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