In 1648 the Hutchinson family was entirely swei)t away by the Indians in their retaliatory war with the Dutch, and a part only of Throckmorton's colony survived. These, with the exception of Thomas Cornell and the Mondys, all New England people, were the only persons who attempted settlements east of the Bronx River until 1654, when Thomas Pell, acting under special authority from Connecticut, purchased of the Indians the land which embraces the present town of Westchester, and obtained a grant of the territory ' bearing date the 14th day of November.

In l(i52* the West India Company had instructed Stuyvesant to engage the Indians in his cause against the New England colonies, but the friendship of the Narragansetts for the Puritans could not be shaken. " I am poor," said Mixam, one of the sachems, "but no j)resents of goods or of guns or of powder and shot shall draw me into a conspiracy against my friends, the English." In this year the Dutch ambassadors opened negotiations in London in reference to the American colonies and the settlement of the boundary question, but the English persistently claimed the territory from Virginia to Newfoundland ; the consideration of the subject was deferred, and the opportunity to secure a ratification of the Hartford treaty of 1()50 was forever lost.*

Again, in 1654, "the States-General, feeling that the encroaching disposition and superior numbers of the English rendered their North American possessions insecure, instructed their ambassadors at London to negotiate a boundary line. But this effort, like those which had preceded it, proved unsuccessful, and throughout the protectorate' England declared the Dutch to be intruders. During the next four years* a good understanding was maintained between the Dutch and their New England neighbors, -- the Dutch, as the weaker party, being very careful not to give offense.