It is said that so fine and free from animosity and greed has been the life of the people of New Paltz that i)revious to 1873 no lawyer ever found a permanent residence there. Johannes Nevius and others, in a report to the States-General in 1663, spoke feelingly of

the deplorable massacre and slaughter of the good people of the beautiful and fruitful country of Esopus, recently committed by the barbarians after the premature and, for this state, in this conjuncture of time, wholly unpractical reduction of the military force of this province, which was notoriously and very urgently required to be completed and reinforced.

Among the stories of the early settlers of Ulster County are many harrowing ones of captivity, with an occasional thrilling account of escape or rescue, but in general there is a dreadful sameness in the details. Now it is a Dutch family, now a Huguenot one --

456 The Hudson River

Lefever, Dubois, Schoonmaker, Osterhout, from Wiltwyck or from Murderer's Creek, or the settlements that lay between. Down to the time of the Revolution the out-settlements of this region were much exposed to Indian attack. According to one of the numerous local legends of Ulster County, two men, Andresen and Osterhout, were taken by the Indians, but when within a single day's march of Niagara Andresen managed at night to work one of his arms free and subsequently removed his bonds. Then, with necessary stealthiness and caution, he succeeded in freeing his companion, and falling iipon the sleeping Indians thev killed all except two squaws, who escaped. Providing themselves with the arms and provisions of their late captors, they undertook the return journey of four or five hundred miles through the woods. Their lives were barely sa\-ed by the game they managed to shoot on the way, for weakened by hunger as well as by fatigue, at the end of seventeen days they staggered into their homes, weak but rejoicing at their almost miraculous escape.