make descent upon some neighboring tribe, they prevailed upon them to storf at New Amsterdam, and aid them in enforcing the "blood atonement," which their laws demanded. On the morning of the fifteenth of September, 1655, " sixty-four canoes full of Indians," were beached on the shore, and, " before scarcely any one had yet risen," their occupants, " five hundred men, all armed," 3 scattered themselves throughout the town, and, "under the pretense of looking for northern Indians," entered dwellings by force and " searched the premises" with more than the zeal of modern officers in quest of fugitives.