History of Westchester County, New York, Volume 1. Frederic Shonnard

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      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 Revolution, 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 Naniehiestawack, 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 north west. There is a most romantic approach to the site of the mountain fastness by a steep, narrow, beaten track opposite to Stamford cart-path, 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 many mounds under which the bones of the slain were interred. They were probably laid there by friendly hands. Underhill, 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 five hundred corpses.

      Captain John Underhill 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 Underhill, from whom a large and conspicuous family of the county has descended.

      The captain sprang from the old Underhill stock of Huningham, in Warwickshire, England. He was born about 1600, and early imbibed an ardent love of liberty, civil and religious, by his service as a soldier under the illustrious Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, in the Low Countries, where he had for one of his comrades-at-arms the noted Captain Miles Standish. Coming to New England with Governor Winthrop, he immediately took a prominent place in the Massachusetts colony, being appointed one of the first deputies from Boston to the General Court, and one of the earliest officers of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. In the Pequod War (1636-37) he was selected by the governor, Sir Harry Vane (who was his personal friend), to command the colonial troops; and, proceeding to the seat of the disturbances in Connecticut, he fought (May 26, 1637) the desperate and victorious battle of Mystic Hill. In this encounter seven hundred Pequods were arrayed against him, of whom seven were taken prisoners, seven escaped, and the remainder were killed — a record almost identical, it will be noted, with that made at the battle in our Bedford township in 1644. Captain Underhill felt no compunctions of conscience for the dreadful and almost exterminating destructiveness of his victories over the Indians. In his narrative of the Mystic Hill fight, alluding to this feature of the subject, he says: " It may be demanded: Why should you be so furious? Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But I would refer you to David's war. When a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man, and all confederates in the action, then He hath no respect to persons, but harrows and saws them, and puts them to the sword and the most terriblest death that may be. Sometimes the Scripture declareth that women and children must perish with their parents; sometimes the case alters, but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings."

      Espousing the religious doctrines and personal cause of Anne Hutchinson, Captain Underhill suffered persecution in common with the other Hutchinsonians, and in the fall of 1637, only a few months after his triumphant return from the wars, was disfranchised and forced to leave Massachusetts. He went to England the next year, and published a curious book, entitled " News from America; or, A New and Experimental Discoverie of New England: Containing a true relation of their warlike proceedings there, two years last past, with a figure of the Indian Fort, or Palizado. By Capt. John Under hill, a commander in the warres there." Returning to America, he settled in New Hampshire. Later, he lived in Stamford, Conn., and was a delegate from that town to the General Court at New Haven. From the time that he accepted his commission from the Dutch in their wars with the Indians until his death he lived on Long Island. He first resided at Flushing, and finally made his СКАЧАТЬ