White Plains, the shire-town of Westchester County, was described in an act of the Legislature of the State of New York, passed in 1788,' as " All that part of the county of Westchester bounded easterly by Mamaroneck River, northerly by North Castle, westerly by Bronx River and southerly by the town of Scarsdale," and by this act was erected into a town, containing four thousand four hundred and thirty-five acres.

As late as the year 1683 this territory was still in the possession of its aboriginal owners. The chiefs were sachems of the ^V^eckf]uaskech tribe, a portion of the powerful Mohican nation, whose territory lay between the Connecticut River and the Hudson, the

I Greenleaf 8 Lawn, vol. ii. p. 153,

Weckquaskech family occupying the more limited region between the Byram River and the Hudson. No woodman's axe had yet invaded the quietude of its forests ; but amid the leaty hedges, and beneath the sheltering branches of overhanging trees, the tawny savage and his tawny mate, rearing their black-eyed little ones in the primitive simplicity of their remotest ancestors, remained the sole human inhabitants of the soil.

But now the hum of civilization is beginning to be heard on their borders. The irrepressible and irresistible New Englander, advancing with rapid strides, having in 1666 settled Rye as far as the Mamaroneck River, in 1683 purchased the better country lying between that river and the Bronx, and called by the natives, Quarroppas, -- by the settlers the White Plains, -- the deed of which to the people of Rye is as follows :