But it was not until after the close of the seventeenth century that the last vestiges of their legal ownership of lands in the county disappeared. In succeeding chapters of this History their relation to the progress of events and to the gradual development of the county during the period of their organized continuance in it will receive due notice, and it is not necessary in the present connection to anticipate that portion of •Moultnifs Hist, of >>w Vork, .111

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

uur narrative. What is known of their ultimate fate as a people may, however, appropriately be related here. During the Dutch Avars many hundreds of them were slain and some of their principal villages were given to the flames. It is estimated Bedthat in a single Indian community (near the present village of more ford), which was surrounded, attacked, and burned at midnight, than five hundred of them perished before the merciless onslaught of the whites. After the peace of 1015 their remaining villages, being absorbed one by one in the extensive land purchases and grants, were by degrees abandoned. The continuance of the Indian on the soil was entirely incompatible with its occupancy by the white man. The became uncountry, by being converted to the uses of agriculture, deserted by adapted to the pursuits of the natives, as it was quickly the game. The wild animals fled to the forest solitudes, and the wild famimenfollowed them, until only small groups, and finally isolated lies and individuals, remained. The locality called Indian Hill, in the Town of Yorktown, is still pointed out as the spot where the last lin<rerino- band of Indians in Westchester County had its abiding place. & The historian of the Town of Rye, the late Rev. Charles W. Baircl, gives the following particulars (typical for the whole county) of the gradual fading away of the Indians of that locality: Muirson. of Rev.