"Indeed, we all love you dearly, grandma," exclaimed Ned. "But, now, please won't you go on and tell us some more? Tell about the Indians, and what they and the white folks did to each other."
"I could not tell all that was done, nor would it be a pleasant story if I could," replied Grandma Elsie. "The Esopus Indians lived on the flats extending northward from the creek for some distance. They did not fancy their white neighbors, and determined to kill them. They fell upon the settlement one day while the able-bodied men were in the field and slew sixty-five persons. The others fled to the redoubt, and the Indians began to build a stockade near it. But a call for help was sent to New York, and the Governor sent troops, who drove the Indians back to the mountains. Not long afterward the Dutch followed the Indians into their fastnesses, destroyed their forts and villages, laid waste their fields, burned their stores of maize, killed many of their warriors, captured eleven of them, and released twenty-two of the Dutch whom they were holding captives. All that led to a truce the next December and a treaty of peace the following May."
"Were the Huguenots there when all that happened, grandma?" asked
Eric.
"No; as I have told you, it was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes which drove them from their native land to this foreign shore, and that did not take place until 1685—more than twenty years later."
"Were the Indians all gone from about Kingston by that time, grandma?" asked Eric.
"Oh, no!" she said. "They as well as the Tories gave a great deal of trouble to the Patriots during the Revolutionary War—that hard struggle for freedom. At the time of the Revolution the New York Legislature, then called 'Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York,' migrated from place to place, being compelled to do so by the movements of the enemy, and finally, in February, 1777, took up their quarters in Kingston until May of that year. They were making a Constitution for the State. It proved a very excellent one, and was adopted. And the first session of the legislature of the State was appointed to meet at Kingston in July. So Kingston was the capital of the State when Sir Henry Clinton took the forts in the Hudson Highlands; and because it was the capital he marked it out for special vengeance.
"The British fleet, under Sir James Wallace, came up the river with 3600 men under the command of General Vaughan. The order given them was to scatter desolation in their track; and they obeyed—destroying all vessels on the river and firing from the ships upon the houses of known Patriots. Also small parties landed and desolated whole neighborhoods with fire and sword. They landed near Kingston on the 13th of October in two divisions, each taking a different road to the town, and burning and destroying as they went. They joined upon a gentle eminence and marched into the town,—then but a small village,—began setting the houses on fire, and soon had almost every one laid in ashes."
"Was Kingston only a very little place then, grandma?" asked Eric.
"A town of only three or four thousand inhabitants," she replied. "Some of the people—warned of the approach of the British—had succeeded in hiding their most valuable effects, but others lost all they had. A large quantity of provisions and stores was destroyed. After doing all that mischief, the British—fearing the American people would gather together and come upon and punish them for all this wanton cruelty—hastily retreated."
"Did it do them any good to burn down the town, grandma?" asked Eric hotly.