When the Dutch gave the name of Katzbergs to the mountains west of the Hudson,
by reason of the wild-cats and panthers that ranged there, they obliterated the
beautiful Indian Ontiora, “mountains of the sky.” In one tradition of the red
men these hills were bones of a monster that fed on human beings until the Great
Spirit turned it into stone as it was floundering toward the ocean to bathe. The
two lakes near the summit were its eyes. These peaks were the home of an Indian
witch, who adjusted the weather for the Hudson Valley with the certainty of a
signal service bureau. It was she who let out the day and night in blessed
alternation, holding back the one when the other was at large, for fear of
conflict. Old moons she cut into stars as soon as she had hung new ones in the
sky, and she was often seen perched on Round Top and North Mountain, spinning
clouds and flinging them to the winds. Woe betide the valley residents if they
showed irreverence, for then the clouds were black and heavy, and through them
she poured floods of rain and launched the lightnings, causing disastrous
freshets in the streams and blasting the wigwams of the mockers. In a frolic
humor she would take the form of a bear or deer and lead the Indian hunters
anything but a merry dance, exposing them to tire and peril, and vanishing or
assuming some terrible shape when they had overtaken her. Sometimes she would
lead them to the cloves and would leap into the air with a mocking “Ho, ho!”
just as they stopped with a shudder at the brink of an abyss. Garden Rock was a
spot where she was often found, and at its foot a lake once spread. This was
held in such awe that an Indian would never wittingly pursue his quarry there;
but once a hunter lost his way and emerged from the forest at the edge of the
pond. Seeing a number of gourds in crotches of the trees he took one, but
fearing the spirit he turned to leave so quickly that he stumbled and it fell.
As it broke, a spring welled from it in such volume that the unhappy man was
gulfed in its waters, swept to the edge of Kaaterskill clove and dashed on the
rocks two hundred and sixty feet below. Nor did the water ever cease to run, and
in these times the stream born of the witch’s revenge is known as Catskill
Creek.
