THE TOWN 



OF 



IXTim^AT' CASTLE, 



This township is situated ten miles north of the village of White 

 Plains, and distant one hundred and twenty-one miles from Albany; 

 bounded North by Cortlandt, Yorktown and Somers, East by Bedford, 

 South by North Castle, and West by Ossining and Mount Pleasant. 

 New Castle was taken from the older town of North Castle, and set 

 off as a separate or distinct township on the 18th of March, 1791. 



By the Indians it was called Shappequa, or Chappequa; which tradition 

 asserts to mean literally, " The Laurel Swamp" a it might have been, 

 however, a mere corruption of the Algonquin term, " Chapacour." 

 which signifies " a vegetable root." 3 The name still survives in theChap- 

 pequa hills, and has been conferred on a small hamlet in the Southern 

 part of the town. 



The chief aboriginal proprietor of these lands, in 1696, was the Indian 

 Sachem Wampus, whose principal residence is said to have been situ- 

 ated near the pond of that name in the south-west part of the town. An 

 Indian village formerly stood on the Chappequa hills in the rear of the 

 late Abraham Hyatt's residence ; while another settlement was located 

 on the southern bank of Roaring Brook. There is also an Indian bury- 

 ing ground in this locality on the property of the late James Weeks now 

 owned by his grandson, James Hunt ; human bones are occasionally 

 disinterred, here on working the roads, together with Indian pestels or 

 pounders and arrow heads. The late Abraham Hyatt, Esq., well re- 

 membered, when a youth, to have seen seventeen Indians from the 

 Chappequa hills passing the old homestead, near Roaring Brook, in 

 file on their way to Rye or Sawpitts by the sound for salt or " to salt " 



a Testimony of tne late Abraham Hyatt, Esq., of Chappequa, who has always heard this 

 meaning given to the word for eighty years past. There is an extensive laurel swamp on the 

 Hyatt, farm near Roaring Brook. 



b Beverly's Hist, of Virginia, p. 121. 



565 



