Kieft, in his blind rage, resolved upon the extermination of the Raritans.

He offered a large bounty for the head of any member of that tribe.
It will be remembered that some years before an Indian had been robbed and murdered near the pond, in the vicinity of the fort at Manhattan, and that his nephew, a boy, had escaped.

That boy was now a man, and, through all these years, with almost religious scrupulousness, had been cherishing his sense of duty to avenge his uncle's unatoned death.
A very harmless Dutchman, by the name of Claes Smits, had reared his solitary hut upon the Indian trail near the East river.

The nephew of the murdered savage came one day to this humble dwelling, and stopped under the pretence of selling some beaver skins.

As Smits was stooping over the great chest in which he kept his goods, the savage, seizing an axe, killed him by a single blow.