This battle, if battle it may be called, was by far the most sanguinary ever fought on Westchester soil. At White Plains, the most considerable Westchester engagement of the devolution, the combined losses of both sides in killed, wounded, and missing did not reach four hundred. The site of the exterminated Indian village has been exactly located by Bolton. It was called Xanichiestawack, and was in the Town (township) of Bedford, not far from the present Bedford village. It " occupied the southern spur of Indian Hill, sometimes called the Indian Farm, and Stony Point (or Hill), stretching toward the northwest. There is a most romantic approach to the site of the mountain fastness by a steep, narrow, beaten track opposite to Stamford cartpath, as it was formerly denominated, which followed the old Indian trail called the Thoroughfare." The picturesque Mianus River flows by the scene. The last ghastly memorials of the slaughter have long since passed away, but local tradition preserves the recollection of

HISTORY

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many mounds under which the bones of the slain were interred. They were probably laid there by friendly hands. Underbill, in the bitter winter season, with his small and exhausted party, and with no implements for turning the frozen sod, naturally could not tarry to give burial to Ave hundred corpses. Captain John Underbill is an entirely unique figure in early American colonial history, both English and Dutch. Although his name, when mentioned apart from any specific connection, is usually associated with New England, he belongs at least equally to New Netherland and New York. Indeed, during more than two-thirds of his residence in America he lived within the confines of the present State of New York, where most of his descendants have continued. Westchester County, by his prowess rescued from the anarchy into which it had been thrown by the aboriginal barbarians and established on a secure foundation for practical development, became the home of one of his sons, Nathaniel Underbill, from whom a large and conspicuous family of the county has descended.