========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 16:14:24 -0500 From: "Russ McGrew" <russmcgrew@email.msn.com> To: PACHESTE-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <000a01be3f3a$5e453700$f9032599@mainmcgrew> Subject: Re: Indian Hannah - a notice Tom (et al)-- I, for one, found your discussion of Indian Hannah and the attendant ceremonies and dedications very interesting. First, my wife's ancestors (Wm I HARVEY's) were from th Embreeville area -- referred to as Harvey's Bridge. Second, related to genealogical pursuits, I have picked up two books of an earlier John Russell HAYES, viz., "The Collected Poems of..." --last c/r 1916 & "Brandywine Days" printed in 1910. The former is a copy he presented to his aunt , with affection, Mary Russell WHITSON. Within it is the following poem: "The Indians' Grave" A dedicatiion box goes: "Here rest Indian Hannah, the last of the Lenni Lenape Indians in Chester County, who died in 1802" "Last of her race, she sleeps in this lone grave,-- Kowly and lone, and dim and half-forgot In these last hundred summers since she died; Last of her race, - laid here so long ago And gently mourned by folk of alien stock, But not of alien hearts, kind Quaker folk Who cherished the lone Indian, cared for her, And made her loneliness less sorrowful, Till life went out. And so went out a race That through uncounted cycles had their home Beside Wawassan's wild and wandering stream, - Tracking the bear and elk among these hills And taking fish in those rude stone-built dams That still remain in old Wawassan's stream, And celebrating round their flickering fires Strange pagan rite and solemn dance of war, - So long and long ago! - ere yet our sires Forced Magna Carta on reluctant John, Or yielded unto Alfred's kindly law, Yea, even ere they stormed the eastern shores Of Britain, rovers on the wild North Sea, - So long ago this old Algonquin folk Hunted and warred and worshipped 'mid the wood That hid these hill in endless greenery. What tribal memories survived in her, That last lone Indian woman, -- what remote And pale tradition from the ancient years, Of sylvan loves and wars, heroic deeds Of deathless chieftans, wisdom of the gods? I think some primal feeling surely stirred At times that lonely heart brooding the Past, When in gray autumn twilights by her fire She mused and mourned, recalling how in youth She heard old men grieve, old women weep O'er territory wrested from their tribe by the intruding English. Hopelessly They grieved and wept; - she could not understand The great All=Father's will, she only knew How numbers lessened, ho the forests fell And spoiled the hunting, how the fishing failed, And how as farmland after farmland spread Along Wawassan's shores, her peiple waned In ancient power and comfort. --'Tis but little We do, in honoring her name today, Toward offering penance for the pitiless force Exerted by our sires against her race. Today, among those grand old Indian hills, And by this wild and wandering Indian stream, In reverance and sorrow let us rear This strong rude boulder o'er the Indian's grave, - We, of the alien English, paying thus Some tribute small of honor and remorse Unto the noble natives of these hills By Indian Wawassan's mourning stream." Dated: Embreeville, 1909 Russ ______________________________ ------------------------------