=Castleton=, a pleasant village on the eastern bank, with main street lying close to the river.  The cliffs, a few miles to the north, were known to the Indians as Scoti-ack, or place of the ever-burning council-fire, which gave the name of Schodack to the township, where King Aepgin, on the 8th of April, 1680, sold to Van Rensselaer “all that tract of country on the west side of the Hudson, extending from Beeren Island up to Smack’s Island, and in breadth two days’ journey.”

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    No spot in all the world where poetry and romance
    are so closely blended with the heroic in history as
    along the banks of our Hudson.

    Wallace Bruce.

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THE MAHICAN TRIBE originally occupied all the east bank of the Hudson north of Roeliffe Jansen’s Kill, near Germantown, to the head waters of the Hudson; and on the west bank, from Cohoes to Catskill.  The town of Schodack was central, and a signal displayed from the hills near Castleton could be seen for thirty miles in every direction.  After the Mahicans left the Hudson, they went to Westenhook, or Housatonic, to the hills south of Stockbridge; and then, on invitation of the Oneidas, removed to Oneida County, in 1785, where they lived until 1821, when, with other Indians of New York, they purchased a tract of land near Fox River, Minnesota.

Domestic clans or families of the Mahicans lingered around their ancient seats for some years after the close of the Revolution, but of them, one after another, it is written, “They disappeared in the night.”  In the language of Tamerund at the death of Uncas, “The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red men has not yet come again.  My day has been too long.  In the morning I saw the sons of Unami happy and strong; and yet before the night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the race of the Mahicans.”

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Autumn had given uniformity of coloring to the woods.  It varied now between copper and gold, and shone like an infinitely rich golden embroidery on the Indian veil of mist which rested upon the heights along the Hudson.

    Harriet Martineau.

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According to Ruttenber, the names and location of the Indian tribes were not ascertained with clearness by the early Dutch settlers, but through documents, treaties and information, subsequently obtained, it is now settled that the Mahicans held possession “under sub-tribal organizations” of the east bank of the river from an undefined point north of Albany to the sea, including Long Island; that their dominion extended east to the Connecticut, where they joined kindred tribes; that on the west bank of the Hudson they ran down as far as Catskill, and west to Schenectady; that they were met on the west by the territory of the Mohawks, and on the south by tribes of the Lenni Lenapes or Delawares, whose territory extended thence to the sea, and west to and beyond the Delaware River.  The Mahicans had a castle at Catskill and at Cohoes Falls.  The western side of the Hudson, above Cohoes, belonged to the Mohawks, a branch of the Iroquois.  Therefore, as early as 1630, three great nations were represented on the Hudson—­