Jim Remsen's Blog: The Slave as "Crushed Vegetable'', page 3
June 19, 2015
Legend of The Bloody Rock
You�ve heard of the Bloody Rock? Sometimes called Queen Esther�s Rock? No?
I�m accustomed to getting blank looks when I ask. It�s such a shame, and one more example of how we�ve forgotten so much of our amazing local history. As the anniversary of that gory event nears, allow me to explain what�s still there�on the roadside in northern Pennsylvania--for you to see.
The incident occurred 237 years ago, immediately after a Revolutionary War fight on the banks of the Susquehanna River near present-day Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Because that area is known as the Wyoming Valley, the fight is officially called the Battle of Wyoming. The Patriot side, however, termed it the Wyoming Valley Massacre because of how their militia was overrun and slaughtered by a joint British-Indian force that afternoon of July 3, 1778.
I recounted the gruesome event during an author talk last week at the Rydal Park senior residence outside Philadelphia. Accounts of the battlefield mayhem had already sobered my 45 listeners, and they really began cringing when I started describing the Bloody Rock. On the evening of the battle, I told them, a dozen or so of the Patriot militiamen who�d fled the slaughter were hunted down, tied up, and led to a stone slab near the river. As night fell, the men were placed around the rock, prone on the ground, with their heads on the rock. And there they were summarily killed.
It�s said this was the work of the Indian warriors. A white witness hiding nearby swore that the executioner was a native woman. He said he saw her lift a war club and, dancing and screaming, methodically bash the skulls of the captives one by one. And he said she was Indian royalty: the matriarch already known to the whites as Queen Esther.
I�ve gotten to know the Bloody Rock story quite well because Queen Esther is the protagonist of Visions of Teaoga, my historical novel about Indian-settler conflict in the Eastern woodlands. As a boy growing up near Wilkes-Barre, I had heard of the Wyoming Valley Massacre but didn�t really know what it was about. I�d never of Queen Esther, either, so I knew nothing about her supposed role. None of this awesome history was taught to us in school, and it�s still skipped over. Visions of Teaoga is my attempt to fill that gap.
Queen Esther was an extraordinary, complicated person, and a natural to serve as my storyteller. I see her as a tragic figure on a Shakespearean scale. People still argue about her role in the Bloody Rock episode, and even about who she really was. I found six different versions of her origins and lineage and went with the one I found most credible, that she was full-blooded Shawnee.
But was she a killer? There are documented accounts of Esther being a peace woman who had good relations with white neighbors for much of her life. Some say it wouldn�t be like her to perpetrate a massacre of helpless captives, and that in any event she was too far away from the battlefield that day. But others who knew her swore she was the one who lifted the bloody maul. Indeed, it is possible that she did it. Perhaps she psychologically snapped from a lifetime of setbacks to her people. Maybe she was enacting the revenge required because of the death of one her sons earlier in the battle. (I work it out in a plausible way in my book�s climax.)
What we do know is that to the enraged Patriot public, Esther was seen as evil incarnate. They called her a demon, the �Butcher of Wyoming.� General Washington ordered a foray that burned down Queen�s Esther Village, the town she led on the upper Susquehanna, and followed that with the Sullivan Campaign that invaded the Iroquois heartland to destroy crops and villages. It�s said Esther went into seclusion and remained a wanted woman for the rest of her life.
Nationalist propaganda focused on the slaughter of the Patriot fighters but overlooked the fact that the outnumbered militiamen foolishly left their fort and marched into a trap after spurning an offer to surrender and be spared. It was blind to the fact that the warriors killed men who took up arms against them--but let all the women and children flee the bloodbath. And it said nothing about why the �savages� were so wrathful; many were carrying out a delayed vengeance for a controversial land grab that had dispossessed their families of the Wyoming Valley a generation earlier.
In the early years of our nation, the bloody episode grew legendary, its victims heroicized. The events inspired the name of the then-new Wyoming territory out west. In 1843, a hulking obelisk was built near the battle site to memorialize the dead militiamen.
Every July 4, a public ceremony is held at the obelisk to commemorate the battle. You can attend the one scheduled for this July 4 at 10 a.m.
And you can drive north a mile, to the little town of Wyoming, Pa., and visit the actual Bloody Rock. It�s covered by a metal grate to protect it from souvenir hunters. You�ll see a plaque that the DAR installed in 1895 that pins the deed squarely on Esther. Fortunately, it�s surmounted now by a state historical marker that corrects the record by noting that the killer was �traditionally but not certainly identified as �Queen Esther.��
Check it out. This is the stuff of legend, and a history too rich to forget.
I�m accustomed to getting blank looks when I ask. It�s such a shame, and one more example of how we�ve forgotten so much of our amazing local history. As the anniversary of that gory event nears, allow me to explain what�s still there�on the roadside in northern Pennsylvania--for you to see.
The incident occurred 237 years ago, immediately after a Revolutionary War fight on the banks of the Susquehanna River near present-day Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Because that area is known as the Wyoming Valley, the fight is officially called the Battle of Wyoming. The Patriot side, however, termed it the Wyoming Valley Massacre because of how their militia was overrun and slaughtered by a joint British-Indian force that afternoon of July 3, 1778.
I recounted the gruesome event during an author talk last week at the Rydal Park senior residence outside Philadelphia. Accounts of the battlefield mayhem had already sobered my 45 listeners, and they really began cringing when I started describing the Bloody Rock. On the evening of the battle, I told them, a dozen or so of the Patriot militiamen who�d fled the slaughter were hunted down, tied up, and led to a stone slab near the river. As night fell, the men were placed around the rock, prone on the ground, with their heads on the rock. And there they were summarily killed.
It�s said this was the work of the Indian warriors. A white witness hiding nearby swore that the executioner was a native woman. He said he saw her lift a war club and, dancing and screaming, methodically bash the skulls of the captives one by one. And he said she was Indian royalty: the matriarch already known to the whites as Queen Esther.
I�ve gotten to know the Bloody Rock story quite well because Queen Esther is the protagonist of Visions of Teaoga, my historical novel about Indian-settler conflict in the Eastern woodlands. As a boy growing up near Wilkes-Barre, I had heard of the Wyoming Valley Massacre but didn�t really know what it was about. I�d never of Queen Esther, either, so I knew nothing about her supposed role. None of this awesome history was taught to us in school, and it�s still skipped over. Visions of Teaoga is my attempt to fill that gap.
Queen Esther was an extraordinary, complicated person, and a natural to serve as my storyteller. I see her as a tragic figure on a Shakespearean scale. People still argue about her role in the Bloody Rock episode, and even about who she really was. I found six different versions of her origins and lineage and went with the one I found most credible, that she was full-blooded Shawnee.
But was she a killer? There are documented accounts of Esther being a peace woman who had good relations with white neighbors for much of her life. Some say it wouldn�t be like her to perpetrate a massacre of helpless captives, and that in any event she was too far away from the battlefield that day. But others who knew her swore she was the one who lifted the bloody maul. Indeed, it is possible that she did it. Perhaps she psychologically snapped from a lifetime of setbacks to her people. Maybe she was enacting the revenge required because of the death of one her sons earlier in the battle. (I work it out in a plausible way in my book�s climax.)
What we do know is that to the enraged Patriot public, Esther was seen as evil incarnate. They called her a demon, the �Butcher of Wyoming.� General Washington ordered a foray that burned down Queen�s Esther Village, the town she led on the upper Susquehanna, and followed that with the Sullivan Campaign that invaded the Iroquois heartland to destroy crops and villages. It�s said Esther went into seclusion and remained a wanted woman for the rest of her life.
Nationalist propaganda focused on the slaughter of the Patriot fighters but overlooked the fact that the outnumbered militiamen foolishly left their fort and marched into a trap after spurning an offer to surrender and be spared. It was blind to the fact that the warriors killed men who took up arms against them--but let all the women and children flee the bloodbath. And it said nothing about why the �savages� were so wrathful; many were carrying out a delayed vengeance for a controversial land grab that had dispossessed their families of the Wyoming Valley a generation earlier.
In the early years of our nation, the bloody episode grew legendary, its victims heroicized. The events inspired the name of the then-new Wyoming territory out west. In 1843, a hulking obelisk was built near the battle site to memorialize the dead militiamen.
Every July 4, a public ceremony is held at the obelisk to commemorate the battle. You can attend the one scheduled for this July 4 at 10 a.m.
And you can drive north a mile, to the little town of Wyoming, Pa., and visit the actual Bloody Rock. It�s covered by a metal grate to protect it from souvenir hunters. You�ll see a plaque that the DAR installed in 1895 that pins the deed squarely on Esther. Fortunately, it�s surmounted now by a state historical marker that corrects the record by noting that the killer was �traditionally but not certainly identified as �Queen Esther.��
Check it out. This is the stuff of legend, and a history too rich to forget.
May 31, 2015
'Cataclysmic Change'
An elegant summary of Pennsylvania’s fraught history with its original people has just been posted on the online Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. A good friend who runs a Philadelphia tour-guide business alerted me to the new essay, and now I commend it to your reading as well.
The author, Gettysburg College history professor Timothy J. Shannon, highlights many of the points that come through in Visions of Teaoga, my historical novel about Indian-settler conflicts in the 1700s. His opening passage captures the problem: “Relations between Pennsylvania’s Native American and European peoples underwent cataclysmic change during the second half of the eighteenth century. Despite the reputation for peaceful intercultural relations that Pennsylvania had enjoyed since its founding in 1681, a series of wars engulfed its frontiers after 1754, leading to the dispossession and exile of the colony’s native peoples.”
The essay covers the same bloody ground that I do in the book. Shannon recounts the fraudulent land purchases, chief among them the notorious Walking Purchase. Also, the arrival into Pennsylvania of other dispossessed native groups from the south, and their being herded into what he calls “polyglot” refugee towns. As my readers know, the protagonist of Visions of Teaoga, the Shawnee matriarch Queen Esther, led just such a mixed village.
Further, Shannon writes about how the Iroquois Confederacy big-footed smaller native groups in the state and even sold land out from under them. He describes the intra-tribal tensions this caused, and the Delawares’ particular determination to regain their hold on the Wyoming Valley. The raids and counter-raids of the French and Indian War resulted in a mutual, raw animosity that has never died. From then on, Shannon writes, “frontier settlers assumed all Indians were hostile and tacitly condoned their exile or murder. Speculators from within and outside the colony competed against each other for Indian land, paying little heed” to prior agreements.
The Revolutionary War brought more bloodshed and revenge raids on a grand scale; these events comprise perhaps the most dramatic era in the state’s history, and the most powerful chapters in my book. Again, in Shannon’s words: “By the war’s end, nearly every Indian community within Pennsylvania’s borders had either been destroyed or abandoned and their survivors forced to seek refuge in Ohio or New York. The state of Pennsylvania recognized no federal or state Indian reservations within its borders.”
Tough stuff, but true.
Take a few minutes to absorb this little-told but important chapter in our history. You can find it here: http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/a...
The author, Gettysburg College history professor Timothy J. Shannon, highlights many of the points that come through in Visions of Teaoga, my historical novel about Indian-settler conflicts in the 1700s. His opening passage captures the problem: “Relations between Pennsylvania’s Native American and European peoples underwent cataclysmic change during the second half of the eighteenth century. Despite the reputation for peaceful intercultural relations that Pennsylvania had enjoyed since its founding in 1681, a series of wars engulfed its frontiers after 1754, leading to the dispossession and exile of the colony’s native peoples.”
The essay covers the same bloody ground that I do in the book. Shannon recounts the fraudulent land purchases, chief among them the notorious Walking Purchase. Also, the arrival into Pennsylvania of other dispossessed native groups from the south, and their being herded into what he calls “polyglot” refugee towns. As my readers know, the protagonist of Visions of Teaoga, the Shawnee matriarch Queen Esther, led just such a mixed village.
Further, Shannon writes about how the Iroquois Confederacy big-footed smaller native groups in the state and even sold land out from under them. He describes the intra-tribal tensions this caused, and the Delawares’ particular determination to regain their hold on the Wyoming Valley. The raids and counter-raids of the French and Indian War resulted in a mutual, raw animosity that has never died. From then on, Shannon writes, “frontier settlers assumed all Indians were hostile and tacitly condoned their exile or murder. Speculators from within and outside the colony competed against each other for Indian land, paying little heed” to prior agreements.
The Revolutionary War brought more bloodshed and revenge raids on a grand scale; these events comprise perhaps the most dramatic era in the state’s history, and the most powerful chapters in my book. Again, in Shannon’s words: “By the war’s end, nearly every Indian community within Pennsylvania’s borders had either been destroyed or abandoned and their survivors forced to seek refuge in Ohio or New York. The state of Pennsylvania recognized no federal or state Indian reservations within its borders.”
Tough stuff, but true.
Take a few minutes to absorb this little-told but important chapter in our history. You can find it here: http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/a...
May 30, 2015
'Cataclysmic Change'
An elegant summary of Pennsylvania’s fraught history with its original people has just been posted on the online Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. A good friend who runs a Philadelphia tour-guide business alerted me to the new essay, and now I commend it to your reading as well.
The author, Gettysburg College history professor Timothy J. Shannon, highlights many of the points that come through in Visions of Teaoga, my historical novel about Indian-settler conflicts in the 1700s. His opening passage captures the problem: “Relations between Pennsylvania’s Native American and European peoples underwent cataclysmic change Read More
The author, Gettysburg College history professor Timothy J. Shannon, highlights many of the points that come through in Visions of Teaoga, my historical novel about Indian-settler conflicts in the 1700s. His opening passage captures the problem: “Relations between Pennsylvania’s Native American and European peoples underwent cataclysmic change Read More
'Cataclysmic Change'
An elegant summary of Pennsylvania�s fraught history with its original people has just been posted on the online Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. A good friend who runs a Philadelphia tour-guide business alerted me to the new essay, and now I commend it to your reading as well.
The author, Gettysburg College history professor Timothy J. Shannon, highlights many of the points that come through in Visions of Teaoga, my historical novel about Indian-settler conflicts in the 1700s. His opening passage captures the problem: �Relations between Pennsylvania�s Native American and European peoples underwent cataclysmic change during the second half of the eighteenth century. Despite the reputation for peaceful intercultural relations that Pennsylvania had enjoyed since its founding in 1681, a series of wars engulfed its frontiers after 1754, leading to the dispossession and exile of the colony�s native peoples.�
The essay covers the same bloody ground that I do in the book. Shannon recounts the fraudulent land purchases, chief among them the notorious Walking Purchase. Also, the arrival into Pennsylvania of other dispossessed native groups from the south, and their being herded into what he calls �polyglot� refugee towns. As my readers know, the protagonist of Visions of Teaoga, the Shawnee matriarch Queen Esther, led just such a mixed village.
Further, Shannon writes about how the Iroquois Confederacy big-footed smaller native groups in the state and even sold land out from under them. He describes the intra-tribal tensions this caused, and the Delawares� particular determination to regain their hold on the Wyoming Valley. The raids and counter-raids of the French and Indian War resulted in a mutual, raw animosity that has never died. From then on, Shannon writes, �frontier settlers assumed all Indians were hostile and tacitly condoned their exile or murder. Speculators from within and outside the colony competed against each other for Indian land, paying little heed� to prior agreements.
The Revolutionary War brought more bloodshed and revenge raids on a grand scale; these events comprise perhaps the most dramatic era in the state�s history, and the most powerful chapters in my book. Again, in Shannon�s words: �By the war�s end, nearly every Indian community within Pennsylvania�s borders had either been destroyed or abandoned and their survivors forced to seek refuge in Ohio or New York. The state of Pennsylvania recognized no federal or state Indian reservations within its borders.�
Tough stuff, but true.
Take a few minutes to absorb this little-told but important chapter in our history. You can find it here: http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/a...
The author, Gettysburg College history professor Timothy J. Shannon, highlights many of the points that come through in Visions of Teaoga, my historical novel about Indian-settler conflicts in the 1700s. His opening passage captures the problem: �Relations between Pennsylvania�s Native American and European peoples underwent cataclysmic change during the second half of the eighteenth century. Despite the reputation for peaceful intercultural relations that Pennsylvania had enjoyed since its founding in 1681, a series of wars engulfed its frontiers after 1754, leading to the dispossession and exile of the colony�s native peoples.�
The essay covers the same bloody ground that I do in the book. Shannon recounts the fraudulent land purchases, chief among them the notorious Walking Purchase. Also, the arrival into Pennsylvania of other dispossessed native groups from the south, and their being herded into what he calls �polyglot� refugee towns. As my readers know, the protagonist of Visions of Teaoga, the Shawnee matriarch Queen Esther, led just such a mixed village.
Further, Shannon writes about how the Iroquois Confederacy big-footed smaller native groups in the state and even sold land out from under them. He describes the intra-tribal tensions this caused, and the Delawares� particular determination to regain their hold on the Wyoming Valley. The raids and counter-raids of the French and Indian War resulted in a mutual, raw animosity that has never died. From then on, Shannon writes, �frontier settlers assumed all Indians were hostile and tacitly condoned their exile or murder. Speculators from within and outside the colony competed against each other for Indian land, paying little heed� to prior agreements.
The Revolutionary War brought more bloodshed and revenge raids on a grand scale; these events comprise perhaps the most dramatic era in the state�s history, and the most powerful chapters in my book. Again, in Shannon�s words: �By the war�s end, nearly every Indian community within Pennsylvania�s borders had either been destroyed or abandoned and their survivors forced to seek refuge in Ohio or New York. The state of Pennsylvania recognized no federal or state Indian reservations within its borders.�
Tough stuff, but true.
Take a few minutes to absorb this little-told but important chapter in our history. You can find it here: http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/a...
May 13, 2015
A momentous land sale
The online journal Slate provided a small-world moment for me the other day. It posted a compelling history article that combined the New Amsterdam Dutch (my very forebears), the Munsee Indians (major players in my historical novel), and even native condolence ceremonies (a powerful aspect of the book’s plot). Let me explain.
The article takes a close and fascinating look at the sale of Staten Island to Dutch and later English settlers in several transactions in the 1600s. Author Andrew Lipman, a Barnard College history professor, notes that the indigenous people who sold the island were known broadly as Munsee because of their common dialects. These are the people who over time were forced west into New Jersey, then Pennsylvania, and then many points beyond, and who became associated with the Lenape or Delaware nation. One of the main characters in my novel Visions of Teaoga is Eghohowin, a real-life Munsee war chief who traversed Pennsylvania in bitterness during the 1700s.
Lipman challenges the notion that Indians could not imagine selling land and were easily duped into it by Europeans. “Indians across the continent transformed the natural world to their liking, marked extensive territorial boundaries, and consecrated their lands with their buried dead,” he writes. “And many native leaders agreed with colonists that at least some tracts (especially those without sacred significance) could be bounded, transferred, or leased.”
But still--as Chief Eghohowin found--land was often relinquished to whites under pressure and the real prospect of violence. As Lipman states, “Although colonists seldom made explicit threats when orchestrating land exchanges, and the text of deeds typically championed peaceful coexistence, there remained the possibility of illegal incursions or bloodshed if the papers were not signed.”
The Munsees on Staten Island might have been ready to sell and move on, anyway, because the whites’ free-ranging livestock was trampling their cornfields. But the record shows that the natives still drove a hard bargain, pushing the English to greatly increase their offer of clothing, guns, lead, powder, hoes, and knives. The Indians also received more than 72,000 wampum beads in the sale.
Following their custom, the Munsees had several of their children sign as witnesses to the final sale. “Munsee people had long been dedicated to teaching their little ones about politics and history,” Lipman writes. “More than two decades earlier, in the midst of the horrific Dutch-Indian war known as Kieft’s War, sachems [chiefs] who left a failed peace negotiation made it clear that this moment would live on. While criticizing the New Netherland director Willem Kieft, some Munsees remarked that if Kieft had only given them enough wampum and other condolence gifts, the colonial massacres of their people might have been forgiven and ‘would never again be spoken of.’ But the director was so stingy that ‘the infant upon the small [cradle] board would remember’ the Dutch atrocities. The same principle seemed to be at work among the Staten Island Indians.”
The full article can be found at: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_an...
The article takes a close and fascinating look at the sale of Staten Island to Dutch and later English settlers in several transactions in the 1600s. Author Andrew Lipman, a Barnard College history professor, notes that the indigenous people who sold the island were known broadly as Munsee because of their common dialects. These are the people who over time were forced west into New Jersey, then Pennsylvania, and then many points beyond, and who became associated with the Lenape or Delaware nation. One of the main characters in my novel Visions of Teaoga is Eghohowin, a real-life Munsee war chief who traversed Pennsylvania in bitterness during the 1700s.
Lipman challenges the notion that Indians could not imagine selling land and were easily duped into it by Europeans. “Indians across the continent transformed the natural world to their liking, marked extensive territorial boundaries, and consecrated their lands with their buried dead,” he writes. “And many native leaders agreed with colonists that at least some tracts (especially those without sacred significance) could be bounded, transferred, or leased.”
But still--as Chief Eghohowin found--land was often relinquished to whites under pressure and the real prospect of violence. As Lipman states, “Although colonists seldom made explicit threats when orchestrating land exchanges, and the text of deeds typically championed peaceful coexistence, there remained the possibility of illegal incursions or bloodshed if the papers were not signed.”
The Munsees on Staten Island might have been ready to sell and move on, anyway, because the whites’ free-ranging livestock was trampling their cornfields. But the record shows that the natives still drove a hard bargain, pushing the English to greatly increase their offer of clothing, guns, lead, powder, hoes, and knives. The Indians also received more than 72,000 wampum beads in the sale.
Following their custom, the Munsees had several of their children sign as witnesses to the final sale. “Munsee people had long been dedicated to teaching their little ones about politics and history,” Lipman writes. “More than two decades earlier, in the midst of the horrific Dutch-Indian war known as Kieft’s War, sachems [chiefs] who left a failed peace negotiation made it clear that this moment would live on. While criticizing the New Netherland director Willem Kieft, some Munsees remarked that if Kieft had only given them enough wampum and other condolence gifts, the colonial massacres of their people might have been forgiven and ‘would never again be spoken of.’ But the director was so stingy that ‘the infant upon the small [cradle] board would remember’ the Dutch atrocities. The same principle seemed to be at work among the Staten Island Indians.”
The full article can be found at: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_an...
May 12, 2015
A momentous land sale
The online journal Slate provided a small-world moment for me the other day. It posted a compelling history article that combined the New Amsterdam Dutch (my very forebears), the Munsee Indians (major players in my historical novel), and even native condolence ceremonies (a powerful aspect of the book’s plot). Let me explain.
The article takes a close and fascinating look at the sale of Staten Island to Dutch and later English settlers in several transactions in the 1600s. Author Andrew Lipman, a Barnard College history professor, notes that the indigenous people who sold the island were known broadly as Munsee because of their common dialects. Read More
A momentous land sale
The online journal Slate provided a small-world moment for me the other day. It posted a compelling history article that combined the New Amsterdam Dutch (my very forebears), the Munsee Indians (major players in my historical novel), and even native condolence ceremonies (a powerful aspect of the book�s plot). Let me explain.
The article takes a close and fascinating look at the sale of Staten Island to Dutch and later English settlers in several transactions in the 1600s. Author Andrew Lipman, a Barnard College history professor, notes that the indigenous people who sold the island were known broadly as Munsee because of their common dialects. These are the people who over time were forced west into New Jersey, then Pennsylvania, and then many points beyond, and who became associated with the Lenape or Delaware nation. One of the main characters in my novel Visions of Teaoga is Eghohowin, a real-life Munsee war chief who traversed Pennsylvania in bitterness during the 1700s.
Lipman challenges the notion that Indians could not imagine selling land and were easily duped into it by Europeans. �Indians across the continent transformed the natural world to their liking, marked extensive territorial boundaries, and consecrated their lands with their buried dead,� he writes. �And many native leaders agreed with colonists that at least some tracts (especially those without sacred significance) could be bounded, transferred, or leased.�
But still--as Chief Eghohowin found--land was often relinquished to whites under pressure and the real prospect of violence. As Lipman states, �Although colonists seldom made explicit threats when orchestrating land exchanges, and the text of deeds typically championed peaceful coexistence, there remained the possibility of illegal incursions or bloodshed if the papers were not signed.�
The Munsees on Staten Island might have been ready to sell and move on, anyway, because the whites� free-ranging livestock was trampling their cornfields. But the record shows that the natives still drove a hard bargain, pushing the English to greatly increase their offer of clothing, guns, lead, powder, hoes, and knives. The Indians also received more than 72,000 wampum beads in the sale.
Following their custom, the Munsees had several of their children sign as witnesses to the final sale. �Munsee people had long been dedicated to teaching their little ones about politics and history,� Lipman writes. �More than two decades earlier, in the midst of the horrific Dutch-Indian war known as Kieft�s War, sachems [chiefs] who left a failed peace negotiation made it clear that this moment would live on. While criticizing the New Netherland director Willem Kieft, some Munsees remarked that if Kieft had only given them enough wampum and other condolence gifts, the colonial massacres of their people might have been forgiven and �would never again be spoken of.� But the director was so stingy that �the infant upon the small [cradle] board would remember� the Dutch atrocities. The same principle seemed to be at work among the Staten Island Indians.�
The full article can be found at: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_an...
The article takes a close and fascinating look at the sale of Staten Island to Dutch and later English settlers in several transactions in the 1600s. Author Andrew Lipman, a Barnard College history professor, notes that the indigenous people who sold the island were known broadly as Munsee because of their common dialects. These are the people who over time were forced west into New Jersey, then Pennsylvania, and then many points beyond, and who became associated with the Lenape or Delaware nation. One of the main characters in my novel Visions of Teaoga is Eghohowin, a real-life Munsee war chief who traversed Pennsylvania in bitterness during the 1700s.
Lipman challenges the notion that Indians could not imagine selling land and were easily duped into it by Europeans. �Indians across the continent transformed the natural world to their liking, marked extensive territorial boundaries, and consecrated their lands with their buried dead,� he writes. �And many native leaders agreed with colonists that at least some tracts (especially those without sacred significance) could be bounded, transferred, or leased.�
But still--as Chief Eghohowin found--land was often relinquished to whites under pressure and the real prospect of violence. As Lipman states, �Although colonists seldom made explicit threats when orchestrating land exchanges, and the text of deeds typically championed peaceful coexistence, there remained the possibility of illegal incursions or bloodshed if the papers were not signed.�
The Munsees on Staten Island might have been ready to sell and move on, anyway, because the whites� free-ranging livestock was trampling their cornfields. But the record shows that the natives still drove a hard bargain, pushing the English to greatly increase their offer of clothing, guns, lead, powder, hoes, and knives. The Indians also received more than 72,000 wampum beads in the sale.
Following their custom, the Munsees had several of their children sign as witnesses to the final sale. �Munsee people had long been dedicated to teaching their little ones about politics and history,� Lipman writes. �More than two decades earlier, in the midst of the horrific Dutch-Indian war known as Kieft�s War, sachems [chiefs] who left a failed peace negotiation made it clear that this moment would live on. While criticizing the New Netherland director Willem Kieft, some Munsees remarked that if Kieft had only given them enough wampum and other condolence gifts, the colonial massacres of their people might have been forgiven and �would never again be spoken of.� But the director was so stingy that �the infant upon the small [cradle] board would remember� the Dutch atrocities. The same principle seemed to be at work among the Staten Island Indians.�
The full article can be found at: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_an...
April 24, 2015
Powwow With a Purpose
History glows underfoot wherever we walk. Some people feel it, others not so much.
Ron Williams is the sort who does. He’s part Apache, an educator from the Southwestern U.S. who now lives in Pottstown, Pa., near Philadelphia. It seems a certain spot along the Schuylkill River in Pottstown has called out to him. It’s a small lot behind a factory—but sacred because of the Lenni-Lenape remains and artifacts found there in 1859.
Mr. Williams began visiting the burial ground, marked with a memorial boulder, to meditate, and “I made a promise to the souls laid to rest here that their place would be useful and remembered,” he told the Reading (Pa.) Eagle.
Next weekend, May 2-3, the general public will have a chance to help Mr. Williams’ campaign to revitalize the memorial by attending a benefit powwow he’s organized. Powwows are always good family fun. This one—the Second Annual Powwow on Manatawny Creek--gives you a chance to do good and enjoy yourself.
The memorial site got a facelift in 2010 when the Eagle Scouts built a pergola and bench and the town’s police chief donated flowers. Williams, a member of the Pottstown school board, wants to expand on that work. He’s been raising funds to add a medicine wheel, a sculpture commemorating the Lenni-Lenape, a wall for visitors to sit on, and educational signage.
I spoke with Mr. Williams recently and got a sense of how the project has gripped him. “The whole idea is to keep awareness of the Native American legend in this region,” is how he put it to the Pottstown Mercury. “The way we’re going to do that is developing the memorial and continuing to remind folks that the [area’s] heritage goes back beyond 1492.”
If you’re anywhere in striking distance, consider attending this special powwow next Saturday or Sunday. Activities kick off at 10 a.m. at Pottstown Memorial Park, also known as Manatawny Park, at 75 West King St. in Pottstown. You can also visit the burial ground, at Industrial Highway and Franklin Street, about 10 blocks east of the park.
Meanwhile, Mr. Williams can be contacted at naheritagecircle@comcast.net.
Ron Williams is the sort who does. He’s part Apache, an educator from the Southwestern U.S. who now lives in Pottstown, Pa., near Philadelphia. It seems a certain spot along the Schuylkill River in Pottstown has called out to him. It’s a small lot behind a factory—but sacred because of the Lenni-Lenape remains and artifacts found there in 1859.
Mr. Williams began visiting the burial ground, marked with a memorial boulder, to meditate, and “I made a promise to the souls laid to rest here that their place would be useful and remembered,” he told the Reading (Pa.) Eagle.
Next weekend, May 2-3, the general public will have a chance to help Mr. Williams’ campaign to revitalize the memorial by attending a benefit powwow he’s organized. Powwows are always good family fun. This one—the Second Annual Powwow on Manatawny Creek--gives you a chance to do good and enjoy yourself.
The memorial site got a facelift in 2010 when the Eagle Scouts built a pergola and bench and the town’s police chief donated flowers. Williams, a member of the Pottstown school board, wants to expand on that work. He’s been raising funds to add a medicine wheel, a sculpture commemorating the Lenni-Lenape, a wall for visitors to sit on, and educational signage.
I spoke with Mr. Williams recently and got a sense of how the project has gripped him. “The whole idea is to keep awareness of the Native American legend in this region,” is how he put it to the Pottstown Mercury. “The way we’re going to do that is developing the memorial and continuing to remind folks that the [area’s] heritage goes back beyond 1492.”
If you’re anywhere in striking distance, consider attending this special powwow next Saturday or Sunday. Activities kick off at 10 a.m. at Pottstown Memorial Park, also known as Manatawny Park, at 75 West King St. in Pottstown. You can also visit the burial ground, at Industrial Highway and Franklin Street, about 10 blocks east of the park.
Meanwhile, Mr. Williams can be contacted at naheritagecircle@comcast.net.
April 23, 2015
A powwow with a purpose
[image error]
Ron Williams at the Lenni-Lenape burial ground (Reading Eagle photo by Susan Keen).
History glows underfoot wherever we walk. Some people feel it, others not so much.
Ron Williams is the sort who does. He�s part Apache, an educator from the Southwestern U.S. who now lives in Pottstown, Pa., near Philadelphia. It seems a certain spot along the Schuylkill River in Pottstown has called out to him. It�s a small lot behind a factory�but sacred because of the Lenni-Lenape remains and artifacts found there in 1859.
Mr. Williams began visiting the burial ground, marked with a memorial boulder, to meditate, and �I made a promise to the souls laid to rest here that their place would be useful and remembered,� he told the Reading (Pa.) Eagle.
Next weekend, May 2-3, the general public will have a chance to help Mr. Williams� campaign to revitalize the memorial by attending a benefit powwow he�s organized. Powwows are always good family fun. This one�the Second Annual Powwow on Manatawny Creek--gives you a chance to do good and enjoy yourself.
The memorial site got a facelift in 2010 when the Eagle Scouts built a pergola and bench and the town�s police chief donated flowers. Williams, a member of the Pottstown school board, wants to expand on that work. He�s been raising funds to add a medicine wheel, a sculpture commemorating the Lenni-Lenape, a wall for visitors to sit on, and educational signage.
I spoke with Mr. Williams recently and got a sense of how the project has gripped him. �The whole idea is to keep awareness of the Native American legend in this region,� is how he put it to the Pottstown Mercury. �The way we�re going to do that is developing the memorial and continuing to remind folks that the [area�s] heritage goes back beyond 1492.�
If you�re anywhere in striking distance, consider attending this special powwow next Saturday or Sunday. Activities kick off at 10 a.m. at Pottstown Memorial Park, also known as Manatawny Park, at 75 West King St. in Pottstown. You can also visit the burial ground, at Industrial Highway and Franklin Street, about 10 blocks east of the park.
Meanwhile, Mr. Williams can be contacted at naheritagecircle@comcast.net.
Ron Williams at the Lenni-Lenape burial ground (Reading Eagle photo by Susan Keen).
History glows underfoot wherever we walk. Some people feel it, others not so much.
Ron Williams is the sort who does. He�s part Apache, an educator from the Southwestern U.S. who now lives in Pottstown, Pa., near Philadelphia. It seems a certain spot along the Schuylkill River in Pottstown has called out to him. It�s a small lot behind a factory�but sacred because of the Lenni-Lenape remains and artifacts found there in 1859.
Mr. Williams began visiting the burial ground, marked with a memorial boulder, to meditate, and �I made a promise to the souls laid to rest here that their place would be useful and remembered,� he told the Reading (Pa.) Eagle.
Next weekend, May 2-3, the general public will have a chance to help Mr. Williams� campaign to revitalize the memorial by attending a benefit powwow he�s organized. Powwows are always good family fun. This one�the Second Annual Powwow on Manatawny Creek--gives you a chance to do good and enjoy yourself.
The memorial site got a facelift in 2010 when the Eagle Scouts built a pergola and bench and the town�s police chief donated flowers. Williams, a member of the Pottstown school board, wants to expand on that work. He�s been raising funds to add a medicine wheel, a sculpture commemorating the Lenni-Lenape, a wall for visitors to sit on, and educational signage.
I spoke with Mr. Williams recently and got a sense of how the project has gripped him. �The whole idea is to keep awareness of the Native American legend in this region,� is how he put it to the Pottstown Mercury. �The way we�re going to do that is developing the memorial and continuing to remind folks that the [area�s] heritage goes back beyond 1492.�
If you�re anywhere in striking distance, consider attending this special powwow next Saturday or Sunday. Activities kick off at 10 a.m. at Pottstown Memorial Park, also known as Manatawny Park, at 75 West King St. in Pottstown. You can also visit the burial ground, at Industrial Highway and Franklin Street, about 10 blocks east of the park.
Meanwhile, Mr. Williams can be contacted at naheritagecircle@comcast.net.
April 9, 2015
Reclaiming the Wyalusing cliffs
One of the most gorgeous spots in Pennsylvania is the Wyalusing Rocks overlook. Looming high above the upper Susquehanna River, it offers a breathtaking vista of the winding river and its broad alluvial plain. As a boy from that Northeastern Pennsylvania region, I remember going there with my parents and beholding the view in awe. Wouldn’t you know, in my historical novel Visions of Teaoga, my modern young protagonist and her dad pull over at Wyalusing to absorb the historical setting before them.
Go to Wyalusing today and, mixed among the roadside tourists, you may find Native Americans, there to pray and pay their respects. They know that this was far more than a lovely overlook. It was a strategically important sentry post, a site of tribal councils, and sacred ground. Fifteen years ago, the Eastern Delaware Nations coalition managed to buy 14 acres of the cliffs, and one of the group’s chiefs, John Taffe, tells me seekers of all ages go there to conduct traditional vision quests.
Wyalusing has been on my mind because I’ll be traveling to the nearby Wyalusing Public Library to give an author talk this Saturday at 1 p.m. I’ll tell folks how their area fits into the book—not only with my modern girl protagonist but more importantly with my historical protagonist. This was the real-life native matriarch known to white settlers as Queen Esther.
During the 1700s, Esther and her people roamed up and down the Susquehanna’s north branch, seeking safe ground during repeated conflicts with the Europeans. According to the historical record, Esther was a peacemaker for much of her life and an admirer of the Moravian Christian missionaries who established an Indian “prayer town” on the river plains just north of the Wyalusing Rocks. Though she did not convert, three of her children did, changing their names and identities in the process.
Over time, the pacifist Moravians were rejected by many native and white leaders. In the early 1770s, under increasing pressure, the Moravians abandoned their Wyalusing mission, known as Friedenschutten, and headed west. Esther never saw her three children again. During the Revolutionary War several years later, native war parties allied with the British attacked patriot settlers across that region. As the settlers fled south, many headed downriver on rafts made of timber salvaged from the abandoned Friedenschutten buildings.
As readers of Visions of Teaoga learn, Esther was married to a war chief of the Munsee Delaware clan. The Munsees had been ousted from their heartland in the Pocono Mountains in the mid-1700s and forced west to the Susquehanna valley.
Today, the Munsees are one of the main constituencies of the reconstituted Eastern Delaware Nations. The EDN’s other tribes are the Nanticoke, the Lenni-Lenape, the Conoy, the Susquehannock, the Shawnee (Esther’s tribe), the Sicannasee, the Wiccomiko, the Mohican, the Umlatchgo, the Conestoga, and the Alleghany. To increase its knowledge base, Mr. Taffe said, the EDN has worked closely with Delaware tribal leaders from the Moraviantown reserve in Ontario.
The EDN formed thirty years and gained nonprofit status in 1993. However, according to its website, www.easterndelawarenations.org, it has never been recognized as a tribe by Pennsylvania or the federal government. “Although the government official stand is that 'no Indians stayed in Pennsylvania,' our ancestors did stay and we are still here!” the coalition declares. In recent years the EDN has conducted public outreach, with achievements including August “Native American Awareness Month” events, school presentations, a mural, and a popular powwow each June in Forksville, Pa. (which I hope to join this year!).
Mr. Taffe, who calls himself a EDN subchief, says the initial plan to build a cultural center right across the highway from the Wyalusing overlook fell through when money dried up in recent years. Instead, the group purchased a former grange building in nearby Wilmot, where meetings and events are held. One of those events, he said, is an occasional series of Munsee-dialect classes conducted by his daughter, Susan Taffe Reed, who teaches at Bowdoin College--and is the Eastern Delaware Nations’ current chief.
Let’s hope EDN stays strong and continues to spread the word about Pennsylvania’s native past and present.
Go to Wyalusing today and, mixed among the roadside tourists, you may find Native Americans, there to pray and pay their respects. They know that this was far more than a lovely overlook. It was a strategically important sentry post, a site of tribal councils, and sacred ground. Fifteen years ago, the Eastern Delaware Nations coalition managed to buy 14 acres of the cliffs, and one of the group’s chiefs, John Taffe, tells me seekers of all ages go there to conduct traditional vision quests.
Wyalusing has been on my mind because I’ll be traveling to the nearby Wyalusing Public Library to give an author talk this Saturday at 1 p.m. I’ll tell folks how their area fits into the book—not only with my modern girl protagonist but more importantly with my historical protagonist. This was the real-life native matriarch known to white settlers as Queen Esther.
During the 1700s, Esther and her people roamed up and down the Susquehanna’s north branch, seeking safe ground during repeated conflicts with the Europeans. According to the historical record, Esther was a peacemaker for much of her life and an admirer of the Moravian Christian missionaries who established an Indian “prayer town” on the river plains just north of the Wyalusing Rocks. Though she did not convert, three of her children did, changing their names and identities in the process.
Over time, the pacifist Moravians were rejected by many native and white leaders. In the early 1770s, under increasing pressure, the Moravians abandoned their Wyalusing mission, known as Friedenschutten, and headed west. Esther never saw her three children again. During the Revolutionary War several years later, native war parties allied with the British attacked patriot settlers across that region. As the settlers fled south, many headed downriver on rafts made of timber salvaged from the abandoned Friedenschutten buildings.
As readers of Visions of Teaoga learn, Esther was married to a war chief of the Munsee Delaware clan. The Munsees had been ousted from their heartland in the Pocono Mountains in the mid-1700s and forced west to the Susquehanna valley.
Today, the Munsees are one of the main constituencies of the reconstituted Eastern Delaware Nations. The EDN’s other tribes are the Nanticoke, the Lenni-Lenape, the Conoy, the Susquehannock, the Shawnee (Esther’s tribe), the Sicannasee, the Wiccomiko, the Mohican, the Umlatchgo, the Conestoga, and the Alleghany. To increase its knowledge base, Mr. Taffe said, the EDN has worked closely with Delaware tribal leaders from the Moraviantown reserve in Ontario.
The EDN formed thirty years and gained nonprofit status in 1993. However, according to its website, www.easterndelawarenations.org, it has never been recognized as a tribe by Pennsylvania or the federal government. “Although the government official stand is that 'no Indians stayed in Pennsylvania,' our ancestors did stay and we are still here!” the coalition declares. In recent years the EDN has conducted public outreach, with achievements including August “Native American Awareness Month” events, school presentations, a mural, and a popular powwow each June in Forksville, Pa. (which I hope to join this year!).
Mr. Taffe, who calls himself a EDN subchief, says the initial plan to build a cultural center right across the highway from the Wyalusing overlook fell through when money dried up in recent years. Instead, the group purchased a former grange building in nearby Wilmot, where meetings and events are held. One of those events, he said, is an occasional series of Munsee-dialect classes conducted by his daughter, Susan Taffe Reed, who teaches at Bowdoin College--and is the Eastern Delaware Nations’ current chief.
Let’s hope EDN stays strong and continues to spread the word about Pennsylvania’s native past and present.
The Slave as "Crushed Vegetable''
In researching the Underground Railroad past of my hometown, Waverly, Pa., I came across a fascinating explication of the abolition mission, at least as it was understood by white participants in the
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