Their hair was worn shorn to a coxcomb on top, with a long lock depending on one side. They wore beaver and other skins, with the fur inside in winter and outside in summer, and also coats of turkey feathers. They were valiant warriors. " Yea," says De Vries, " they say they are Manetto -- the devil himself! '' Their leading sachems, at the advent of white settlers, were Tequeiaet, Eechgairac and Packamiens, from whom the Dutch director, Kieft, purchased, in August, 16-19, the tract Keskeskick. This tribe gradually dwindled, until its remnant finally disappeared before the end of the eighteenth century.

First Skttlement. -- The earliest white resident and proprietor was Dr. Adraien Van der Donck,y«m ufriusque doctor, of Leyden. He had been sheriff" of the Colonic of Rensselaerswyck since 1641. Having aided Director Kieft in negotiating an important Indian treaty at Fort Orange, Albany, the latter granted him, in 1645, a large tract on the Nepperhaem River, Yonkers, where he built a saw-mill,* laid out farms and plantations-and " had actually resolved to continue." But that indispensable requisite of a Dutch farm, salt meadow, was lacking. In search of this, Van der Donck found, about a mile above the irading-phice (King's Bridge) " a flat, with some convenient meadows about it," which he promptly secured by purchase from the Indians and a further grant from Kieft. His new acquisition included the area under consideration, extending from the Hudson to the Bronx, and from the Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the Nepperhaem tract. Here he located his bowerie, or home-farm, with its " planting-field," and near the latter he had already begun the erection of his house, before going to Holland, in 1649, as the representative of the commonalty of New Amsterdam. Van der Donck's " planting-field " was on the plain or flat of the Van Cortlandt estate, lying between Broadway and the present lake, and extending up to the southerly end of Vault 11111.** It is probable that his house was on the flat, and located, per. haps, where the old house of Jacobus Van Cortlandt afterwards stood until the early part of this century.'"