The Shekilammy Boulder is a bronze sculpture with a fieldstone base sculpted by Joseph Pollia. It was dedicated on June 14, 1930. The sculpture is part of the Smithsonian American Art Collection. From the Smithsonian's website (
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"The sculpture honors Shikellam, Conrad Weiser's friend and a negotiator for the Iroquois. Shikellam was appointed by the Onondaga Council of the Iroquois Confederacy to oversee Pennsylvania's Indian inhabitants. The sculpture was placed by the fraternal lodge The Improved Order of Redmen. Conrad Weiser Park, also referred to as the Conrad Weiser Homestead, has been designated a national landmark."
From an article in the Reading Eagle on June 4, 1930 (
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"Shekilammy,his mighty features set in eternal bronze, yesterday once more raised his right hand toward heaven in the Indian sign of peace. Two hundred years ago, Shekilammy, great chief of the Iroquois Indians, raising his hand in the same gesture, brought peace to the white men in a day when massacre and bloody warfare were common.
On a gentle slope in Weiser park, workmen yesterday finished the erection of the statue donated to the park by the Improved Order of Red Men and the Degree of Pocohontas at a cost of $3,500. With Governor Fisher scheduled as the principal speaker, the monument will be unveiled at elaborate ceremonies June 14.
COUNCIL FIRES TO BURN
Charles E. Pass, Harrisburg postmaster and past national president of the Red Men, will also make an address. Council fires will burn in a tepee village to be erected for the exercises and the Wyanet Detree team will stage a public initiation.
Shekilammy's statue is a symbol of the peace he brought to his people and the whites. Scantily clothed after te custom of the race, his muscular figure stands poised erect as he raisess his right hand in the peace sign. He carries in his left hand the calumet, the ceremonial peace pipe of the North American Indian. His head is slightly drawn back and a breeze seems to move through the coarse braids of hair reaching halfway down to his waist. In his rough, stern features one seems able to catch at a glance, traits of nobility, courage and friendship. A 10-ton boulder, eight feet high, supports the figure. It was brought from an old Indian trail near Newmanstown, which Shekilammy himself once used.
WAS IROQUOIS CHIEF
The members of the Red Men pour eulogies on the name of the Indian chief for his part in the early history of the country. As chief of the Iroquois, a league of six powerful Indian tribes, including the Mohawk or Mohican Indians, the Onondagas, the Cayukas, the Senecas, the Oneidas and the Tuscarroras, he headed what has been called, the most powerful Indian confederacy in America. Because the Iroquois sided with the English against the French during the French and Indian was, the English were able to win the conflict with the result that an English-speaking nation, alive with the germs of democracy was brought in existence.
Shekilammy welcomed Christian missionaries and his friendship with Count Zinzindorf, Moravin missionary, is historical. With Conrad Weiser he framed numberous treaties between the red and white men, some of which were made at what is now Womelsdorf.
WERE NEAR SUNBURY
The council house of the Iroquois was along the Oswego river in New York but Shekilammy and his Cayuga tribesmen spent much of their existence on the Susquehanna river near Sunbury. His name as chief of the Iroquois meant "the heart of the nation." He passed through Reading many times to trail with Weiser to Philadelphia. He died in Shamokin in 1740."