History of Westchester County, New York, Volume 1. Frederic Shonnard
County, they performed highly valuable services, culminating in their memorable fight, August 31, 1778, at Cortlandt's Ridge, in the Town of Yonkers, where, according to the British commander, they lost "near forty killed or desperately wounded," about half their number. In this light they first attacked the British from behind the fences, and then fell back among the rocks, where for some time they defied all efforts made to dislodge Them. They were charged by an overwhelming force of cavalry, but as the horses rode them down "the Indians seized the legs of their foes and dragged them from their saddles." Their chief, Nimham, king of the Wappingers, finally counseled his followers to save themselves, adding, however, " As for myself, I am an aged tree; I will die here." When ridden down by Simcoe he wounded that officer and was about to pull him from his saddle when shot dead by an orderly.
In 1780 the surviving remnant of the Mohican warriors, some twenty men, were honorably discharged from the army, and returned to their homes. It was upon this occasion that Washington wrote the letter above alluded to. which was a communication to congress, requesting that suitable measures be Taken to provide them with necessary clothing.
With the close of the Revolution the history of the Mohicans as a people ends completely, and even their name vanishes. From that time they are known no longer as Mohicans, but as " Stockbridge Indians," from the name of a town in central New York, to which they removed. Leaving their ancient seats at the headwaters of the Hudson, they settled in 1783-88 near the Oneidas. They received a tract of land six miles square in Augusta (Oneida County) and Stockbridge (Madison County ) . This tract they subsequently ceded to white purchasers by twelve different treaties, executed in the years 1818, 1822, 1823, 1825, 1826, 1827, 1829, and 1830. Some of them removed in 1818 to the banks of the White River, in Indiana, and a large number, in 1821, to lands on the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers, in Wisconsin, which, with other New York Indians, they had bought from the Menominees and Winnebagoes. The Stockbridge tribe numbered 120 souls in 1785 and 438 in 1818.
Physically the Indians of Westchester County, as of this entire portion of the country, were remarkable specimens of manhood, capable of marvelous feats of endurance and free from most of the diseases incident to civilized society. The early European writers testify without exception that there were none among them afflicted with bodily deformities. The women delivered their young with singular ease, and immediately after labor were able to resume the ordinary duties of life. The appearance and general physical characteristics of the Indians are thus described by Van der Donck:
They are well shaped and strong, having pitch-black and lank hair, as coarse as a horse's tail, broad shoulders, small waist, brown eyes, and snow-white teeth; they are of a sallow color, abstemious in food and drink. Water satisfies their thirst; flesh meat and fish are prepared alike. They observe no set time for meals. Whenever hunger demands the time for eating arrives. Whilst hunting they live some days on roasted corn carried about the person in a bag. . . . Their clothing is most sumptuous. The women ornament themselves more than the men. And although the winters are very severe, they go naked until their thirteenth year; the lower parts of the girls' bodies alone are covered. All wear around the waist a girdle made of seawant (shells). They bedeck themselves with hair tied with small bands. The hair is of a scarlet color and surpassing brilliancy, which is permanent and ineffaceable by rain. The women wear a petticoat down midway the legs, very richly ornamented with seawant. They also wrap the naked body in a deerskin, the tips of which swing with their points. . . . Both go for the most part bareheaded. . Around the neck and arms they wear bracelets of seawant, and some around the waist. Moccasins are made of elk hides. . . . The men paint their faces of many colors. The women lay on a black spot only here and there. . . . Both are uncommonly faithful.
Although their society was upon the monogamous plan, and none of the common people took more than one wife, it was not forbidden the chiefs to follow their inclinations in this respect. " Great and powerful chiefs," says Van der Donck, " frequently have two, three, or four wives, of the neatest and handsomest of women, who live together without variance." As the life of the Indian was spent in constant struggle against most severe conditions of existence, sensuality was quite foreign to his nature. This is powerfully illustrated by the almost uniformly respectful treatment accorded female prisoners of war. As a victor the North American Indian was entirely merciless and cruel. His adult male captives were nearly always doomed to death, and if not slain immediately after the battle were reserved for slow torture. But the women who fell into his hands were seldom violated. Such forbearance was of course dictated in no way by sentiment. The women, in common with the young children, were regarded by the conquerors merely as accessions to their numbers. Unchastity was an exceptionally rare thing among the married females; and in no other particular do the different accounts of the natives given by the earliest observers agree more markedly than in the statement that both the women and the girls were peculiarly modest in their demeanor. The Dutch farmers occasionally took Indian women for their wives, refusing to abandon them for females of their own country.
One of the most curious domestic institutions of the Indians of this region was the sweating bath, " made," says Van der Donck, " of earth and lined with clay." " A small door serves as an entrance. The patient creeps in, seats himself down, and places heated stones around the sides. Whenever he hath sweated a certain time, he immerses himself suddenly in cold water; from which he derives great security from all sorts of sickness." Of medical science they knew T nothing, except how to cure wounds and hurts. They used for many purposes an oil extracted from the beaver, which also was considered by the Dutch to possess great virtues. Upon the " medicine man, " who was supposed to effect cures by supernatural powers, their reliance in the more serious cases of sickness was mainly placed.
Inured to abstemiousness by the rigors of his lot and but little disposed to sexual gratification, the Indian yet fell an easy victim, and speedily became an abject slave, to strong drink. It was not the taste but the stimulating properties of the white man's rum which enthralled him. Hudson relates that when he first offered the intoxicating cup to his Indian visitors while at anchor in New York Bay, they one and all refused it after smelling the liquor and touching their lips to it. But finally one of their number, fearing that offense might be taken at their rejection of it, made bold to swallow it, and experienced great exhilaration of spirits in consequence, which led his companions to follow his example, with like pleasing effects. Robert Juet, the mate of the " Half Moon,'' gravely says in his journal: " Our master and his mate determined to try some of the cheefe men of the country, whether they had any treachery in them. So they took them down into the cabin, and gave them so much wine and aquae vitae that they were all very merie." Rum, or rather distilled liquor of every kind, soon came to be valued by the savages above every other article ili.it they obtained from the whites, and it played a very important part both in promoting intercourse and in hastening their destruction. A chief of the Six Nations, in a speech delivered before the commissioners of the United States at Fort Stanwix, in 1788, said: "The avidity of the white people for land and the thirst of the Indians for spirituous liquors were equally insatiable; that the white men had seen and fixed their eyes upon the Indian's good land, and the Indians had seen and fixed their eyes on the white man's keg of rum. And nothing could divert either of them from their desired object; and therefore there was no remedy but that the while men must have the land and the Indians the keg of rum."
The Indian character has always been a matter of the most varied accounts and estimates. While there is no room for disagreement or misunderstanding about its more prominent separate traits, views of it in its general aspect are extremely divergent, and extensive as is the literature bearing upon this subject there exists no single presentation of the Indian character in its proportions, at least from a familiar pen, that entirely rills and satisfies the mind. Longfellow's " Hiawatha " and Cooper's Indian actions bring out the romantic and heroic phases; but no powerful conception of the Indian type, except in the department of song and story, has yet been given to literature.
There is one safe starting point, and only one, for a correctly balanced estimate of the Indian. He was essentially a physical being. Believing both in a supreme good deity and an evil spirit, and also in an existence after death, religion was not, however, a predominating factor and influence in his life and institutions. In this respect he differed from most aboriginal and peculiar types. Of a stolid, stoical, and phlegmatic nature, possessing little imagination,