The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-11-09
A "REMINISCENCES or MAnnAHArrA.
Berkeley. is New York Mercury.

when the air begins to get smoky and the shocks oi corn stand upon the held hke 70 many wigwams and the cows loom up in the meadows as hay as if they were gigantic buffaloes, the mind naturally turns to the rcd men who dwelt here long before Christopher Columbus sailed from Palos.
 The aborigines had musical names for all the lo- calites in and about the island Of MannAhatta but the Dutch made sad havoc with them in a Kindly effort to perpetuate their sounds and the English ignored them as . rule and preferred to give the name of some scion of royalty to the rivers head lands and bays The Indians, for instance gave the musical designation of Muscoota to the stream which the Dutch designated Harlem river, and the English banished the name Minnahanonck from the island which become commonplace as Black wells Island. The Indian village at Harlem situ- ated the fertile meadows just east of Mount Nor rs, bore the name of the stream that at the spot where Greenwich village was located was known n Sapokanikan above, at Spuyten Duyvii, was . village called Mosholu, a name which has not yielded Its claim to the stream designated by white settlers as Tibbet's brook and Teleput was the title of the red mans settlement in the meadows above Jones' woods If the early Dutch historians are to be believed the aboriginal inhabitants of the island of Manhattan were industrious people At the village of Sspokanikan, Henry Hudson found house or barn constructed of oak bark with an arched roof and large that 1t contained "corn and beans enough to load three ships, besides what was growing in the fields" Later, when, after the massacre at Pavonia, now Hoboken-where on Christmas eve the soldiers of Kieft had surprised
 
 of the Raritans-the survivors met the ambassadors of Governor Kieft, they said 10 him. "When you nrst arrived on our shores you were In want of food; we gave you our beans and our corn and let you eat our oysters and sh." So 1t is that never see the shocks of corn standing on few still unoc- cupied fields in the island of Manhattan and one of the heights beyond the Muscoota that I do not think of the red men who once dwelt here, and wonder why 90 little has been done to perpetuate their memory and gather their story.
 Some of the names of the red chiefs still survive in musty documents that go back far as l645. At that date it appears, by a treaty between the Indian sakemakers, or sachems, and "their nigh ghtness the lords states general of the United Netherlands" that Tamekass, Lackwenoen Hacka- wanna1), Krahorat and Toemakurma were chief tains and the names of half 6 dozen warriors are also signed to the dingy documents, as also the mark" of Lahenisios, "a boy" Poor little fellowl That Is all that Is known of him. He played in the glades and hunted in the woods of Mannahatta and then he faded away. Whether he died as warrior or chief called to the Great Spirit in his higher boyhood there is nothing to say. He and his comrades belonged to the hospit- able but warlike Wissequekonks, who were the tribe that then dominated the island of Manhattan. Beyond the Harlem was 6 settlement of the MaQuas, whose most noted chief, Katonah, has left his name to on Of the prettest sections of Westchester county
 This Is but reminiscence-a glance into 6 past that is full of tradtion-and the red men of Mama hatta have become also but Q reminiscence. 1t is a pity that their story could not be gathered; pity that there is little kindly thought for those who were hospitabe to the settlers when the latter were honest and true and deadly foes of those who broke faith; who saved the first settlement from starvation and then drove out the first men who farmed at Harlem with fire and the tomahawk and carried the war down to the palisade st Wall street It is still greater pity that one ever gathered the story of the red who averred that their an- cestors at one time could cross He'll Gate on the rocks to Long Island on foot.
 But the red men faded away like the mists of these autumnal days. Kismet, says the Turk-it was fAted. They lapsed quietly out of the worlds life to give place to a better and more enduring aivfl;wa4Ror