28 HISTORY OF Superintendent of Indians Affairs in America^ through whose agency treaties were formed, and purchases consummaited with the Aborigines. The earliest settlement in Tryon county, of which ! find any record, was made by a company of Grerman Palatines, in the early part of the eighteenth century. About 1709 or 1710, three thousand Palatines landed at New York, many of whom had served in the army of Queen Anne, by whom they were hired of the princes who ruled over them. A large portion of these emigrants were induced by Penn to settle on his lands in Pennsylvania; many settled in New York, where they erected the first Lutheran church in America — settle- ments were made by them at East and West Camp, on the Hudson, and the remaining families emigrated to Schoharie county. The journey from Albany occupied four days; they crossed the spur of the Catskill mountains, which extends through the present county of Albany from north to south ; and which they named in their native tongue, " Heldeburgh,'^ signifying Prospect Hill ;" carrying upon their backs tools and provisions, with which they had fortunately provided themselves. They located in the beautiful and fertile valley of the Schoharie-kill, more or less of which had been cleared, and to some extent improved and cultivated by the Schoharie Indians, who had located there — tradition says — twenty years before. These settlements continued to spread until the outbreak of the Revolution, when their comparatively prosperous condition was suddenly and fearfully disturbed; when their homes became the theatre of a dark and bloody war. The compara- tively remote situation of the little settlement from the theatre of military operations, surrounded as they were by forests, which formed a shelter and a hiding-place for their savage foe, rendering them the fit subjects of Indian barbarity and wanton cruelty. Devastation and destruction, like meteoric flames,
