In the stillness of a dark winter's night, the soldiers at the fort, joined by freebooters from Dutch privateers, and led by a guide who knew every by-path and nook where the savages nestled, crossed the Hudson," (into Pavonia, New Jersey, whither the unsuspecting Weckquaskecks and Tappaens had fled from Manhattan,) " for the purpose of destruction. The naked and unsuspecting tribes could offer little resistance : the noise of musketry mingled with the yell of the victims. Nearly a hundred

« O'Callaghan's Hist. N. N. p. 249, 50. b O'Callaghan's Hist. N. N. p. 264.

COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 169

perished in the carnage. Day break did not end its horrors ; men might be seen, mangled and helpless, suffering from cold and hunger; children were tossed into the stream, and as their parents plunged to their rescue, the soldiers prevented their landing, that both child and parent might drown. "^ Beside these thirty more were murdered at Corlaers Hook on Manhattan Island while sunk in repose.

"This unjustifiable outrage led to consequences ulmost fatal to the Dutch. It estranged the Long Island Indians, the wannest of their friends, who now formed an alliance with the River Indians, whose hate knew no bounds when they discovered that it was the Dutch, and not the Mohawks, v/ho had attacked them at Pavonia and Corlaers Hook. The tomahawk, the fire-brandj and scalping knife, were clutched with all the ferocity of phrensy, and the war-whoop rang from the Raritan to the Connecticut, for eleven tribes of savages proclaimed open war against the Dutch. Every settler on whom they laid hands was murdered -- women and children dragged into captivity ; and though the settlements around Fort Amsterdam extended, at this period, thirty English miles to the east, and twenty-one to the north and south, the enemy burned the dwellings, desolated the farms and form-houses, killed the cattle, destroyed the crops of grain, hay, and tobacco, laid waste the country all around, and drove the settlers, panicstricken, into Fort Amsterdam. ' Mine eyes saw the flames of their towns,' says Roger Williams, 'the frights and hurries of men, women and children, and the present removal of all that could to Holland.'^ The assassins, says Bancroft, were compelled to desire a peace, which was covenanted with the River Indians the 22cl of April, 164.3.