Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1898-08-08
! SINGULAR PEOPLE.
ODD SPECIMENS OF HUMANITY ARE
 RAMAPo MouNTAINEERs.

RAMAPo MoUNTAINEERs. Ai5iaos q the Nilkiest Haired and Pink
 est Eyed Variety Are Common Among
 Them-They Are the Best Hunters and
 Fishermen Tn the Land
 People who have never been up in the Ramapo mountains can have little idea of how strange race of people live back in those high and rocky hills, miles from any village, and with not a rod of road by which their huts may be reached by wagons. In other words, it is not generally known that within 35 miles of the heart of New York city there is community as curious almost as can ba found ill the remote mountain recesses of Tennessee or North Caroli na. It is . sort of lost tribe, or, rather, an amalgamation of two lost tribes.
 If one can imagine what sort of beings would result from more than century intermarrying of American Indians and Gninea negroes, with an occasional dash of white blood added to tho mixture, he may form notion of the people that live back in the rugged hills that rise about Suffern. Ramapo, Sloatsburg, Woodbourne, Tuxedo and other places in the Ramapo valley. But it would take pretty brisk imagination to pic tnre some of the queer specimens of hn- manity that have resulted from this mixture.
 Albinos of the milkiest haired and pinkest eyed variety are common, and the dime museums recruit their curio halls in that line from among these mountaineers, as did the great and only Barnum before them.
 Back i'll tho last century and during the first quarter of the present century slaves were common in that part of New York state and the adjacent region of New Jersey. These slaves were treat ed no better by their old Dutch masters than were their fellow bendsmen in the soRth. They were worked long and hard, and the lash was not spared. Con- sequently runaway slaves were many. These runaways invariably sought the fastnessas of the surrounding mountains.
 It is q very difficult thing to make one's way mp and among tho Ramapo mountains even at this day, and 1t was almost an impossibility in the slavery days. As result, when a negro once succeeded in hiding there he was as safe from recapture as if he had gone to Canada, although he might be within sight and sound of his master home. Scores of runaways i'll time peopled the inaccessible hills, and in the spota where they threw up their first shelter ing huts of bark or fallen trees or found refuge in caves their descendants dwell today
 The woods had their Indian dwellers already, and tho two races mingled. These arc the strange people who are seen now and then ill the little villages along the Erie railway in Rockland and the adjoining towns of Bergen and Orange counties, and whose homes are far back ill the hills. A characteristic of these people is that the names of the old Dutch families in which the orig inal blacks were slaves have been re- tained by them, generation after gener- ation. The most numerous family of the race goes by the name of De Groat, but there are De Presses, Van Hoeyens and many other Des and Vans.
 In the summer time you might climb and chamber and stumble up tho steep sides and over the rocky summits of the Ramapo mountains all day and not see solitary sign of habitation, although there would be many on all sides of you. They arc so deftly tucked in among the rocks and hidden by the trees and foliage that only one acquainted with tho ways of tho mountaineers could find them. In the fall, when the trees are bare, tho huts stand revealed to any who may pass that way, and such are few, for although there is no better rutfed grouse shooting anywhere than in these mountain fastnesses the weary climbing necessary to get to the haunts of these birds is more than the average sportsman cares to undergo.
 There is no ground that might grow anything about any of these huts; not chicken or fowl of any kind not even q pig But there are dogs without Hmit-mongrel, wolfish looking dogs, such as might hang about Indian camps --and always from one to half dozen half naked, eerie, elfsh looking chil- dren, who, at sisNt or sound of stran- ger, scampe7 5.I.Iter in the hut, in the brush aMung the rocks, disappearing as cor. iately as startled brood of young quail.
 How do these people subsist? They are the best hunters and fishermen in the land, and game and trout are abun- dant all about them. They hunt and snare grouse and rabbits and catch trout for the market during the season. The women and children plck berries. For the products of the forest, streams and berry patches these people obtain store goods at the villages, both tho luxuries and tho neeessaries-the latter being chiefly whisky and tobacco, the former four, meal and cheap dress goods. For their own homo providing tho possum and the coon are plentiful at their very 1nOrS or,d fl,n oh iclran ,,oo,,c of +l,a o,,+