The whites now put handles or helves in the former, and cut trees down before their eves, and dug the ground, and showed them the use of the stockings. Here a general laughter ensued among the Indians, that they had remained for so long a time ignorant of the use of so valuable implements, and had borne with the weight of such heavy metal hanging to their necks for such a length of time. . . . Familiarity daily increasing between them and the whites, the latter now proposed to stay with them, asking for only so much land as the hide of a bullock would cover or encompass, which hide was brought forward and spread on the ground before them. That they readily granted this request; whereupon the whites took a knife and beginning at one place on this hide cut it up into a rope not thicker than the finger of a little child, so that by the time the hide1 was cut up there was a great heap; that this rope was drawn out to a great distance ami then brought round again, so that the ends might meet; that they carefully avoided its breaking, and that upon the whole it encompassed a large piece of land; that they were surprised at the superior wit of the whites, but did not wish to contend with them about a little land, as they had enough; that they and the whites lived for a long time contentedly together, although the whites asked from time to time more land of them, and proceeding higher up the Mohicanituk they believed they would soon want the whole country." The first purchase of Indian lands in what is now New York State was that of Manhattan Island, which was announced in a letter dated November 5, 1626, from P.