After their (12) High Mightinesses, the Lords States General, were pleased, in the year XVP and twenty-two, to include this Province within the Charter of the West India Company, the latter considered it necessary to take complete possession of this naturally beautiful and noble Province ; this, indeed, did follow in course of time, but according as circumstances permitted, as in all beginnings; for since the year of our Lord XV1'= and twenty-three, four forts have been built there by ^°^^ bun^herer ""kenofpoiseMion. order of the Lords Majors, one on the south point of Manhattans island, at the junction of the East and North rivers, and named New Amsterdam, where the ' Sapsis seems to be a synonym for Sappaen : Duundare is of the Iroquois stock, and means, literally, Boiled bread ; from Onnontara, boiled, and i)a<aroA, bread. See Vocabulary, in Gall., 324; also, Transactions of New-York Ethnological Society, II., 79. --Ed.

284 NEW-YORK COLONIAL MANUSCRIPTS. staple right of New Netherland is designed to be. Another, called Orange, is in the Colonie Renselaerswyck, thirty-six leagues higher up on the west side of the last named river, three leagues below the Kahoos, or Great falls of the Mohawk kill; but there never has been, as yet, any difference with foreigners wTailT'difflTJify about that (North) river. On the South river stands fort Nassou, and on the about the Nurih p^ggj^ river, the Good Hope. In these four forts there has always been some garrison from the beginning to the present time, though just now they are all T.^'^v '"'"ooV* and '" ^ '^^^y P°°'' condition, both as regards themselves and the garrison. useless. These forts, as well north and south, were located not only to close and command the said rivers, but as far as property by occupation extended, to possess as well all the lands comprehended between them as round about them, and on the opposite side of the river; to declare them the Hon.