262 HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 



two years stationed at New Amsterdam, to proceed with a force of eighty 

 men against the Weckquaskecks, to execute summary vengeance upon 

 that tribe, with fire and sword." 



To ensure complete success, the expedition was placed under the di 

 rection of a trusty guide, who professed to be intimately acquainted with 

 the homes and haunts of the. savages. This party started in the fore 

 part of March, and pushed actively forward towards the Indian village; 

 but fortune favored the red man. The night set in clouded and dark ; 

 and when the expedition reached Armeperahin, a Van Dyck called a 

 halt, notwithstanding the entreaties of his men to push on, ere the 

 savages should have warning of their approach. An hour and a half 

 was thus lost ; the guide then missed his way, whereupon Van Dyck lost 

 temper, and made a retrograde movement to Fort Amsterdam, whither 

 he returned without having accomplished the object for which he had 

 been detailed. The expedition, however, was not without its effect. 

 The Indians had observed, by the trail of the white men, how narrowly 

 they had escaped destruction ; and therefore immediately sued for peace, 

 which Cornelis van Tienhoven concluded with them, in the course of 

 the spring" of 1642, "at the house of a settler named Jonas Bronk, 

 who resided on a river to which he gave his name, situated east of 

 Yonkers, in the present county of Westchester." 



One of the conditions of the above treaty was the surrender of the 

 murderer of Clas Smits, dead or alive ; a condition however which was 

 never fulfilled, owing either to unwillingness or inability on the part of 

 the Indians." 6 



"Feb. 7th, 1642, winter came; and while the earth was yet burried 

 in snow, a party of armed Mohawks, some eighty or ninety in number, 

 made a descent upon the Weckquaskecks and Tappaen Indians, for the 

 purpose of levying tribute." 



" At the approach of these formidable warriors of a braver Huron 

 race, the more numerous but cowering Algonquins crowded together in 

 despair, begging assistance of the Dutch. Kieft seized the moment for 

 an exterminating massacre. In vain was it fortold that the ruin would 

 light upon the Dutch themselves. In the stillness of a dark winter's 

 night, the soldiers at the fort, joined by freebooters from Dutch priva- 

 teers, and led by a guide who knew every by-path and nook where the 



a Armeperahin, supposed to be the west branch of the Sprain river, which flows in the rear 

 of Dobb'a Perry. 



b O'Callaghan's Hist N. N. p. 249, 50. 



c O'Callaghan's Hist. N. N. p. 264.—" I have been told," says Coldon, " by old men in New 

 England, who n member the time when the Mohawks made war on their Indians, that as soon 

 as a single MohawS was discovered in the country, these Indians raised a cry from hill to hill, 

 ' A Mohawk ! a Mohawk !' upon which they all fled like sheep before wolves, without attempt- 

 ing to make the least resistance, whatever odds were on their side," &c. — Colden's Mint. Five 

 Hatiuns, 3, 4. 



