2 HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 



sagamore of Roatan, and whose jealous eye guarded the territory and 

 fishing grounds, away out to the waters of the babbling Rowalton (Five 

 Mile River). 



On the north of these sea-washed domains lay the more extended 

 realms of Ponus. From his ancestors he had received the wooded 

 hills and brook-washed vales that stretch far away to the north until 

 they are lost in the forests, even among the Mohawk tribes, which even 

 the red men did not claim — a wild border ground between the eastern 

 and western tribes, and he hoped to hand them all over to his idol, 

 Powahag, the bright-faced son of his first born Onox. But the old 

 patriarch of his wasting tribe, saw his warriors fade and perish as if 

 touched with the power of his own decay, and he yielded gracefully to 

 the stern necessity. He lived, as we shall see presently, to sign with his 

 own hand the deed which forever alienated from himself and heirs, "all 

 the uplands, meadows, and grass, with the rivers, and trees," that had 

 once been his rejoicing and his pride.* 



Upon the ist of July, 1640, Nathaniel Turner, agent, in behalf of the 

 people of Quinipiacke (New Haven), "bought of Ponus, sagamore of 

 Toquams, and of Wascussue, sagamore of Shippan (the other Indians 

 consenting thereto), all the ground belonging to the said sagamores, 

 except a piece of ground which Ponus reserved for himself and the 

 other Indians to plant upon." This purchase embraced all the land 

 sixteen miles north of the Sound. The Indian name of the tract was 

 Rippowams.f 



"The consideration was twelve coats, twelve hoes, twelve hatchets, 

 •twelve glasses, twelve knives, two kettles, and five fathoms of white 

 wampum." The liberty of hunting and fishing on the land was reserved 

 by the Indians. J The above sale was confirmed to the inhabitants of 

 Stamford on the nth of August, 1655, by Ponus, and Onox his eldest 

 son: "extending sixteen miles north of the town plot of Stamford and 

 two miles still further north for the pasture of their cattle ; also eight 

 miles east and west, (the same as paid for before); and as a further 

 recompense, four coats of English cloth was given them.§ This grant, 

 which embraced nearly the whole township of Bedford, "was offered by 

 the New Haven Colony (the same year) to a company of dissatisfied 

 men at Weathersfield, Conn., who, looking about for a new home; but 



•Huntington, Hist, of Stamford, p. 102-3. 



tOn the 30th of October, 1640, Mr. Andrew Ward and Mr. Robert Coe, on behalf of them- 

 selves and twenty other planters, purchased Rippowains of New Haven, for £33 sterling. 

 Lambert's History of New Haven, 176. 



tLambert's History of New Haven. 



§Huntington's Hist, of Stamford. 



