56 Staten Island Association of Arts and Sciences 



. . . saw nothing but firing, and heard the shrieks of the In- 

 dians murdered in their sleep. 



" I returned to the house (again) by the fire. Having sat there 

 a while, there came an Indian with his squaw whom I knew well, 

 and who lived about an hour's walk from my house, and told me 

 that they two had fled in a small skiff, . . . that the Indians 

 from Fort Orange had surprised them, and that they had come 

 to conceal themselves in the fort. I told them they must go 

 away immediately, that there was no occasion for them to come 

 to the fort to conceal themselves ; that they who had killed their 

 people were not Indians but the Swannekens as they called the 

 Dutch. They then asked me how they could get out of the 

 fort. I took them to the door, and there was no sentry there, 

 and so they betook themselves to the woods. When it was day 

 the soldiers returned to the fort, having massacred or murdered 

 eighty Indians, and considering they had done a deed of Roman 

 valor, in murdering so many in their sleep : where infants were 

 torn from their mother's breasts, and hacked to pieces in the 

 presence of their parents, and the pieces thrown into the fire and 

 into the water, and other sucklings were bound to small boards, 

 and then cut, struck, and pierced, and miserably massacred in 

 a manner to move a heart of stone. Some were thrown into the 

 river, and when the fathers and mothers endeavoured to save 

 them, the soldiers would not let them come on land but made 

 both parents and children drown — children from five to six years 

 of age, and also some decrepit persons. Many fled from the 

 scene, and concealed themselves in the neighboring sedge, and 

 when it was morning came out to beg a piece of bread and to 

 warm themselves ; but they were murdered in cold blood and 

 tossed into the water. Some came by our lands in the country with 

 their hands, some with legs cut off, and some holding their entrails 

 in their arms, and others had such horrible cuts and gashes that 

 worse than they were could never happen. And these poor 

 simple creatures, as also many of our own people did not know 

 any better than that they had been attacked by a party of other 



