Wolferts Roost and Miscellanies | Page 5

itself, and like all empires, great and small,
has had its grand historical epochs. In speaking of this doughty and
valorous little pile, I shall call it by its usual appellation of "The
Roost;" though that is a name given to it in modern days, since it
became the abode of the white man.
Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly
called the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact becomes mystified, and
tinted up with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea
was inhabited in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all
the simplicity of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and fishing,
and recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking and
scalping. Each stream that flows down from the hills into the Hudson,
had its petty sachem, who ruled over a hand's-breadth of forest on
either side, and had his seat of government at its mouth. The chieftain
who ruled at the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a
medicine-man, or prophet, or conjurer, for they all mean the same thing,
in Indian parlance. Of his fighting propensities, evidences still remain,
in various arrowheads of flint, and stone battle-axes, occasionally
digged up about the Roost: of his wizard powers, we have a token in a
spring which wells up at the foot of the bank, on the very margin of the
river, which, it is said, was gifted by him with rejuvenating powers,
something like the renowned Fountain of Youth in the Floridas, so
anxiously but vainly sought after by the veteran Ponce de Leon. This
story, however, is stoutly contradicted by an old Dutch matter-of-fact
tradition, which declares that the spring in question was smuggled over
from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van Slocum, wife of Goosen

Garret Van Slocum, one of the first settlers, and that she took it up by
night, unknown to her husband, from beside their farm-house near
Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it in the new
country--and she was right.
The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud
with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his
hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor ragged
hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long talks and
hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a
medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts as
well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and
hocus-pocus there, he managed to extend his boundary-line from field
to field and stream to stream, until he found himself in legitimate
possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and
limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the
Pocantico. [Footnote: As every one may not recognize these boundaries
by their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the
Neperan is that beautiful stream, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River,
which, after winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley,
shrouded by groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself
into the Hudson, at the ancient drop of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that
hitherto nameless brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many
a wizard maze through the sequestered banks of Sleepy Hollow. We
owe it to the indefatigable researches of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, that
those beautiful streams are rescued from modern common-place, and
reinvested with their ancient Indian names. The correctness of the
venerable historian may be ascertained, by reference to the records of
the original Indian grants to the Herr Frederick Philipsen, preserved in
the county clerk's office, at White Plains.]
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