History of Westchester County, New York, Volume 1. Frederic Shonnard
beads, axes, hoes, stockings, and other articles, and made them understand that he would return home and come again to see them, bring them more presents, and stay with them awhile, but should want a little land to sow some seeds, in order to raise herbs to put in their broth. . . . They rejoiced much at seeing each other again, but the whites laughed at them, seeing that they knew not the use of the axes, hoes, and the like they had given them, they having had those hanging to their breasts as ornaments, and the stockings t hoy had made use of as tobacco pouches. The whites now put handles or helves in the former, and cut trees down before their eyes, and dug the ground, and showed them the use of the stockings. Here a general laughter ensued among the Indians, that they had remained for so long a time ignorant of the use of so valuable implements, and had borne with the weight of such heavy metal hanging to their necks for such a length of time. . . . Familiarity daily increasing between them and the whites, the latter now proposed to stay with them, asking for only so much land as the hide of a bullock would cover or encompass, which hide was brought forward and spread on the ground before them. That they readily granted this request; whereupon the whites took a knife and beginning at one place on this hide cut it up into a rope not thicker than the finger of a little child, so that by the time the hide 1 was cut up there was a great heap; that this rope was drawn out to a great distance and then brought round again, so that the ends might meet; that they carefully avoided its breaking, and that upon the whole it encompassed a large piece of land; that they were surprised at the superior wit of the whites, but did not wish to contend with them about a little land, as they had enough; that they and the whites lived for a long time contentedly together, although the whites asked from time to time more land of them, and proceeding higher up the Mohicanituk they believed they would soon want the whole country."
The first purchase of Indian lands in what is now New York State was that of Manhattan Island, which was announced in a letter dated November 5, 1626, from P. Schaghen, the member of the States-General of Holland attending the "Assembly of the XIX." of the West India Company, to his colleagues in The Hague. This letter conveyed the information that a ship had arrived the day before bringing news from the new settlement, and that "They have bought the island Manhattes from the wild men for the value of sixty guilders " – $24 of our money. The acquisition of title to the site of what has become the second commercial entrepot of the world for so ridiculous a sum — which, moreover, was paid not in money but in goods — is a familiar theme for moralizing and didactic writers. Yet there can be no question that the value given the savages reasonably corresponded to honorable standards of equivalent recompense. The particular land with which they parted had to them no more worth than an equal area of the water of the river or the bay, except in the elementary regard that it was land, where man can abide, and not water, where he cannot abide; while to the Dutch the sole worth lay in the chance of its ultimate development. On the other hand, the value received by the settlers was an eminently substantial one, consisting of possessions having a practical economic utility beyond anything known to their previous existence. " A metal kettle, a spear, a knife, a hatchet, transformed the whole life of a savage. A blanket was to him a whole wardrobe." Moreover, the moral phases of such a bargain cannot fairly be scrutinized by any fixed conception of the relative values involved. It was purely a bargain of friendly exchange for mutual convenience and welfare. The Indians did not understand, and could not have been expected to understand, that it meant a formal and everlasting alienation of their lands; on the other hand, they deemed that they were covenanting merely to admit the whites peaceably to rights of joint occupancy. The amount of consideration paid by the latter has no relevancy to the merits of the transaction, which was honorable to both parties, resting, so far as the Dutch were concerned, upon the principle of purchase and recompense instead of seizure and spoliation, and, on the part of the Indians, upon the basis of amicable instead of hostile disposition.
The principle of reciprocal exchange established in the purchase of Manhattan Island was adhered to in all the progressive advances made by the whites northward. Westchester County was never a squatter's paradise. Its lands were not grabbed by inrushing adventurers upon the Oklahoma plan. De facto occupancy did not constitute a sufficient title to ownership on the part of the white settlers. Landed proprietorship was uniformly founded upon deeds of purchase from the original Indian owners. The rivalries between the Dutch and English, culminating in the overthrow of the former by conquest, were largely occasioned by antagonistic claims to identical strips of land — claims supported on both sides by Indian deeds of sale.
But the right to buy land from the Indians was not a. necessary natural right inhering in any white settler. The government, upon the well-known principle of the supreme right of discovery, assumed a fundamental authority in the disposal of lands, and hence arose the numerous land grants and land patents to specified persons, which were based, however, under both Dutch and English law, upon previous extinguishment of the Indian title by deeds of sale. It is well here to more clearly understand the principles underlying this governmental assumption. They have been thus stated:
Upon the discovery of this continent the great nations of Europe, eager to appropriate as much of it as possible, and conceiving that the character and religion of its inhabitants afforded an apology for considering them as a people over whom the superior genius of Europe might claim an ascendancy, adopted, as by common consent, this principle:
That discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or under whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession. Hence if the country he discovered and possessed by emigrants of an existing and acknowledged government, the possession is deemed taken for the nation, and title must he derived from the sovereign in whom the power to dispose of vacant territory is vested by law.
Resulting from this principle was that of the sole right of the discoverer to acquire the soil from the natives and establish settlements, either by purchase or by conquest. Hence also the exclusive right cannot exist in government and at the same time in private individuals; and hence also
The natives were recognized as rightful occupants, but their power to dispose of the soil at their own will to whomsoever they pleased was denied by the original fundamental principle that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it.
The ultimate dominion was asserted, and. as a consequence, a power to grant the soil while yet in the possession of the natives. Hence such dominion was incompatible with an absolute and complete title in the Indians. Consequently they had no right to sell to any other than the government of the first discoverer, nor to private citizens without the sanction of that government. Hence the Indians were to be considered mere occupants to be protected indeed while in peaceable possession of their lands, but with an incapacity of transferring the absolute title to others.
In many of the old Indian title deeds various conditional clauses appear, the savages reserving to themselves certain special rights. For example, it was at times specified that they should retain the whitewood trees, from which they constructed their "dugout" canoes. They always remained on (he lands after sale, continuing their former habits of life until forced by the steady extension of white settlement to fall back farther into the wilderness. Having no conception of the principles of civilized law, and no idea of the binding effect of contracts, they seldom realized that the mere act of signing over their lands to the whites was a necessarily permanent release of them. They were incapable of comprehending any other idea of ownership than actual physical possession, and in cases where lands were not occupied promptly after sale they assumed that no change had transpired, and thus frequently the same territory would be formally sold two or three times over. Besides, they considered that it was their natural right at all times to forcibly seize lands that had been sold, expel the settlers, and then resell them. The boundaries of sub-tribal jurisdiction were necessarily indefinite, and consequently deeds of sale by the Indians of one locality would frequently cover portions of lands conveyed by those of another, which led to much confusion.
The military power of the Indians of Westchester County was destroyed forever as a result of the war of 1643-45 with the Dutch. But it was not until after the close of the seventeenth century that the last vestiges of their legal ownership of lands in the county disappeared. In succeeding chapters