The first chief or attaman of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, Polish Cossacks, or Cossacks of the Dnieper, (for they are all three comprised under this denomination,) appears to have been Przeclaw Lanckoronski (pronounced Pchetslave Lantskoronsqui), staroste de Khmielnitza, a Polish noble of very ancient and distinguished family. At first the union of the Cossacks with Poland (in 1515) was the source of great embarrassment to the latter, seeing that over the vast pasture grounds of Podolia, then but nominally belonging to Poland, and forming scarcely more than a desert waste, the Turks left their herds of cattle to rove at will beyond the river Dneister. In so doing, they had never yet experienced any hindrance whatever. The Cossacks, however, urged by their thirst for rapine, and without permission from the Polish government, fell on their defenceless neighbours, whom they surrounded on all sides, massacred the herdsmen, and seized upon their cattle. At the news of this outrage, the Turks passed the Dniester, which they then regarded as the limit or barrier between the two states, and in their turn fell upon the aggressors. The Turks were defeated, but returned to the charge, seven times invaded Podolia, and set the Tatars upon Poland. This was afterwards the fruitful source of frequent and calamitous wars between Turkey and Poland, and between the Cossacks and the Tatars; whereas their true line of policy would have been for all to have united for mutual self-defence against their common enemy the Russians.
As the Cossacks aided Sigismund I. on his return from his Russian expedition to take possession of Bialogrod, they thereby insinuated themselves into his good graces; and shortly afterwards the Diet of Piotrkow (in French, Petrykof) accorded them (in 1518), by the influence of that prince, a kind of pay or subsidy, on condition of their defending the frontiers; and it is only from this period that they are officially known throughout Poland under the name of Cossacks. By a second resolution of the Diet of 1529, both their numbers and their pay was somewhat increased. But it must be here remarked that the crown of Poland never recognized any territorial rights as belonging to the Cossacks; a precaution equally just as prudent. Sigismund, however, with his habitual sagacity, resolved to turn this irregular militia to some useful account, and to render it, by degrees, advantageous to the state; for this reason, he permitted Ostaii Daszkiewicz (pronounced Daschkievitch), a man of low extraction, but of great intelligence and bravery, to organize them if possible into regular form and discipline, and to instruct them in the art of war; a task which he accompKshed to a certain point. He fashioned them into something like a regular body of militia, by means of which he was enabled to repel the incursions of the Tatars, and to gain some advantages over the Ottomans, the Wallachians, and the Russians. The king, Sigismund, not only ennobled the successful chieftain, but conferred upon him the starosties of Czerkassy with Krzyczef and Cieciersk (pronounced Tcherkassy, Kchitcheve, Tsetshiersque,) on the banks of the Dnieper, and appointed him attaman or chief of all the Polish Cossacks, as the recompense of his fidelity, valour, and good conduct. Although Daszkiewicz was not the first attaman of the Cossacks in question, yet it is to him nevertheless that is incontestably due the merit of having laid the first stone of their military organization: his successors but followed in the track he had originally marked out for them, and only perfected the work his genius had commenced.