Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/71

DELAWARE COUNTY. 47 part of the patent, for farm or family uses. The date of these deeds is April 6, 1763. The Indian village of Pakatakan, was a little above the site of the present village of Margaretville, as before stated, and near the junction of the Bush-kill with the East Branch. Mr. Kittle designated it as a Tuscarora village, and informed me that the Indian etymology of the name was, " The place where the streams come together, or The meeting of the water s,^^ a very appropriate cognomen, as three very considera- ble streams intersect in that neighborhood, besides three or four smaller ones. The early settlers were principaUy Dutch, and both wrote and spoke that language. They lived, so far as I have been able to learn, upon very friendly terms with the Indians, up to the dark period of the Revolutionary war. They suffered all the privations incident to a new and distant settlement, and were for a long period obliged to do their milling, trading, &c., at Esopus, forty-five miles distant, and the greater part of the distance being through an unbroken wilderness.* For a period of more than ten years from the first settlement, and until the breaking out of hostilities, the little colony continued slow- ly to increase in the valley of the Delaware, and nearly all the alluvial lands along the main stream were occupied, and more or less improved for a distance of more than twenty miles. Several schools were also established, where instruction was given in the Dutch dialect. But few of the names of those who settled before the war has been handed down to us ; among them, we find those of Hermanns and Peter Dumond, Van Waggoner, Hendricks, Mr. Kittle informed me, that both the settlers and Indians (who, it seems employed horses,) fastened their horses and cut fodder for them at the Beaver meadaws, in Roxbury, distant ten or twelve miles, fol- lowing an Indian trail or foot-path, from Pakatakan to the meadows.