westward in an organized way, with apprehension and resentment. To secure the Dutch title to original and exclusive sovereignty over the whole country, Kieft made land purchases from the Indians, in 1639 and 1640, extending as far east as the Norwalk archipelago, purchases which, however, were matched by similar early deeds granted by the natives to the English to much of territory in the eastern part of Westchester County. After the close of the Dutch and Indian wars, the territorial dispute steadily grew in importance, although it was a number of years before the Dutch found any special cause for complaint on the score of actual English encroachment.
On July 14, 1649, Director Stuyvesant, representing the West India Company, confirmed the former Indian deeds of sale by purchasing from the sachems Megtegichkama, Oteyochgue, and Wegtakockken the whole country " betwixt the North and East Rivers." The boundaries of this tract, which in the record of the transaction is called Weckquaesgeek, are not very distinctly defined; but the intent of the purchase was evidently incidental to the general Dutch policy of showing a perfect title to the country. At all events, a very large part of Westchester County was embraced in the sale, the recompense given to the Indians consisting of " six fathom cloth for jackets, six fathom swam [wampum], six kettles, six axes, six addices, ten knives, ten harrow-teeth, ten corals or beads, ten bells, one gun, two lbs. lead, two lbs. powder, and two cloth coats."
The English of Connecticut, on the other hand, do not seem to have attached any peculiar political value to Indian land purchases. There is no record of any purchase of Indian lands extending into Westchester County on the part of the government of Connecticut. The authorities of that colony were evidently satisfied to leave the westward extension of English possessions to the individual enterprise of the settlers, meantime holding themselves in readiness to support such enterprise by their sanction, and regarding all the land occupied by their advancing people as English soil, without reference to the counterclaims of the Dutch.
The purchase made by Nathaniel Turner, for the citizens of New Haven, in 1640, of territory reaching considerably to the west of the present eastern boundary of our county, was confirmed to the inhabitants of Stamford on August 11, 1655, by the Indian chief Ponus and Onox, his eldest son. The tract bought in 1610 ran to a distance sixteen miles north of the Sound. By the wording of the new deed of 1655, its bounds extended " sixteen miles north of the town plot of Stamford, and two miles still further north for the pasture of their [the settlers'] cattle; also eight miles east and west." The Indian owners, upon this occasion, received as satisfaction four coats of English cloth. No settlement of the region was begun during the continuance of Dutch rule in New Netherland, and thus the matter did not come prominently to the notice of Director Stuyvesant.
But in the preceding year a private English purchase from the Indians was made of a district lying nearer the Dutch settlements and within the limits of the already well-established jurisdiction of the New Amsterdam authorities, which became a matter of acute irritation. On the 11th of November, 1654, Thomas Pell, of Fairfield, Conn., bought from the sachems Maminepoe and Ann-Hoock (alias Wampage), and five other Indians, " all that tract of land called Westchester, which is bounded on the east by a brook, called Cedar Tree Brook or Gravelly Brook, and so running northward as the said brook runs into the woods about eight English miles, thence west to Bronck's River to a certain bend in the said river, thence by marked trees south until it reaches the tide waters of the Sound, . together with all the islands lying before that tract." This is the earliest legal record we have of the application of the name Westchester to any section of our county; although there is reason for believing that for several years previously this locality on the sound had been so called by the people of Connecticut, and that some squatters had already made their way thither. The bounds of Pell's purchase overlapped the old Dutch Vredeland and encroached upon the grants formerly made in that region to Throckmorton and Cor nell. Indeed, after the English took possession of New Netherland, the Town of Westchester set up a claim to the whole of Throgg's Neck, and Pell brought suit to recover Cornell's Neck from Thomas Cornell's heir; but as it was a part of the English policy to confirm all legitimate Dutch land grants, both these pretensions were disallowed. Westchester, as originally so styled, covered a much greater extent of country than the township of that name. Gravelly Brook, named in the conveyance from the Indians as its eastern boundary line, is a creek flowing into the Sound in the Township of New Rochelle; so that the territory at first called Westchester included, besides Westchester township proper, the townships (or portions of them) of Pelham, Eastchester, and New Rochelle. It is an interesting fact that the first of these four townships to be settled was the one most remote from Connecticut and nearest the seat of Dutch authority; which lends color to the strong suspicion that the migration of the English to this quarter was under the secret direction, or at the connivance, of the government of Connecticut, which sought to extend settlement as far as possible into the disputed border territory. Later, as Pell's purchase became sub-divided, separate local names were given to its several parts, the name of Westchester being retained for that portion only where the original settlements had been established. Thus it came that the company making the first considerable sub-purchase within the Pell tract conferred the name of Eastchester upon their lands, which immediately adjoined Westchester town at the east. The settlers in Westchester were not exterminated or driven away, like those on Hutchinson's River and Throgg's and Cornell's necks; and, though interfered with by the Dutch, held their ground permanently. Westchester was therefore the earliest enduring English settlement west of Connecticut. This was remembered when, in 1683, under English rule, the erection of regularly organized counties was undertaken; and accordingly the name Westchester was selected as the one most suitable for the county next above Manhattan Island.
It is certain that English settlers had begun to arrive in Westchester before the execution of Pell's deed from the Indians (November 14, 1654); for on the 5th of November, 1654, nine days before that execution, it was resolved at a meeting of the director-general and council of New Netherland that " Whereas a few English are beginning a settlement at no great distance from our outposts, on lands long since bought and paid for, near Vredeland," an interdict be sent to them, forbidding them to proceed farther, and commanding them to abandon that spot. Pell, in the law suit which he brought in 1665 against the heir of Thomas Cornell to recover Cornell's Neck, stated that in buying the Westchester tract he had license from the governor and council of Connecticut, " who took notice of this land to be under their government," and " ordered magistratical power to be exercised at Westchester." The colonial records of Connecticut show that such license was in fact granted to him in 1663. This sanction, issued nine years after his original purchase, was probably procured by him with a view to a second and confirmatory purchase. Whether the first settlers came to Westchester as the result of any direct instigation on the part of the Connecticut officials cannot be determined; but it is probable that the latter were fully cognizant of their enterprise, and promoted it by some sort of encouragement. Certainly the Westchester pioneers made no false pretenses, and sought no favors from the Dutch, but boldly announced themselves as English colonists. One of their first acts was to nail to a tree the arms of the Parliament of England.
Stuyvesant permitted the winter of 1654-55 to pass without offering to disturb the intruders in the enjoyment of the lands they had so unceremoniously seized. But in April he dispatched an officer, Claes Van Elslandt, with a writ commanding Thomas Pell, or whomsoever else it might concern, to cease from trespassing, and to leave the premises. Van Elslandt, upon arriving at the English settlement, was met by eight or nine armed men, to whose commander he de livered the writ. The latter said: "I cannot understand Dutch. Why did not the fiscaal, or sheriff, send English? When he sends English, then I will answer. We expect the determination on the boundaries the next vessel. Time will tell whether we shall be under Dutch government or the Parliament; until then we remain here under the Commonwealth of England." Notwithstanding this defiant behavior, the Dutch director-general was reluctant to act severely in the matter, and nearly a year elapsed before the next proceedings were taken, which were based quite as much upon considerations affecting the character of the English settlement as upon the desire to vindicate Dutch territorial rights. The director and council, by a resolution adopted March 6, 1656, declared that the English at Westchester were guilty of " encouraging and sheltering the fugitives from this province," and also of keeping up a constant correspondence with the savage enemies
