By: Gavin Schweiger, Follow South Jersey Community Journalist
SALEM, N.J. – While people were out enjoying the festivities along Broadway in Salem for the city’s 350th anniversary on Saturday, October 4, local Native American culture and town history came to life in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park.
The shows included Lenni-Lenape dances and songs, as well as three living history plays featuring different Salem historical figures.
Spectators gathered while listening to the beat of drums and singing coming from Ty “Dancing Wolf” Ellis, his children, and his nephew, Dallas MacMahan, who are all Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape. Ellis was raised in Salem.
After the music, Ellis introduced the dances.
“They are traditional to us, but it’s a way that we have learned to universally speak to other tribal nations across the community,” Ellis said.
MacMahan and Ellis’s children each took turns dancing before Ellis introduced the “Bean Dance,” asking the audience to join in. The Bean Dance is a traditional dance specific to the Lenni-Lenape, but it’s also a joining force, according to Ellis.
“I love doing that dance because it brings everybody together. No matter what culture or background you’re from,” Ellis said.
Ellis led the dance with singing and a rattle. A few audience members trickled, which turned into a long line of people dancing in spirals. Ellis slowly led the spiral inwards towards the center, where everyone followed and gathered closely, which is Ellis’s favorite part.
After the dancing, a different type of performance took the stage through a series of living history plays. Historical figures like John Fenwick, Abigail Goodwin and Amy Hester “Hetty” Reckless took the stage to display the scope of Salem’s history.
Fenwick, played by Samuel Preston Carpenter, led the first play depicting the founding of Salem in 1675, seven years before Philadelphia’s founding in 1682.
Escaping persecution by the British, Quaker colonists settled in Salem and purchased the land from the Lenni-Lenape already in the area.
“This land shall be a refuge, a place of peace free from persecution,” said Carpenter, portraying Fenwick.
The play went on to describe the founding of the first Quaker meeting house in Salem.
“So, when they first built a meeting house, the meeting house was also a courthouse, a meeting house for the public, and it was also a school,” Carpenter said.
Other plays included local Quaker abolitionist Abigail Goodwin writing a letter to a friend looking to help fugitive slaves, and Amy “Hetty” Reckless, who escaped slavery and became an abolitionist.
These plays served to display the long and difficult history of slavery in Salem, only ending after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
The Living History plays gave spectators moments in history, and some they may not have known.
Some histories, like that of Hetty Reckless, are difficult to study, as Daisy Century found when preparing to play Reckless. Century, a historical interpreter who has also played characters like Harriet Tubman and Bessie Coleman, found her role as Reckless satisfying to perform.
“I like to tell the story of those who fought so hard and had a hard time,” Century said.
Alice Waddington, 97, watched all the performances with her son and daughter-in-law.
“We know a lot of the history that we heard. So, I don’t know how people who didn’t know it would feel about it,” Waddington said. “I hope they enjoyed it. I enjoyed it.”
The performances looked into Salem’s past, but many are looking to its future as well.
For example, Native American religions and cultural practices were largely prohibited until the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Today, Ellis sees efforts to right the wrongs of the past.
“But there’s an intent city-wide to bring light to our existence here. And acknowledging that we’ve always been here. This is a huge deal for us,” Ellis said.
As his hometown, Ellis thinks Salem is an “amazing place,” even though he was raised in a less safe area. Though he recognizes Salem’s good and bad, he believes there can be a bright future for the 350-year-old city.
“Based off of what I’ve seen out here today, and everybody getting together and walking around and accepting and observing all that’s going on, it does give a little glimmer of hope, what Salem could be,” Ellis said.
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