Document: New Netherland in 1627. Letter from Isaack de Rasiere to Samuel Blommaert. Image 008

the river to the east end of the Fisher’s Hook. In some places it is from three to four leagues broad, and it has several creeks and bays, where many savages dwell, who support themselves by planting maize and making sewam and who are called Siwanoys and Shinnecocks. It is also full of oaks, elms, walnut and fir trees, also wild cedar and che stnut trees. The tribes are held in subjection by, and are tributary to, the Pyquans, hereafter named. The land is in many places good, and fit for plowing and sowing. It has many fine valleys, where there is good grass. Their form of government is like that of their neighbors, which is described hereafter.

The Hamels-Hoofden being passed, there is about a league width in the river, and also on the west side there is an inlet, where another river runs up about twenty leagues, to the north-northeast, emptying into the Mauritius River in the highlands, thus making the northwest land opposite to the Manhattas an island eighteen leagues long. It is inhabited by the old Manhattans; they are about two hundred to three hundred strong, women and men, under different chiefs, whom they call Suckimas. This island is more mountainous than the other land on the southeast side of the river, which opposite to the Manhattas is about a league and a half in breadth. At the side of the before-mentioned little river, which we call “Achter Cal,” there is a great deal of waste reedy land; the rest is full of trees, and in some places there is good soil, where the savages plant their maize, upon which they live, as well as by hunting. The other side of the same small river, according to conjecture, is about 20 to 23 leagues broad to the South River, 12 in the neighborhood of the Sancicans, in so far as I have been able to make it out from the mouths of the savages; but as they live in a state of constant enmity with those tribes,