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INDEX

TENTH GENERATION

518. Capt. Arien/ Albert Heymanse Roosa

519. Maria Evertse Pels



Purchase of Indian Lands in Ulster County, NY
Rhinebeck -- On a June day 300 years ago, three settlers from the Wiltwyck (Kingston, Ulster, NY) area made a deal with some Indians for land on the east shore of the Hudson River across from Rondout Creek... The three, Gerrit Artsen and Jan Elton [Elting], together with a Portuguese Jew named (518) Arie Roosa, purchased the land from the Indians as speculators hoping to cash in on future development, according to two professors whose field of expertise is the Indians of New York.
 
State University College at New Paltz history professor Laurence Hauptman and Ohio University anthropology professor Robert Grumet agreed that both the Europeans and the three members of the Esopus tribe lived on the west side of the river principally. The Indians are listed on the deed as Aran Kee, Kreme Much and Korra Kee. Aran Kee, known on other deeds as Ankony, was really armed Aramuchtan, said Grumet. He was part of a clan or group of Esopus Indians in the Wiltwyck area who owned land on what is now the Rhinecliff side of the Hudson River. Kreme Much, he said, was probably Pemmryawech, husband-consort to the female sachem (chief) Mamanuchqua, said Grumet, who is in the area working on a book on the Hudson Valley Indians of the 17th and 18th century. Grumet said he does not know about Korra Kee.
 
...Grumet and Hauptman pointed to "the Livingston landgrab" in what is now northern Dutchess southern Columbia counties as a classic example. [The Whitemans acted as agents for the Livingstons in the next century.] They recalled that in 1685, Robert Livingston bought up strategically placed points of land from the Indians. He then applied to the English crown for a patent that not only covered those pieces of land, but the land between the areas he had purchased.
 
"The Indians flipped out," said Grumet.
 
"It was a clear attempt to cheat the Indians and other settlers who wanted the land," Hauptmann agreed. Eventually, Livingston had to buy the Indians out. But as for Artsen, (518) Roosa and Elton, "they probably kept the land for speculative purposes," rather than settling on it. [NYG&BR contradicts this, saying that Arie Roosa settled on the new purchase.]"
 
-- Poughkeepsie Journal, August 6, 1986, p. 8B, c/o Harvey Auster
 

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