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Page 5
This last-mentioned stream, or rather the valley through which it flows,
was the most difficult of all his acquisitions. It lay half way to the
strong-hold of the redoubtable sachem of Sing-Sing, and was claimed by
him as an integral part of his domains. Many were the sharp conflicts
between the rival chieftains for the sovereignty of this valley, and
many the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place
among its fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish
the details for the gratification of those gentle but bloody-minded
readers of both sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and
scalping-knife. Suffice it to say that the wizard chieftain was at
length victorious, though his victory is attributed in Indian tradition
to a great medicine or charm by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing
and his warriors asleep among the rocks and recesses of the valley,
where they remain asleep to the present day with their bows and
war-clubs beside them. This was the origin of that potent and drowsy
spell which still prevails over the valley of the Pocantico, and which
has gained it the well-merited appellation of Sleepy Hollow. Often, in
secluded and quiet parts of that valley, where the stream is overhung by
dark woods and rocks, the ploughman, on some calm and sunny day as
he shouts to his oxen, is surprised at hearing faint shouts from the
hill-sides in reply; being, it is said, the spell-bound warriors, who
half start from their rocky couches and grasp their weapons, but sink to
sleep again.
The conquest of the Pocantico was the last triumph of the wizard sachem.
Notwithstanding all his medicine and charms, he fell in battle in
attempting to extend his boundary line to the east so as to take in the
little wild valley of the Sprain, and his grave is still shown near the
banks of that pastoral stream. He left, however, a great empire to his
successors, extending along the Tappan Zee, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy
Hollow; all which delectable region, if every one had his right, would
still acknowledge allegiance to the lord of the Roost--whoever he might
be. [Footnote: In recording the contest for the sovereignty of Sleepy
Hollow, I have called one sachem by the modern name of his castle or
strong-hold, viz.: Sing-Sing. This, I would observe for the sake
of historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name,
O-sin-sing, or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any
thing may be had for a song--a great recommendation for a market town.
The modern and melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing is said to
have been made in compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who
first introduced into the neighborhood the art of singing through the
nose. D. K.]
The wizard sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs, of whom nothing
remarkable remains on record. The last who makes any figure in history
is the one who ruled here at the time of the discovery of the country by
the white man. This sachem is said to have been a renowned trencherman,
who maintained almost as potent a sway by dint of good feeding as his
warlike predecessor had done by hard fighting. He diligently cultivated
the growth of oysters along the aquatic borders of his territories, and
founded those great oyster-beds which yet exist along the shores of the
Tappan Zee. Did any dispute occur between him and a neighboring sachem,
he invited him and all his principal sages and fighting-men to a solemn
banquet, and seldom failed of feeding them into terms. Enormous heaps of
oyster-shells, which encumber the lofty banks of the river, remain as
monuments of his gastronomical victories, and have been occasionally
adduced through mistake by amateur geologists from town, as additional
proofs of the deluge. Modern investigators, who are making such
indefatigable researches into our early history, have even affirmed that
this sachem was the very individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson and
his mate, Robert Juet, made that sage and astounding experiment so
gravely recorded by the latter in his narrative of the voyage: "Our
master and his mate determined to try some of the cheefe men of the
country whether they had any treacherie in them. So they took them down
into the cabin and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae that they
were all very merrie; one of them had his wife with him, which sate so
modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a strange place. In the
end one of them was drunke; and that was strange to them, for they
could not tell how to take it." [Footnote: See Juet's Journal, Purchas
Pilgrim.]
How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their
experiment with the sachem's wife is not recorded, neither does the
curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this
grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem on landing
gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial
discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms that he remained a
hard drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre
by acre, for aqua vitae; by which means the Roost and all its domains,
from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regular course of trade and
by right of purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.
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