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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
INDIAN MILLS, 120.4 miles (70 alt., 78 POP.), is the site of the first
Indian reservation on the continent, established in 1758. Most of the old
buildings are gone, and only a rusted wheel shows where a mill once
stood. On the site of an old one-room SCHOOLHOUSE, today used for cranberry sorting, stood a church where the Indians worshiped; it burned in
1802. Behind it was the Indians' burying ground. Indian Mills today is a
small settlement of cranberry pickers and a few farmers. The land is perhaps even more barren than when it was set aside for the survivors of the
South Jersey or Turkey brotherhood of Indians, at a time when the Colonial government was striving to end the costly Indian war on its borders.
In August, 1758, an Indian delegation presented a formal request to
the Colonial assembly for the allocation of this area. In three days the
legislature complied, buying a 3,000-acre tract called Edge Pillock, or
Edge-Pe-Lick, on which were built several cabins and a log meeting house.
Friends of the Indians renamed the place Brotherton. Here the last tribes-
join kinsmen in the Lake Oneida Reservation, N. Y. A small remnant
moved later to Wisconsin and then to Oklahoma and to Ontario, where
men lived but did not prosper; in 1801 they sold their land and left to
their descendants still live (see ARCHEOLOGY and INDIANS).
Several residents here remember Indian Ann, member of a half-breed
family that remained when the others moved away. She had three husbands in turn, a Negro, an Irishman, and a mulatto, and sold Indian trinkets in many villages. Ann lived to be more than l00 years old, dying in
1890.
Between Indian Mills and Atsion the highway passes through a heavy
wooded section, on nearly level ground.
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