Rensselaer's agent, and Stuyvesant declared the title void, ordering that the purchase money be restored, \'et making a condition that if those holding such lands would, within six weeks, petition the Director and Council, they might have their holdings confirmed. Of course, this was a crafty effort on the Governor's part to make the too independent patroon of Rensselaerswyck own the authority of the Company's Director at Manhattan. Grants free from dependence upon the Patroon were subsequently given by the powers at Amsterdam. William Leete Stone, editor at one time of the New York Couinicycial Advertiser, wrote regarding the settlement of Catskill, that

its Dutch founders, with characteristic prudence, placed it entirely out of sight from the river, probably to render themselves secure from bombardment by a foreign fleet and from invasion from the armies of the Yankees, which formerly much annoyed our primitive settlements.

The Indians from whom the lands of the early settlers were purchased disappeared entirely from the scene. Their sachem, Mahak-Neminaw, seems to have been a poor sort of a chief, drunken and beggarly. He had a share in the earlier transactions for the transfer

of his tribe's patrimony, but when the final sale, which left his people without a habitation on earth, was made, he was not present, and his fellovz-tribesmen stipulated that when he appeared he was to receive, as his share of the price, two pieces of duffels and six cans of

The Catskill Region 491

rum. Where these eadier inhal:)itants, whose wigwams occupied the terrace that l)eeame the site of old Catskill, betook themselves, is not recorded. The subsequent Indian troubles, which this ])lace shared with other river towns, were due to conflict with other tribes. The most tragic stories of Indian atrocities are of Revolutionary date. The fierce Mohawks, acting as allies with the British, and aided l^y Tories who were scattered throughout the countr\', swoojjcd down upon solitary farmhouses and ca])tured the inmates, taking them by arduous forest ways to Canada, where a reward was paid for each ])risoner.