It is matter of history that the
settlements on the eastern shores of the Hudson, such as Claverack,
Kinderhook, and even Poughkeepsie, were not regarded as safe from
Indian incursions a century since; and there is still standing on
the banks of the same river, and within musket-shot of the wharves
of Albany, a residence of a younger branch of the Van Rensselaers,
that has loopholes constructed for defence against the same crafty
enemy, although it dates from a period scarcely so distant. Other
similar memorials of the infancy of the country are to be found,
scattered through what is now deemed the very centre of American
civilization, affording the plainest proofs that all we possess of
security from invasion and hostile violence is the growth of but
little more than the time that is frequently fulfilled by a single
human life.
The incidents of this tale occurred between the years 1740 and 1745,
when the settled portions of the colony of New York were confined
to the four Atlantic counties, a narrow belt of country on each
side of the Hudson, extending from its mouth to the falls near its
head, and to a few advanced "neighborhoods" on the Mohawk and the
Schoharie.
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