The firearms of white men at Beverwyck and in Rensselaerswyck began to impair the value of the hunting grounds in their vicinity, and Van Curler learned that the Indians might consent to sell their lands at Schenectady. He looked about for associates in the purchase of the lands and their settlement, and sifted out fourteen. He applied to the Director General or Governor of the province, Peter Stuyvesant—whose real qualities and worth and those of his good subjects the pen of Irving has replaced with the genial travesties of his enduring caricature,—and obtained his reluctant consent to the purchase. He then applied to the Indian chiefs. They too were reluctant. Schonowe was the site of one of their most ancient castles. It had long been their favorite home. Their traditions covered many generations, but no tradition reached back to their first coming. Still they well remembered that Hiawatha had lived here, two centuries or more before.
Hiawatha, the chief, of whom the Great Spirit was an ancestor, and whose wisdom, goodness and valor far surpassed that of other men, was the founder of the confederacy of the Five Nations. He devoted his long life to the good of his people, teaching them to live nobler
