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User:Rhythmnation2004/sandbox2 ARTICLE LINKS Wampage Siwanoy Susanna Cole Ann Hook's Neck Sovereign Colonial Society Americans of Royal Descent =Notes on the Siwanoys=
 * The Siwanoys were a tribe of the Wappinger-Mattabesec Confederacy.
 * The name Siwanoy may be a corruption of Siwanak, 'salt people'.
 * They spoke Munsee, a Lenape language.
 * Territory: Their territory extended from Hell Gate in Manhattan, to Norwalk, in Fairfield County, and as far inland as White Plains. Wykagyl was the Native term for the area.
 * Settlements: In 1640, the Siwanoys' largest village was Poningo, situated near the present Rye, in Westchester County. They also had stockade settlements at Ann Hook's Neck and Hunter Island (they referred to this area as Laaphawachking, or "place of stringing beads"),  and at Davenport Neck (which they referred to as Shippa or Shippan).  Their "winter quarters" were located farther south at Hell Gate.  The village of Nanichiestawack or Nawchestaweck ("place of safety"), located near present day Woods Bridge at Muscoot Reservoir, was destroyed during the Pound Ridge massacre in 1644.
 * Religion: Two glacial erratic boulders named Grey Mare and Mishow, located on Hunter Island, were spiritually significant to the Siwanoy. Here the Siwanoys practiced their sacred ceremonies, and two Sachems are believed to be buried at Mishow; the Siwanoys believed the boulders to have been placed there by their guardian Manitou (the spiritual, omnipresent life force that manifests itself in everything). However, many Siwanoys likely becamed Christianized; the Siwanoy Sagamore Wampage I was one of these, and he took John White as a baptismal name.
 * Physical Appearance: The Lenape generally had black hair and brown eyes. They frequently painted their bodies and faces (black, red, yellow, blue and white) for ceremonial rites, war and festive occasions, or to mourn the dead. Women generally wore their hair loose; men would often remove all hair but a long forelock.
 * 1640 Conflict with Dutch: The western bands of the Wappinger - which includes the Siwanoys - became involved in war with the Dutch in 1640, which lasted five years, and this is said to have cost the lives of 1,600 Wappinger, of whom the Wappinger proper were the principal sufferers.
 * 1643 Murder of Anne Hutchinson: In August 1643, the Siwanoys, led by Wampage I, massacred the family of Anne Hutchinson; the only survivor of the attack was Hutchinson's nine year old daughter Susanna, "who became the bride of an Indian Chief". It has been written that Wampage himself was the murderer of Hutchinson and that he adopted the name of Anhõõke due to a Mahican custom of taking the name of a notable person personally killed.
 * 1644 Pound Ridge Massacre: In February 1644, the entire village of Nanichiestawack (or Nawchestaweck), located near present day Woods Bridge at Muscoot Reservoir, was wiped out by 130 Dutch mercenaries under Capt. John Underhill. The surprise attack, known as the Pound Ridge massacre, took place while a large number of Siwanoy and Wecquaesgeek people were gathered together for a corn festival. The Dutch forces slaughtered between 500 and 700 indigenous people, including women and children, who were forced into their homes and burned alive.
 * 1654 Treaty: On June 27, 1654, sagamores Shawanórõckquot (Shanarockwell), Poquõrúm, Anhõõke (Wampage I), Wawhamkus, and Mehúmõw deeded to Thomas Pell 9,160 acres of land east of the Hutchinson River northward to Mamaroneck, including modern day Pelham, New Rochelle, and portions of the Bronx. The parties signed a treaty under the Treaty Oak near Bartow-Pell Mansion in Pelham.
 * 1692 Deed: On May 27, 1692, Maminepoe and Wampage II (Ninham-Wampage), alias Ann Hook, deeded what is now the eastern coast of the Bronx to the Trustees of Westchester County.
 * 1700 Deed: On December 23, 1700, Woavatapus, Ann Hooke (Wampage II), and Porrige confirmed satisfaction of debt owed by the trustees of Eastchester regarding land between the Bronx and Hutchinson Rivers.
 * 1701 Deed: On November 6, 1701, Ann Hook (Wampage II) deeded what is now Larchmont, New York to Samuel Palmer, an English colonist.
 * 1705 Deed: On April 6, 1705, Anne Hook (Wampage II), Patthunck, Hopescoe (Porrige), and Elias transferred land between Eastchester and Westchester to George Booth.
 * Wappinger History: The Wappinger's closest allies and relatives were the Mahicans to the north and the Lenape to the south. The totem (or emblem) of the Wappinger, which they shared with the Mahicans, was the “enchanted wolf”, with the right paw raised defiantly. The Wappinger continued to reside along the shore in Westchester County until 1756, when most of the Wappinger and Mahicans remaining in the area joined the Nanticoke, then living under the protection of the Iroquois, and with them were eventually merged into the Lenape. Some of them joined the Stockbridge Indians, who were removed to Wisconsin in the 1830s.

Pelliana
"[p 35]In a word, as Thomas Pell II grew from boy to man at Pelham, against a background of primeval forests, wild animals and savage Indians, his landscape was bounded by West Chester with its nonconformists, the Baileys and the others, with whom his family was on

[p 36] far from cordial terms; by East Chester, with whose residents his parents had consistently friendly relations; by New Rochelle with its French speaking Huguenots who were the special wards of Sir John Pell, his father. Above all, Pelham was a refuge for the Siwanoys, who has a "castle" on Pelham Neck, another on Hunter's Island and still another at New Rochelle. The Indians were invariably welcomed by the Pells, and doubtless as a boy Thomas II hunted and trapped with the young Indians and learned the ways of the woods and streams from them. Without a doubt, too, he courted the Indian maidens, and this leads to the mystery of his marriage in 1700 to Anne or Anna, the Princess of the Siwanoys.

"Anna" has been described as the "daughter" of the Siwanoy Chief Wampage I from whom Thomas Pell I bought Pelham. Wampage I, as what the English called "king" of the Siwanoys, headed one of the six nations of the Mattabesec Indian Confederation, and he died in 1681/82 according to contemporary Connecticut records. This has led competent genealogists to challenge the claim that Anne, who was about eighteen years old when she married Thomas Pell, was his daughter. As a consequence they are inclined to dismiss the "Indian Princess story" in the Pell family history and insist that Anna was someone else - just who, they do not explain, although they pounce upon the fact that a Thomas Pell married an Aaltje Beek at the Dutch Reformed Church in New York City in March, 1702. Aaltje was clearly not Anne, and this Thomas was very evidently not Thomas, third Lord of the Manor of Pelham, but probably a member of one of the two Pell families from Norfolk, England, which had settled in New York by then. Thomas of Pelham already had two sons by March 1702/03 and it is most improbable that he married a member of the Dutch community since the relationship between the Pells and the Dutch was anything but friendly.

Now it is well to recall that at the time Wampage I was "King of the Siwanoys" and Thomas Pell I was first Lord of the Manor of Pelham, which he bought from Wampage, there were sixteen Indian nations in the territory covered by modern Connecticut, Long Island and Westchester County, New York. Originally, they were grouped in four Confederations: the Narragansetts, the Pequots, the Mohegans (Mohicans) and the Mattabesecs or Wappingers. In 1636/37 the English eliminated the Pequots, and the English, Mohegans and Mattabesecs divided territory between them. Thus, when

[p 37] Thomas Pell I established himself at Pelham, the Indian Confederations were three. The Indian Confederation which interests us is the Mattabesecs, which grouped six nations: the Hammonassets, Naugatucks, Quinnipiacs, Paugusetts, the Uncowas and the Siwanoys, sometimes called the Ramapos. The territory of this Confederation ran from well beyond the Connecticut River deep into Dutch territory, including what today is Westchester County, New York, where the Siwanoys were installed, lapping over into Connecticut, with their capital at Fairfield. Furthermore, the Indian nations on Long Island were included in the Mattabesec Confederation; that is, the Montauks, the Shinnecocks, the Uncachogues and the Poosepatucks.

Now, over this Mattabesec Confederation there rules a Paramount Chief who in Thomas Pell I's day was Romaneck, sometimes called by the English "Joseph," a warrior whose authority none dared to challenge. He had an only daughter, Prasque, and she became the bride of the Chief of the Siwanoys, Wampage, whom we shall call Wampage I, or as it was spelled in the Mohegan dialect, Wamponneage, and mispronounced by the English as Wampus or Wampers. Wampage I was also sometimes called "Ann Hook," because he was lord of the territory, hook meaning neck of land, where in 1634 he and his tribesmen killed Anne Hutchinson and her fellow colonists in Westchester whom he accused of trespassing on Indian territories.

Some time after this, Wampage I became a close friend of Thomas Pell I, who was the Indian Commissioner in Fairfield, and Wampage I and Thomas Pell I concluded much business together. Wampage I sold Pelham to Thomas in 1654, and in 1657, on March 10, he and Commissioner Pell negotiated the definitive treaty between the English and the Siwanoys whereby their respective positions were delineated. In fact after the signature of that treaty the Siwanoys “melted away (from Connecticut, that is. ed.) to parts unknown”, according to Mathias Spiess, who prepared the Report on the Indians of Connecticut for the Connecticut Tercentenary in 1933. But they remained for another hundred years in Westchester County, and in both Connecticut and Westchester County they merged through intermarriage with the English settlers. This friendship of Thomas I with Wampage I continued, at all events, into the lifetime of Sir John Pell, the second Lord, and it was Sir John who supported the petition of the Siwanoy Chieftain when

[p 38] the Privy Council in London came to consider it on March 28, 1679/80. This, in fact, was without a doubt the reason why Sir John and Lady Rachel Pinckney Pell crossed the ocean to visit London in the spring of 1678, it is now ascertained, on the eve of the hearing. After all, the validity of Sir John's own claim to Pelham was directly involved, and as a consequence he was eager to act as Wampage's witness before the Privy Council. Previously, it was with Wampage I, in 1676, that Sir John Pell negotiated a Treaty of Peace which kept the Mattabesec Confederation out of King Philip's War. This treaty, it will be recalled, was signed with Wampage I and the lesser chieftains, sitting on the lawn at Pelham under the Treaty Oak to which Thomas Pell I had nailed his arms many years before to proclaim his right to the Manor.

Thereafter Sir John Pell kept his faith with the Indians. But his loyal attitude was not echoed by many of his contemporaries, who were inclined to disregard the treaties and engagements made with the Indians and reneg on solemn pacts and contracts. Offender like the rest, but perhaps a little more so, was Major Nathan Gold, chief magistrate in Fairfield. He held that the English held their lands by right of conquest and that contracts of sale between Indians and English had no validity. To make his position clear, when the elderly Wampage came to Fairfield, formerly his capital, to collect on a bill of sale of Major Gold had him beaten and thrown into jail. Sir John Pell, hearing of Wampage's predicament, intervened to have him released on his surety, and it was in subsequent conversations between Sir John and the Indian chief, who had been baptized by this time, taking the name of John White and his wife that of Anna, or Anne, White, that the decision was taken to appeal to the Privy Council, the highest legal body in England. This decision was motivated on Sir John's part by the fact that if the Gold doctrine was maintained, his rights in Pelham, which his uncle Thomas bought from Wampage, might fall. Accordingly, in the spring of 1678, Sir John with Lady Rachel set out for London to represent Wampage before the Privy Council. After Sir John had renewed his contacts at the Court of Charles II and very probably with the King, Sir John in John Wampage White's name duly submitted a petition for redress. Hearings were held by the Privy Council with Sir John as witness in Wampage White's behalf, and on March 28, 1679, the Council ruled in favor of the petitioner

[p 39] and despatched the following notification to the Governor of Connecticut:

From the Lords of the Council to the Governor and Magistrates (of Connecticut) After our hearty Commendations. Whereas John Wampage, alias John White, has, by petition, humbly represented unto His Maty that he is by marriage of Anne, the daughter of Romaneck, late Sachem of Aspatuck and Sasquannaugh, upon the death of said Sachim, become sole propetor of those tracts of land where the Town of Fairfield in ye Colony of Connecticut is built, that the Petrs said Father in law did about nineteen years since deliver up ye possession of the said lands to the Petr who, some time after, sold part thereof to Captain Denison, Amos Richardson and others of Connecticut Colony, for the sum of Three Hundred and Fifty pounds or thereabouts, and that by the evil practices of Major Nathan Gould and other Inhabitants of Fairfield, he is not only kept out of his just rights but was also imprisoned by them in May last, when he went to demand possession of his Estate, Withall complaining of ye great hardships and Miserys he and other native Indians are subject unto by the Laws of that Colony. His Maty taking into his gracious consideration the miserable condition of the Petr, and declaring His Royal Pleasure that not only the Petr but all such Indians of New England as are his subjects and submit peaceably and quietly to His Maty's Government, shall likewise participate of his Royall Protection, wee do by his Maty's express commands signify the same unto you, requiring you to do the Petr such justice as his case may deserve and for ye future to proceed in such manner as his Maty's subjects may not be forced to undertake so long and dangerous Voyages for obteyning Justice which His Maty expects shall be speedily and impartially administered unto them upon ye Place. And so, not doubting your ready compliance herein, we bid you heartily farewell. From ye Council Chamber in Whitehall, the 28 day of March, 1679. Your loving Friends Anglesy Clarendon Ailesbury J. Bridgewater Faucenberg J. Ernle To Our Loving Friends the Governor and Magistrates of His Mty's Colony of Connecticut in New England (See Connecticut, Foreign Correspondence I, 14a)

[p 40] This order in Council was received at Hartford on May 17, 1680, possibly carried there by Sir John Pell in person because he returned to America at that time. Wampage I died soon afterwards, possibly from anguish over the continued refusal of the magistrates to bow to any authority other than their own, even the King’s. A year later, on July 27, 1681, Richard Thayer, attorney for Wampage's estate, wrote Governor Leete of Connecticut stating that he was "employed by the Executors of John Wampage, dec'd., to make inquisition after the estate which his father (sic) Romaneck gave him," that he has applied to William Hill, Recorder of the Town of Fairfield, for further information, replied that he "had the evidences in his custody but would not deliver them nor copies thereof without the advice of Major Gold." Moreover on July 22nd Mr. Thayer sumoned Mr. Hill to give his evidence "before authority." This Mr. Hill refused to do. It is at this point that attorney Thayer appealed to Governor Leete, who issued the requested order to the magistrates of Fairfield. Unfortunately we do not know what sequence was given to the Governor's order or if the heirs received any funds, legally due, from the recalcitrant townsmen of Fairfield.

Now, who inherited from John Wampage White? The evidence in the hearing before the Privy Council in London speaks of a first son who inherited his father's name and title and was to be called Wampage II, Sachem of Ann Hook and other places. There was a second son known as John Wampage White. John Wampage White's wife was none other than Elizabeth French, stepdaughter of Thomas Pell I, and their children were Elizabeth, Mary and Nathaniel White. These are the three children mentioned in Thomas I's will in 1670. To Elizabeth White, Thomas Pell, it will be recalled, bequeathed [...]. Elizabeth White, named after her mother married John Tompkins of Fairfield, to whom Sir John Pell made a grant in Westchester adjoining Pelham in 1681, upon his return from England. There John and Elizabeth Tompkins raised their six children listed by Tompkins in his will dated September 2, 1684. They were Anna, named after his wife's grandmother, Anna or Prasque; Elizabeth, named after his wife and her mother; Rebecca and Nathaniel, named after his uncle, Nathaniel White. John Tompkins named his

[p 41] brother-in-law Nathaniel White as his executor. The girls married Eastchester men; Anna married Isaac Odell.

Now, the cousins of the Tompkins children, the grandchildren of Wampage I, the children of Wampage II, were growing up on the threshold of Pelham as full blooded Indians. They were the only playmates, probably of Thomas II as a boy and his closest friends in his young manhood. In time the eldest, Anna, usually spelled Anne, named after her grandmother, the wife of Wampage I, became his fiancee. Anne, it is the theory of Mr. Morgan H. Seacord, President of the Huguenot and Historical Association of New Rochelle, probably grew up on Hunters Island where Wampage II had his stockaded "castle," and about the time of her marriage to Thomas, the ownership of Hunters Island passed from Wampage II to Sir John, and then to Thomas. Perhaps Hunters Island was Anna's dot.

Without a doubt Sir John encouraged the marriage of Anne and Thomas because this union would bring together all the skeins of Pell, Wampage and Romaneck, and put a firm seal on the ownership of Pelham. Sir John, who was clearly a man of affairs and who was deeply concerned all his life with reinforcing the title to Pelham, may have had this in mind when he permitted the courtship. Certainly he could not have been averse to the marriage of the heir to Pelham with the heiress of the Indian Sachem. We have to stretch our imagination to picture the wedding of Thomas and Anna at the Manor House. It must have been a festive occasion, crowning a friendship between an English and an Indian family through two long lives.

Thomas II, in any event, who succeeded to the Manor, lived a very active life, representing Pelham on many public occasions, and serving as vestryman in the combined parish of Pelham, New Rochelle, East Chester and West Chester. Evidently he was not martially inclined and so it was his brother John who became Captain of the Manor of Pelham and commanded the Pelham Horse. Sir John, the second Lord, gave John, his second son, Travers Island, and there he built a house, but he occupied it rarely, preferring to live at the Manor, and he never married. Ithamaria, the eldest of Thomas' two sisters, married James Eustis, son of one of the original Ten Proprietors of Eastchester to whom Thomas I made the grant on June 14, 1664. The second sister, Mary, married Samuel Rodman of the tract of land successively known as Ann Hook Neck, Pelham Neck and Rodman Neck."