30 HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 



minion ; he saith the government and council of Connecticut took 

 notice of this land to be un ler their government, and that they ordered 

 magestratical power to be exercised at West Chester; and that he had 

 license from them to purchase. He pleads that where there is no right 

 there can be no dominion ; so no patent could be granted by the Dutch, 

 they having no right. Several testimonys were read to prove that ye 

 Indians questioned Mr. Cornell's and other plantations there about not 

 paying for these lands, which was the occasion of their cutting them off 

 and driving away the inhabitants ; but the defendant hath payed a 

 valuable consideration to the natives."" 



Here, is a flat denial on the part of Pell, supported by the authorities 

 of New England, that the Dutch had any claim whatever on these 

 lands; although the latter had discovered the country in 1609, and 

 besides had purchased the very territory in question of the Indians, for 

 a valuable consideration in 1640, just fourteen years previous to Pell's 

 conveyance. Take the whole transaction together with the subsequent 

 proceedings, and it looks uncommonly like a collusion between the 

 Xew England authorities and the Indians. Let it be remembered, too, 

 that the latter, who afterwards murdered Mrs. Hutchinson and her 

 family, the Throgmortons, the Cornells, and the Moody's (all refugees 

 from New England persecution, and carried off Mrs. Hutchinson's 

 youngest daughter into captivity,) belonged to a tribe of Mohegan 

 Indians which owned the supreme authority of the Uncas Chief Sachem 

 "who had always been the unscrupulous ally of the English." 



It is a little singular that the permission given by the Dutch authori- 

 ties to Throgmorton to settle himself, with thirty-five English families 

 within twelve miles of Fort Amsterdam, bears the date of 2d of 

 October, 1642, only a few months after Mrs. Hutchinson's settlement 

 on Pelham Neck. There can be no doubt that the Throgmortons and 

 Mrs. Hutchinson, with the Cornells and Moody's, 6 were associated in 

 their plans, all coming, as they did almost simultaneously from New 

 England to New Netherlands — and besides all this the gallant old 

 campaigner, Captain John Underbill, who professed to hold Mrs. 

 Hutchinson's doctrines, had established himself two years prior to this, 

 at Greenwich only a tew miles to the eastward of Vredeland, the former 

 being then under the authority jDf the Dutch. c 



a Alb. Assize Kcc. p. 15. 



/> In 1040. I.udy Deborah Moody a person of noble family and of heroic character, whom 

 Winthrop styled "an anciently religous woman came to Massachusetts." Life of Henry 

 DuDBton by Chapln, p. vi. 



lerhiU blames the Dutch authorities for the massacres of Mrs. Hutchinson, and the 

 Collins rs from the following extract taken from his "Vindication" dated 20th 



of .May 1663. " we have transported ourselves hither at our own cost, and main' ol as have 

 purchased their land, from the Indians, the right owners thereof, iiut a great portion of the 



