Friends of Wickers Creek Archaeological Site
Mission:
To remember and honor the first residents of Wysquaqua,
now known as Dobbs Ferry: the Lenape people.
Black Beaver
(1806 - May 8, 1880)
Black Beaver, Se-ket-Tu-Ma-Quah, renowned Delaware Indian scout and guide of many U.S. government exploring expeditions throughout the Southwest, made seven treks over different routes to the Pacific Coast. He was a guide with a military escort under the command of Capt. R.B. Macy who accompanied the famous wagon train of gold seekers to the California gold fields in 1849, charting the long-used “California Road” west from Fort Smith, AR.
Black Beaver was born 1806 at the site of Belleville, IL, and came southwest as a young man. His band of Delaware lived as neighbors to the Absentee Shawnee near the Oklahoma-Arkansas boundary. Black Beaver’s band lived in many places south of the Canadian River in Oklahoma before the Civil War.
He was interpreter to Col. Henry Dodge on the noted Leavenworth (or Dragoon) Expedition from Fort Gibson to the Wichita village on the Red River in 1834, for the first council between the U.S. and the Plains Indians of Oklahoma.
He and members of his band went to Kansas and served as scouts for the Union army during the Civil War.
After the war, Black Beaver and his friend Jesse Chisholm returned and converted part of the Native American path used by the Union Army into what became the Chisholm Trail. They collected and herded thousands of stray Texas longhorn cattle by the Trail to railheads in Kansas, from there the cattle were shipped East, where beef sold for ten times the price in the West.
Black Beaver resettled at Anadarko, where he built the first brick home in the area. He had 300 acres of fenced and cultivated land as well as cattle, hogs and horses. He became a preacher in the Baptist church, and was counted as a leader among the Indians of the Wichita Agency.
He had three, perhaps four, wives and four daughters. Black Beaver died May 8, 1880 and was buried in a government plot near his old home place in Anadarko, OK. His remains were moved to the Chief’s Knoll at Fort Sill, OK, in 1975..
Roberta Lawson
10/31/1878 - 12/31/1940
Roberta Campbell Lawson, was a Lenape-Scots-Irish activist, community organizer, and musician. She was born at Alluwe, I.T. (Indian Territory), the daughter of J.E. and Emeline Journeycake Campbell. She was the granddaughter of the Rev. Charles Journeycake, the last tribal chief of the Delaware.
Roberta learned from both sides of her family; she was tutored at home and later attended a seminary and Hardin College in Missouri. From her mother and maternal grandfather Charles, she learned Lenape chants and music, which later inspired her own compositions.
She married lawyer Eugene B. Lawson on Oct. 31, 1901 and they established a home in Nowata, OK.
When the first women’s club was organized in Nowata in 1903, Roberta became its president, serving for five years. The Lawson family moved to Tulsa, OK, in 1908, where their beautiful home was a tradition in Oklahoma hospitality.
During World War I, she was the head of the Women's Division of the Oklahoma Council of Defense. She was president of the Oklahoma State Federation of Women's Clubs, which organized to support community welfare and educational goals, from 1917 to 1919, and General Federation of Women's Clubs director from 1918 to 1922. She was a member of Tulsa’s Philbrook Art Center’s board of directors, and also served 18-years as a member of the board of regents for the Oklahoma College for Women in Chickasha, OK. She was a member of the board of directors of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and a trustee of the University of Tulsa at time of her death.
Always closely identified with the Delaware people, Lawson became distinguished within the tribe when she was elected national president of the National Federal of Women’s Clubs from 1935 to 1938, the first woman of American Indian descent to hold this office. During her three year term, she led its two million members to work toward goals of "uniform marriage and divorce laws, birth control, and civic service".
Roberta died from monocytic leukemia in her Tulsa home on Dec. 31, 1940. She was buried in Tulsa’s Memorial Park Cemetery.
Save Buttonhook
Let’s Protect This Forest Forever
Buttonhook Forest is a 20.3-acre hilltop woodland forest located in Chappaqua, NY—just 40 miles north of New York City — home to a newly discovered ancient Indigenous ceremonial site, endangered species, and a critical NYC Reservoir watershed. Friends of Buttonhook Forest (FoBF), a nonprofit formed in 2022, is partnering with the Brothertown Indian Nation (BIN) to purchase and preserve this irreplaceable site. The shared goal: return this land to Indigenous stewardship and protect it for generations to come.
National Hall of Fame for Famous American Indians
Anadarko, Oklahoma
The National Hall of Fame has bronze busts mounted outdoors. The Hall of Fame, which has free admission and is staffed by volunteers, features busts of 41 Native Americans from various tribes to honor their contributions and place in American history.
Those honored include three from the Lenape Nation: Roberta Campbell Lawson, Chief Tamanend, and Black Beaver.