• Name: Princess Aracoma Sky (Keigh-tugh-quah And Heliziknopo) CORNSTALK
• Sex: F
• Birth: 1740 in Shawnee Nation,Ohio
• MARC: 1762
• Death: 1780 in Logan County,West Virginia
• MARC: 1762
• Note:
The above was assembled from treaty signings and other affairs where the name is recorded as "son of or daughter of Cornstalk"
After the Battle of Point Pleasant and the death of Chief Cornstalk in 1774, the Shawnees in West Virginia were under the command of Aracoma. Aracoma is credited with settling the conflict between the native population and the settlers through her marriage to a white man, Boling Baker. Aracoma brought peace to the people and lived among them until her death in 1780.
An Indian raid on the frontier settlement which had been made on the
Bluestone River in the western part of Virginia in 1780, which led to a pursuit of the savages and culminated in a battle with the Indians on a site which lay within the present bounds of the city of Logan, and in which Princess Aracoma, the daughter of the doughty Indian chief, Cornstalk, received fatal wounds, and before her death, delivered to General William Madison the leader of the pursuing white troops, the following warning: (text of Aracoma's speech)
My name is Aracoma, (meaning a corn blossom) and I am the last of a
mighty race. My father was a great chief and a friend of your people.
He was murdered in cold blood by the white when he came to them as a
friend to give them warning. I am the wife of a paleface who came across the great waters to make war on my people, but came to us and was made one of us. A great plague many moons ago carried off my children and they lie buried just above the bend in the river.
Bury me with them with my face toward the setting sun that I may see my people on their march to the happy hunting grounds. For your kindness I warn you to make haste in returning to your homes for
my tribe is still powerful and will return to avenge my death."
Aracoma lingered far into the night with her death struggle, but before morning dawned her spirit had taken its eternal flight.
That afternoon the white buried Aracoma, amid tears that fell for a
savage that displayed courage to the last, and who was willing to forgive her slayers through the compassionate heart that flourished in a noble body and a soul with comely face, and a body of physical beauty.
The fragments of this true, historical narrative has been obtained
and here compiled for the glorification and to the sacred memory of
Aracoma, an Indian Princess who never knew civilization, but who loved her people with passionate ardor and who ruled with the utmost tenderness and compassion. Princess Aracoma has long since been laid to rest, but the memory linger on.
* * * * *
In 1915, when the Abdoney building was being constructed on the 100
block of Stratton Street, the workmen uncovered a grave that was eight feet deep, considerably deeper than the other Shawnee graves in the county. In it was a skeleton of a young woman and a necklace of buckhorn beads. The string had rotted away, but the necklace was still arranged around the neck. The odd and haunting irony was that the skeleton was buried at the bend of the Guyandotte, almost exactly where the old and half forgotten traditions claimed was the final resting place of Aracoma.
• Change Date: 6 JAN 2007 at 23:10:03
Father: Chief "Keigh-tugh-quah" CORNSTALK b: 1720 in Wynepuechisika Village,Western Pennsylvania
Mother: HELIZIKINOPO b: 1715 in Pennsylvania
Marriage 1 Bolin (Andrew W. Sr. And Mary Agnes Bolling) BAKER b: 4 MAY 1738 in Ashe County,North Carolina Married: 1762 1
Sources:
1. Title: GEDCOM File : woltzbowers.ged
Abbrev: GEDCOM File : woltzbowers.ged
Date: 31 MAR 2006