Longfellow._
* * *
It is also pleasant to remember that the Mahicans as a tribe were true
and faithful to us during the war of the Revolution, and when the six
nations met in council at Oswego, at the request of Guy Johnson and
other officers of the British army, "to eat the flesh and drink the
blood of a Bostonian," Hendrick, the Mahican, made the pledge for his
tribe at Albany, almost in the eloquent words of Ruth to Naomi, "Thy
people shall be our people, and whither thou goest we will be at your
side."
=The Mourdener's Kill=, with its sad story of a girl tied by Indians
to a horse and dragged through the valley, flows into the Hudson above
Castleton. Two miles above this near the steamer channel will be seen
Staats Island on the east, with an old stone house, said to be next in
antiquity to the old Van Rensselaer House, opposite Albany. It is also
a fact that this property passed directly to the ancestors of the
present family, the only property in this vicinity never owned by the
lord of the manor. Opposite the old stone house, the point on the west
bank is known as Parda Hook, where it is said a horse was once drowned
in a horse-race on the ice, and hence the name Parda, for the old
Hollanders along the Hudson seemed to have had a musical ear, and
delighted in accumulating syllables.
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