The Nanticoke Indian Museum, Millsboro, DE USA

[CC Rider]

Greetings. Here is a video I did about my Nanticoke Indian Tribe's museum in my home state of Delaware. Not too many of us are left these days, but our rich heritage and past is well preserved and protected within the museum's walls for our future generations. The museum also allows us an opportunity to share our culture with the many good non-Nanticoke people who drop by wanting to learn more about our little, not-too-well-known Tribe.

I made the video to hopefully draw some more attention to our museum, which originally was a schoolhouse built in 1881 just for the Nanticoke Indian children in our Indian community. The Nanticoke were not integrated into Delaware's public school system until the early 1960s, when I was still a young boy. Rough times back then with crazed "terrorists" running around us everywhere behind sheets and also in plain sight on the streets we now shared with them. As a race of people, the Native American 9/11 had occurred to us centuries earlier. Our mightiest buildings had long since fallen at the hands of European terrorists. We simply inherited those terrorists' descendants, who never left our homeland to return to where they came from. (Hey, no hard feelings!)

As an aside, in my opinion, if anyone should have something to say about immigration laws today, it should only be us few surviving Native Americans scattered here and there. We, alone, still have the moral right to comment on the subject of immigration. EVERYONE else talking about it these days is either an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants to begin with, and their opinions on the matter are always little more than rationalizations to prove their points. Last thing I knew the Statue of Liberty still welcomes strangers to these lands. (I despise hypocrisy, an unfortunate but historic American trait.)

I did absolutely no post-production work on this video. Truth is, I was pretty tired late last night when I was working on this to delay working on my taxes, then at some point thought the footage looked just fine as is using the mood of the late afternoon light as I intended to, and so I next simply posted it on YouTube...somehow forgetting to give it any post-production treatment before I hit publish! So it is what it is, a little too dark in a few frames (appears even a tad darker via YouTube) but is still basically what I was shooting for. (Pun intended.)

Here's the video. Hope you enjoy it. Take care. Any feedback is more than welcome.

P.S. The Nanticoke Indian song soundtrack on the video - using a horn rattle and sung in our native language - is performed by me, so please cut me some slack there, too!

 

[gwhuntoon]

Hey CC, I like it. It's also a late nite for me and this question came to mind, is the song in Nanticoke with an understanding of the language? I'm only asking because I read the Nanticoke language was extinct with the last speaker of Nanticoke being Lydia Clark, who died between 1840 and 1850?

Also in a past conversation and you mentioned an obscure fact regarding Ben Franklin proposing the wild turkey be our national bird I thought I'd share another one, camels actually originated in North America not the Middle East, and horses aren't native to North America, strange but true.

Also having researched local indian tribes, the Muskegon, Michigan area was inhabited by various bands of the Ottawa and Pottawatomi Indian tribes. In 1830 Muskegon was solely an Ottawa village. The name "Muskegon" is derived from the Ottawa tribe term "Masquigon," meaning "marshy river or swamp"

 

[CC Rider]

Hey CC, I like it. It's also a late nite for me and this question came to mind, is the song in Nanticoke with an understanding of the language? I'm only asking because I read the Nanticoke language was extinct with the last speaker of Nanticoke being Lydia Clark, who died between 1840 and 1850?

Also in a past conversation and you mentioned an obscure fact regarding Ben Franklin proposing the wild turkey be our national bird I thought I'd share another one, camels actually originated in North America not the Middle East, and horses aren't native to North America, strange but true.

Also having researched local indian tribes, the Muskegon, Michigan area was inhabited by various bands of the Ottawa and Pottawatomi Indian tribes. In 1830 Muskegon was solely an Ottawa village. The name "Muskegon" is derived from the Ottawa tribe term "Masquigon," meaning "marshy river or swamp"

Thank you for your comments and your interest. I really appreciate both.

Yes, the song is in the Nanticoke Indian language. Lydia Clark, whose Nanticoke name was Naw-Gwa-Ok-Waw which means "She Who Bows Her Head in Prayer," is my great-great-great-great grandmother, who died in 1856. My daughter is named after her today, carrying on both of her names. She was, indeed, the Tribe's last fluent speaker of the language. However, our language was preserved in several historic accounts - including some cultural studies of us led by Thomas Jefferson, who took an interest in us - and today is experiencing a rebirth among tribal members through the help of an Indian linguist. There is even a Nanticoke/English dictionary available. Certain songs still remain in the old tongue, such as this one.

The first Lydia Clark was only 8 years old when the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776. She was 19 when Delaware became the First State in the USA. She is buried where what is now my brother's expansive backyard, where other of my ancestors are laid to rest and I will be buried next to them. A nearby 10-foot stone and brass monument commemorates her life, erected by the National Colonial Dames Society in 1927.

When you consider our contact with Europeans began with the English coming to our native shores in 1608, when Capt. John Smith "discovered" us on tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay, it is amazing that anything remains of our culture after 409 years of conquest, colonization, exploitation, war and disease, and the ongoing occupation of our indigenous lands. It proves the tenacity of my People has never waned despite the incredible odds we have faced since that fateful date so long ago.

 

[gwhuntoon]

That's great to hear and honoring your great-great-great-great grandmother by naming your daughter after her. My experience has been usually two outcomes, (complete extinction or extinction through assimilation) i.e extinction, or survival and strength through adversity. I believe the later for your people. It's seems no matter how dire things become as long as a single UN-extinguished spark remains, there's hope. Thank you for sharing some of your history.

 

[CC Rider]

That's great to hear and honoring your great-great-great-great grandmother by naming your daughter after her. My experience has been usually two outcomes, (complete extinction or extinction through assimilation) i.e extinction, or survival and strength through adversity. I believe the later for your people. It's seems no matter how dire things become as long as a single UN-extinguished spark remains, there's hope. Thank you for sharing some of your history.

It's been my pleasure, sir. Thank you very much for your interest and for the opportunity to share a little of my Tribal and family history with you. That is always a treat for me to do. And yes, we have become a tight interdependent group made stronger through great adversity. Thank you, too, for recognizing that trait.