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History of Westchester County, New York — Passage 59 (part 3)

Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900) 227 words View original →

[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] At all events, a very large part of Westchester County was embraced in the sale, the recompense given to the Indians consisting of " six fathom cloth for jackets, six fathom seawant [wampum], six kettles, six axes, six addices, ten knives, ten harrow-teeth, ten corals or beads, ten bells, one gun, two lbs. lead, two lbs. powder, and two cloth coats." The English of Connecticut, on the other hand, do not seem to have attached any peculiar political value to Indian land purchases. There is no record of any purchase of Indian lands extending into Westchester County on the part of the government of Connecticut. The authorities of that colony were evidently satisfied to leave the westward extension of English possessions to the individual enter-prise of the settlers, meantime holding themselves in readiness to support such enterprise by their sanction, and regarding all the land occupied by their advancing people as English soil, without refer-ence to the counterclaims of the Dutch. The purchase made by Xathaniel Turner, lor the citizens of New Haven, in L640, of territory reaching considerably to the west of the present eastern boundary of our county, was confirmed to the inhab-itants of Stamford on August 1 1, l<;r>r>, by the Indian chief Ponus and Onox, his eldest son. The tract bought in L640 ran to a distance sixteen miles north of the Sound.