Pound Ridge Massacre

The Pound Ridge massacre was a battle of Kieft's War that took place in March 1644 between the forces of New Netherland and members of the Wappinger Confederacy at a Wappinger Confederacy village in the present-day town of Pound Ridge, New York. A mixed force of 130 Dutch and English soldiers led by Captain John Underhill launched a night attack on the village and destroyed it with fire. 500 to 700 members of the Wappinger Confederacy were killed while the New Netherland force lost one man killed and fifteen wounded. More casualties were suffered in this attack than in any other single incident in the war. Shortly after the battle several local Wappinger Confederacy sachems sued for peace.

Kieft’s War began in 1640 as a result of escalating tensions over land use, livestock control, trade and taxation between the Dutch West India Company colony of New Netherland and neighboring native peoples. In September 1639 Director Willem Kieft decided to levy a tax in pelts, maize or wampum on Indian peoples surrounding New Amsterdam. In May 1640 the Director ordered each of the inhabitants to provide themselves with a gun and organized them under corporals. The conflict began when members of the Raritan tribe attacked a sloop sent to trade with them in the spring of 1640. Several Raritan, Dutch colonists and Dutch livestock were killed on Staten Island in 1640 and 1641. Kieft placed bounties of wampum on the Raritan which bought him the alliance of several Indian groups. These included the Indians of western Long Island as well as the Tankiteke of the Wappinger Confederacy led by their sachem Pachum. The Tankiteke inhabited present-day eastern Westchester County, New York and Fairfield County, Connecticut. The Dutch then came into conflict with the Wecquaesgeek of the Wappinger Confederacy in present-day Westchester County over the murder of a Dutch settler on Manhattan. The Dutch launched an abortive expedition against the Wesquaesgeek in 1642. That year also saw the beginning of armed conflict with the Hackensack tribe of present-day New Jersey with the murder of two Dutch colonists. In February 1643 the Wesquaesgeek were attacked by musket-wielding Mohawk from the vicinity of Fort Orange and sought shelter on Manhattan and in Hackensack territory. On February 25 the Dutch killed between 80 and 120 of the Wesquaesgeek in surprise attacks at Corlaer’s Hook in Manhattan and Pavonia in Hackensack territory. There was subsequently conflict between the Dutch and Indians of Long Island. Tentative treaties were negotiated with the Hackensack, Wesquaesgeek and Long Island Indians, but the former Tankiteke ally Pachum brought the Wappinger Confederacy into war with the Dutch in August 1643. The Wappinger tribe attacked Dutch ships along the Hudson River beginning with an incident in their territory in present-day Poughkeepsie, New York. Soon other Indian groups rejoined the war and all of the Dutch settlements in present-day Westchester and New Jersey were destroyed or abandoned. The Siwanoy, who lived along the Long Island Sound between Hell Gate and Norwalk, killed 18 settlers including religious dissenter Anne Hutchinson in an attack near present-day New Rochelle.

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