I have been unable to locate the text of the April 19, 1640 land grant
to the Dutch by local Native Americans of lands that included much of
today's Pelham Bay Park and lower Westchester County.  I have failed
despite efforts including a review of many of Dr. Charles T. Gehring's
monumentally significant translations.  I am hoping that a member of the
list may have seen the text of the land grant and may recall where,
assuming it exists. 
 
In 1640, officials of New Amsterdam were engaged in efforts to acquire
from local Native Americans lands north of what we know today as
Manhattan. Though the circumstances surrounding such acquisitions were
quite complex, one reason for the purchases was to slow the westward
expansion of English settlements inexorably from the northeast toward
Manhattan. 

According to E. B. O'Callaghan, a 19th century scholar of the Dutch
history of New York and, particularly, the history of New Amsterdam:

"Cornelis van Tienhoven, secretary of the province, was dispatched early
in the spring [of 1640] to the 'Archipelago,' to purchase that group of
islands, which lay at the mouth of the Norwalk River, 'and all the
adjoining lands, and to erect thereon the standard and arms of the High
and Mighty Lords the States General; to take the savages under our
protection, and to prevent effectually any other nation encroaching on
our limits, or making incursions on our land and territory.'"

Source: O'Callaghan, E.B., History of New Netherland; or, New York Under
the Dutch, Vol. I, pp. 214-15 (2d Ed., D. Appleton & Co. 1855).

O'Callaghan further indicates that this land acquisition took place on
April 19, 1640. Id. 

The area encompassed by this acquisition is generally believed to have
extended from today's Hell Gate to Norwalk and to have included today's
Town of Pelham. There long has been dispute over whether the Dutch
actually -- or adequately -- compensated the Native Americans for the
purchase. Many historians have suggested that among the many complex
causes that may have played a role in the Native American massacre of
Anne Hutchinson and members of her family was a failure by the Dutch to
compensate the Native Americans for the lands on which Hutchinson
settled. 
 
I have seen countless other references to this land grant, but have yet
to see its text.  Can anyone help?
 
Blake A. Bell
Town Historian, Pelham, NY