Pell, ambassador of Oliver Cromwell to the Swiss Cantons.' In 1691 the name of John Pell is found on the list of membersreturned by the sherifi" to represent the county ot Westchester, New Y'ork.-

The territory now within the limits of the town of Pelham was claimed both by the Dutch of New Amsterdam and the colony of Connecticut. There can be no doubt that the Dutch were the first to discover and settle upon the island of Manhattan and the territory between the North and East Rivers. Both professed to have purchiised their title from the Indians. But we know what that meant in those days. The whites took what they wanted and paid the Indians what they pleased. All transactions were with the chiefs, and the chiefs were not usually in a condition, when the land was bought, to look out very carefully for their side of the bargain. So it hap-

' Vaughan's " Protectorate of Cromwell.'' - Smith's " Hist, of New Yorlj," p. 72.

HISTOHyr OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

pened that afterwards, when the Indians came to be dis2)ossessed of all their favorite resorts upon the shore, and driven back by the tide of white immigration into the interior, and when they found, moreover, that they had received no just equivalent for their homes and hunting and fishing-grounds, there was trouble along the whole line. In all the Indian Avars in which the aborigines were involved with the Puritans, the Dutch, aud the Virginians, and which cost thousands of lives and an untold amount of suffering on both sides, it may fairly be doubted whether the Indians were in a single instance the aggressors. The Quakers of Pennsylvania, under William Penn, had no difficulty with them. The Indians in the British possessions of North America are and for almost a century have been peacefully disposed.