s of Winter by the encircling hills, and it may have been
that the swamps of Mosholu Creek gave them pleasurable anticipations
of dykes and ditches--a touch of home. They had but to re-name the
creek and make it a real Amster Dam.

Spuyten Duyvil Hill toward the west was known to the Indians as
Nipnichsen. Here they had a castle or stockade to protect them against
the Sauk-hi-can-ni, the "fire workers", who dwelt on the western shore
of the great river Mohican-i-tuck, and from which later came that
delectable fire-water known as "Jersey lightning," against which no
red man is ever known to have raised a hand. In later days three small
American redoubts, known as forts Nos. 1, 2 and 3, crowned this same
hill. One of these is now doing duty as the cellar walls of a
dwelling. On the rise of ground to the east known as Tetard's Height,
was Fort Independence, or No. 4. This series of eight small forts,
which covered the upper end of Manhattan Island from the heights of
the adjoining mainland, seem to have been more ornamental than useful,
as they fell into British hands with little or no fighting. No. 8
overlooked Laurel Hill, on which stood Fort George.

In the early days King's Bridge appears to have been the only
connecting link with the mainland, for not only did travelers for the
north go this way, but it seems that those for the east also availed
themselves of this approach to the mainland, as Madam Knight, on her
journey from New Haven to New York, in 1704, speaks of coming to
"Spiting Devil, else King's Bridge, where they pay three pence for
passing over with a horse, which the man that keeps the gate set up
at the end of the bridge receives."

The "Neutral Ground" came down to this point, and during the
Revolution it was the borderland over which the raids of both
belligerents swept. Congress, recognizing its importance, ordered in
May, 1775, "That a post be immediately taken and fortified at or near
King's Bridge, and that the ground be chosen with a particular view to
prevent the communication between the City of New York and the country
from being interrupted by land."

Here in January, 1777, Major-General Heath attacked a body of Hessians
under Knyphausen and drove them within their works, but the Americans
were in turn driven off, and again in 1781, in order to afford the
French officers a view of the British outposts, the American Army
moved down to King's Bridge when the usual skirmish followed--in fact,