In the year 1626 the munificent sum of twentyfour dollars had been originally paid to the Indians for the whole of New York Island -- (twenty-two thousand acres) ; paid too, in " beads and trinkets," on which, very likely, there was a large profit to the buyers. No doubt the Indians ought to have been satisfied ; but, strange to say, when they were crowded out, not only from the island, but from Staten Island, Long Island and the shores of the bay, the Hudson River and the Sound by the new settlers, they took it to heart in away for which neither beads nor trinkets proved a solid consolation. Hence came troubles and difficulties which, through the insane course of Governor Kieft, culminated in his ordering a general attack to be made upon the neighboring tribes, at the very time when their distress and dissatisfaction had reached the highest point. Not only had the Dutch traders sold •whiskey to the Indians in abundance, but firearms and ammunition as well.

In the middle of the winter, when the river (Hudson) was full of ice, and the savages were collected in their winter camps, a war-party from the powerhil Mohawks at the north came sweeping down upon

them, armed with the guns the Dutch had furnished, and drove before them far greater numbers -- whole settlements indeed -- of the Algonquins. This was the opportunity chosen by Kieft, to cross the river with his Dutch soldiers from Fort Amsterdam, make an attack upon the defenseless savages, peacefully sleeping in their wigwams, "just at midnight, the winter's night being cold and still." " Eighty Indians were killed at Pavonia, Hoboken, and forty at Corlaer's Hook that night, with horrible barbarities that might have given the savages themselves a lesson in the art of torture." The consequence was, that "all about the lower river and the bay, and on Long Island, the Algonquin people rose furiously against the whites." The terrors of an Indian war broke forth with a suddenness which appalled the colonists, and every swamp and wood from the country of the Hackensacks, New Jersey, to the Connecticut seemed all at once to be swarming with hostile savages.