“The Lakota was a true naturalist — a lover of nature. He loved the Earth and all things of the Earth, and the attachment grew with age. The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his youth close to its softening influence.” — Chief Luther Standing Bear, Lakota Sioux Indian Tribe, born 1868.
I remember, well and fondly, when my father took me to harvest sassafras root for the first time, taking me into the woodlands framing our family’s farmlands to search for sassafras trees. It was an old Nanticoke Indian tribal thing to do. I was no more than 7 years old. I had been waiting for this to happen forever.
I followed my dad through the lush forest, looking for this tree, so we could make a medicinal tea from its roots. We stopped at the first sassafras tree my dad saw. He told me about the plant’s healing qualities, then he used his strong hands as two red-brown shovels, and he dug a small hole in the ground to expose the tree’s roots. Next, he took a crumpled cigarette from his shirt pocket, tapping tobacco into the hole as an offering. Once he had covered the hole over with dirt, he wiped his hands on his dark work pants and said we now had to search for a second sassafras tree.
I asked my father why we didn’t harvest that tree and why we had to search for another. My father looked deep into the forest, and then, he looked deeper into me.
“If we take that tree, boy, we may be taking the last sassafras tree growing around here. If we leave that tree alone and find another tree, we know we will not be taking the last sassafras tree here. We will know we’ll be leaving one tree behind, for someone else who may need it.”
The truth
In the years ahead, my father taught me much, much more. I always held tightly onto each syllable he uttered to me, and I would often roll his words around in my mind later. One day, many years later, it finally struck me: If everyone did as my father taught me to do, we would never run out of anything.
The truth is always simple. The truth is always easy to explain; it is instantly recognizable to the human heart. And the truth — the real truth — never dies or goes away.
Sometimes, though, it does go out of fashion. Such is the case with the “justifications” that our elected state and county officials have been spewing out for decades, as they have systematically destroyed my ancestral homeland: the too-popular resort and retirement destination place that is Sussex County, Delaware.
Protecting these lands and striving to preserve them was a duty I was born to do. At this very moment, I am a member of a grassroots group working hard to stop the county — and an out-of-state developer — from locating an ill-conceived development called Stillwater Harbor in an environmentally sensitive and important area. It would be less than 100 feet from the Indian River and in an area notorious for severe routine flooding problems: the entire Oak Orchard and Riverdale areas.
If anyone wanted a blueprint on how and why not to build a development, this development would be the most perfect model to draw from. It doesn’t take engineering degrees, experience in water and soils or any other such qualifications to quickly understand how bad the idea for this development is. All it takes is simple common sense.
This proposed development borders my ancestral family lands, specifically our farmlands where we grow corn and soybeans. I grew up and played upon these adjoining lands. I know them like I know my heart. I see these lands through older eyes now, but I still enjoy seeing the life thriving here.
‘There are no other places for them’
If this proposed development of 123 homes is approved by Sussex County officials, at least 42 acres of trees growing upon that 54-acre parcel of land will be removed and gone forever. The rich natural bounty of numerous types of trees there will also be gone forever after the land has been clear-cut and left ragged and bare. Gone forever, too, will be the homes, the food sources, the stomping grounds and the breeding grounds for a wide range of precious — and increasingly rare — forms of wildlife native to this overdeveloped area.
Eagles, hawks, osprey and owls, turkeys and many, many more bird species live in and upon those densely forested lands. Herds of deer are often seen there, eating, prancing and playing, and mating, too. The trees are abundant with squirrels, as well as birds. Muskrats and other aquatic-loving animals living there depend upon the tidal wetlands and marshes that are also within those lands. Rabbits abound there, as do several species of turtles, snakes, bats, frogs and toads. The land there is still alive and thriving, with all of those endangered life-forms, simply because it has not yet been killed and left for dead by human beings.
If the Stillwater Harbor development is allowed to be built, all of that wildlife will be gone and gone forever, never again to return. With the sole exception of my family’s farmlands, all of the land surrounding those precious 54 acres of woodlands and wetlands, teeming with life, have already been denuded of trees and ground cover, and are already filled with people.
Where will the countless birds and squirrels go to live, hunt and breed without those trees? Where will the herds of deer, the flocks of turkeys and every other life-form go to live if their longtime homes are destroyed and rendered into just memories after the heavy, unforgiving tracks of earthmoving equipment literally scrape away and crush to death every single living thing that dwells upon, below and even above that land?
Nowhere.
That is the only true answer to these questions. Nowhere. Because there are no other places for any of them to go.
Every living thing there will first be made to suffer when the land-development onslaught begins. Next, anything and everything that is still alive after the first acts of destruction — by the hands of mankind — will find themselves in the midst of a holocaust, plain and simple. Then, in the final stage of this mass destruction of life, every living thing that is still in the way of the developers will be identified, targeted and shoved into oblivion.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin himself could not fashion any better act of extermination.
Continued flooding
If you think this appalling deforestation, destruction and eradication of wildlife are the only threats this proposed development poses, then you need to realize that this is only the beginning.
One has to question the decision — and the research — behind locating Stillwater Harbor in the Oak Orchard community area. For over 25 years, the residents living here have been pleading to state and county officials for help with a long-standing problem: extreme routine flooding. Recently, some minor help finally came, but it was literally a very thin drop in a very big and very dusty bucket.
Every time another development is approved and erected, the people living on River Road and the many roads connected to it see a dramatic increase in flood-related problems.
One incongruity and a ridiculous display of our government working at cross-purposes is found in what public and elected officials are doing, at different levels, here in the Oak Orchard area.
In 2016, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., held an awards and recognition event to recognize the members of the volunteer fire company in Oak Orchard for assisting local flood victims when severe flooding posed serious threats to residents’ lives. In 2019, Sen. Carper was again in Oak Orchard and Riverdale to witness firsthand the terrible effects of flooding throughout the entire region and to make commitments to find federal dollars to address this relentless problem. During this same time, Rep. Ruth Briggs King, R-Georgetown, held numerous town hall meetings at the fire hall to address these flooding problems, announce proposals to help solve them and attempt to help citizens who have been asking for help from elected public officials for more than two decades.
How sensible is it then now to have county officials even consider a development proposal that will only make these flooding problems much worse? The 42 acres of trees on the 54-acre Stillwater Harbor site are some of the last groups of trees, in any significant amount, that directly help the flooding problems from getting worse. Even to consider removing them is a choice built upon sheer ignorance, short-term thinking and good old American greed.
More threats to the Oak Orchard and Riverdale communities are waiting in the wings if this development is approved: increases in traffic; roadway congestion; greater demands placed upon law enforcement and first responders; potential increases in crime and pedestrian roadway accidents; changes in the very character of these well-known and historic communities; the destruction of Native American cultural resources laying beneath the grounds; and more.
My great-grandfather, Nanticoke Indian Chief Wynikako, was born William Russell Clark in 1852. My family was able to retain our ancestral lands with the help of nonnative benefactors. It was a fight preserved in history books, beginning with my great-great-great-great-grandmother, Nau-Gwa-Ok-Wa, whose name means “She Who Bows Her Head in Prayer.” Her great-grandson, Chief Wynikako, held Indian powwows on our family’s lands along the Indian River. In time, spectators began asking my great-grandfather if he would consider selling his land. My chief replied he would never sell his land, but he did agree to rent it.
The community my great-grandfather established upon our ancestral homeland soon began to flourish. When Chief Wynikako died in November 1928 at age 76, my grandfather, Chief Little Owl, eventually took over managing our lands. My grandfather, Charles C. Clark — who I am named after — was killed in front of me on April 13, 1971, when I was just 11 years old. Flooding had eroded some of our beach lands, so my pop-pop decided to bring in 40 dump trucks filled with sand to rebuild those eroded lands. As the last dump truck prepared to unload, my grandfather, my chief, said, “Boy, you stay here while I tell the driver where to dump this last load.”
“OK, Pop-Pop,” I replied to him before I turned my head away for just a few seconds. When I looked at him again, it was just in time for me to see the dump truck knock him to the ground and then crush the life out of him.
‘You have to learn not be greedy’
When the dust finally settled following his death, my father and I were finishing laying out the last homes on the last street he was working on, named Chippewa Avenue. I remember finishing our surveying and sitting on the tailgate of Dad’s pickup truck. I was wiping the sweat off my face when my father said, “Well, that’s it, boy. Four hundred homes. We are done; no more homes.”
I looked at our field adjoining Chippewa Avenue and our other field right across the road. I considered the lengths and breadths of both fields and shook my head. “Why are we stopping, Pop?” I asked. “We can just keep on going. We can make Riverdale bigger. We can double or triple its size.”
My beloved, wise father placed his warm, deer-brown eyes upon me for a moment, and then, he smiled his warm smile over me.
“You have to learn not be greedy in life, boy. Being greedy will only bring bad things to you. We can’t just provide homes for people on our land; we have to consider the homes all of the animals need, too.”
I learned that lesson at just 12 years old. Why can’t adults three times that age learn that same lesson, too?
Perhaps it’s because of how I was raised. Perhaps that is what made the difference. Perhaps it’s because my father “was a true naturalist, a lover of nature. He loved the Earth and all things of the Earth, the attachment (growing) with age,” just as Lakota Sioux Chief Luther Standing Bear stated so long ago. Perhaps it’s because by knowing this sentiment of raising his children close to nature, my father “kept his youth close to its softening influence” because my father understood “that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too.” Perhaps it’s simply because I was raised correctly by a man who knew what was right.
I am Charles C. Clark IV, “Little Owl,” Lamaisu Quoo Waant in Nanticoke. I am the son of “Chief Red Deer,” Kenneth S. Clark Sr., and a grandson of “Chief Little Owl,” Charles C. Clark. I am the great-nephew of Robert Clark, “Chief Mawit,” and Ferdinand Clark, “Chief Seagull.” I am the great-grandson of “Chief Wynikako,” William Russell Clark; a great-great-grandson of James Clark; a great-great-great-grandson of Boen Clark; and a great-great-great-great-grandson of Nau-Gwa-Ok-Wa,” Lydia Clark, “She Who Bows Her Head in Prayer.”
My sky father is above me, my Earth mother is around me, and both of them provide for me freely, in abundance and with love. My extended family includes the countless creatures I live with upon this wonderful world. My human brothers and sisters are from the four directions. They come to me in beautiful sacred colors: in red, yellow, black and white, the same colors as the Earth’s lands, her skin. When I pray, I pray for all things, and I include everyone in my family in all of my prayers.
Now, I humbly extend my heart and hands out to you, in brotherhood and sisterhood. I ask you to please accept my loving embrace and honor my requests to you for assistance. Please join me and others in our fight against the Stillwater Harbor development. It is a good fight, a fight for life and a good future for all. Please enter into our sacred circle and stand with us in a good place, where only love, peace, sharing and caring are allowed, and guide us upon the paths we share.
I am Little Owl. I speak only the truth. And I have spoken here. A’ho!
Charles C. Clark IV, “Little Owl,” was assistant chief of the Nanticoke Indian Tribe for more than a decade. He helps manage his family’s ancestral lands along the Indian River in Sussex County
