Special Gratitude I owe to a Lenni Lenape Chief and his tribe, because if not for his actions 376 years ago, I would not be here.
I discovered through my family genealogical research
that my ninth great-grandmother, Penelope (Thomson) van Princes’ life was saved
by an American Indian by the name of Tisquantum, Chief of a Lenni Lenape tribe,
members of the Algonquian language family and now known as the Delaware. The year was 1643. Penelope and her first husband, Kent van
Princes, had sailed from their home in Amsterdam, Holland, across the Atlantic
to the new world, planning to settle in the New Amsterdam area. The ship encountered a storm along our
Eastern seaboard and made a landing on the rocky shoals near Sandy Hook, New
Jersey. The recorded story is that
Penelope’s husband was deathly ill, and after the passengers made it to shore,
the van Princes couple were left behind while the other passengers departed for
the New Amsterdam Dutch settlement of what is now New York City. The following morning, three Indians,
described with feathers sticking up from coppery, shaved heads, attacked the
couple. The husband, in a semiconscious
state, was unable to defend in any way and was killed with one blow of a
tomahawk. Penelope was brutally
attacked, partially scalped, a knife wound to her arm, and a deep slash across
her abdomen which exposed her bowels.
The Indians left her to die there in the dense woods not far from the
beach.
A strong and determined young woman, she somehow
managed to hold her bowels in her abdomen and in grief and pain, lay there in a
hollowed-out tree for seven days, surviving on tree sap and fungi. On the eighth day she was discovered by Tisquantum
and a younger Lenape. Tisquantum carried
her back to their village, and there she was nursed back to health using what I
would consider to be Shamanistic Native American medicine. Chief Tisquantum, said to have been named for
a noble ancestor, knew a little English, and asked Penelope to teach him more
English during her recuperation.
In 1644, Penelope married Richard Stout and they
had ten children. Penelope lived to be
110 years of age. She and Tisquantum
remained friends until his death. A monument
and commemorative coin have honored her in Monmouth, New Jersey. The coin depicts Penelope and
Tisquantum.
-Linda
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