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 Keskachauge, or, The first white settlement on Long Island

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CD Content
  A Complete Searchable Publication on CD
Keskachauge, or, The first white settlement on Long Island, "With maps and illustrations." Includes bibliographical references and index, New York: Putnam's :,
1924, Van Wyck, Frederick,  947  pgs.
Book Synopsis
(1)-The author has tried to show that Flatlands Village is the site of the first white settlement on Long Island, and of the Indian village of Keskaechqueren, headquarters of the chiefs of the principal tribe in what is now the Borough of Brooklyn.
(2)--He has tried, but has been unable, to determine what the three flats called by the Indians, Keskateuw, a name that appears to have been identical with Keskachaue or Keskachauge, in modern spelling Keskachogue,--and by the Dutch, Amersfoort or the village of Amersfoort, comprised. The tract included the site of the village of Flatlands, and probably included the site of the village of Flatbush or Midwout, and the sites of the first white settlements in Flatlands Neck.
(3)--He has tried to show who made the undiscovered original of the two Manatus Maps, one owned by the Govenment of Italy and the other owned by the Government of the United States. The maps are bird's-eye views of Manhattan Island and its surroundings. Each map bears date 1639, and was published for the first time in 
1916.
(4)-He has tried to show where the bouweries were on Ex-Director General Van Twiller's two of the three flats; 
(5)--That the dwelling house on one of these bouweries, built by Van Twlller before April 11, 1641, is still standing; 
(6}-That these two bouweries, after they had been confiscated by the Dutch West India Company, were the bouweries referred to in the records as Director General Stuyvesant's bouwery at Amersfoort and his bouwery situate in the village of Amersfoort;
(7)--Where Surveyor General Hudde's house and tobacco plantation on the Platland near Seskaechqueren was; and
(8) Where the poet Jacob Steendam's land near and east of the village of Amersfoort was.
(9)--He has tried to show that the name, before it was changed to Canarsie, of the principal tribe of Indians in what is now the Borough of Brooklyn, was Keskachaue or Keskachauge;
(10)-To dispel the doubt Mr. William Wallace Tooker has raised that the great Chief or Sachem Penhawitz belonged to that tribe;
(11) To show that the part of Brooklyn called Canarsie was called by the Indians, Kanalinck;
(12)--That the Marechkawick Indians of the old town of Brooklyn and the Nayack Indians of New Utrecht were small bands of North River Indians and not members of any of the native Long Island tribes;
(13)-That Penhawitz was the hereditary Grand Sachem of the native Long Island tribes west of the Great and Nissequogue Rivers, if not of all the tribes on Long island 
except these two bands of North River Indians;
(14)-That the Canarsie tribe was nearly exterminated in September, 1655, by Indians from both sides of the North River, with the result that the chieftaincy of that tribe, before May 13, 1664, had passed to the Sachem of Rockaway;
(15)--Why the Montauk Sachem, after the death of Penhawitz, joined in conveyances of lands of the Rockaway tribe; and
(16)--To throw some light on the obscure subject of the acquiring by the Dutch of the Indian titles to lands in the Borough of Brooklyn.
(17)-It is shown that Governors Island, in New York Harbor, was deeded to Van Twdler by Kakapeteyno and Penhawitz, with the consent of the community at Keskaechqueren; 
(18)--That substantially all the old town of Bushwick was deeded to the West India Company by Kakapeteyno and two other chiefs of Keskaechqueren; and
(19) That a large part of the Wallabout, including the site of the United States Marine Hospital there, was deeded to George Rapalje by Kakapeteyno and Penhawitz.
(20) The evidence tending to show that the greater part of Gowanus, including nearly all the older part of Greenwood Cemetery, was purchased by William Adriance 
Bennett and Jacus Bentyl from Kakapeteyno is reviewed; as well as
(21)-The evidence showing that the West India Company finally took from Peuhawitz a deed of all the lands left to him as an inheritance, by his ancestors, situate on 
Long Island, within the limits of New Netherland, including lands about Schout's Bay, thought by some historians to have been Manhasset Bay, and by Mr. Tooker to have been Oyster Bay.
(22)--Mr. Edward M. Ruttenber, one of the leading writers on the subject of the Indian tribes of Hudson's River, concluded, without giving his reasons, that Penhawitz was the first sachem known to the Dutch. The evidence, and it appears to bear Mr. Ruttenber out, is examined.
(23)-The possibility that some, at least, of those who were left here by the Dutch trading ships in 1614-15 and 1615-16, to dispose of goods to the Indians, wintered at Keskaechqueren, under the protection of the great chief Penhawitz, and that Flatlands Village is the oldest place of white abode in Greater New York, is considered.
(24) Translations of several unrecorded Dutch documents are set forth, some from the Stoothoff Papers, a collection recently bought by the Colonial Daughters of the Seventeenth Century. One of these Stoothoff documents, set forth in English, is the ante-nuptial agreement, in Dutch, dated July 20, 1683, between Captain Elbert Elbertsen Stoothoff of Flatlands, and Sarah or Saartje Roelofs, daughter of the celebrated Annetje Jans. Captain Elbert's homestead on Bergen Island, Flatlands, in 
which it may be that he and Saartje Roelofs lived, is still standing, with additions built after 1800 by his descendants, the Bergen owners.
(25)--The importance, to the chiefs of Seskaechqueren, of the wampum industry on Bergen Island, and in the present Gerritsen's Mill Pond, both near by; and the possibility that this Stoothoff or oldest part of the Bergen Island homestead was built by the West India Company itself, for use in connection with that industry, before Van Twiller's arrival here not later than April 16, 1633; and the influence that that industry may have had, three years after that date, in determining the site of the 
first white settlement on Long Island, are considered.
 
 Book Contents
Maps
Chapter I. Flatlands village
Chapter II. Keskateuw
Chapter III. Land in New Netherland
Chapter IV. The Ordinance of July 1, 1652
Chapter V. Flatbush
Chapter VI. Flatlands neck
Chapter VII. The Bouwery of Achtervelt 
Chapter VIII. Equindito and Winippague
Chapter IX. Keskaechqueren
Chapter X. The Manatus maps
Chapter XI. Andries Hudde
Chapter XII. Kanalinck; The town records, the salt meadows
Chapter XIII. The Nicolls Charter
Chapter XIV. The Confirmatory Patents
Chapter XV. The arbitration of 1695/6
Chapter XVI. The arbitration of 1695/6
Chapter XVII. The arbitration of 1705
Chapter XVIII. Stuyvesant's bouweries
Chapter XIX. The boundary arbitrations
Chapter XX. The Wyckoff homestead
Chapter XXI. The sale of the common lands
Chapter XXII. The soil survey; prehistoric Flatlands
Chapter XXIII. Jacob Steendam
Chapter XXIV. The three original bouweries
Chapter XXV. The three original ground-briefs
Chapter XXVI. The long houses of the Indians
Chapter XXVII. Penhawitz
Chapter XXVIII. Penhawitz
Chapter XXIX. New Netherland tenures
Chapter XXX. The Indian deeds
Chapter XXXI. Demesne lands
Chapter XXXII. The deed from Mechowodt
Chapter XXXIII. Gauwarowe
Chapter XXXIV. The Rockaway Convention
Chapter XXXV. Kieft's War
Chapter XXXVI. Pavonia
Chapter XXXVII. Kakapeteyno
Chapter XXXVIII. Mechawanienck
Chapter XXXIX. Marechkawick
Chapter XL. Mattano
Chapter XLI. Seyseys
Chapter XLII. Numers
Chapter XLIII. The petition and postel
Chapter XLIV. Witaneywen
Chapter XLV. Wantagh
Chapter XLVI. Mannahanning
Chapter XLVII. Seawanhaka
Chapter XLVIII. Tackapousha
Chapter XLIX. Weywitsprittner
Chapter L. Wamatapeck
Chapter LI. The Kouwenhovens
Chapter LII. The Bergen Island homestead
Chapter LIII. The Mill Island homestead
Chapter LIV. Miscellaneous, Saartje Roelofs
Chapter LV. Loockermans, Van Twiller

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