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."*5 The name still survives in the Chappequa 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 situated 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 burying 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 remembered, 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 the late Abraham Hyatt, Esq., of Chappoona, who ha* alwavs hoard this meaning given to the word for eighty years past. There Is an extensive laurel swamp on the Hyatt farm near Roaring Brook.