The Hickatuck Indians

The Hickatuck Indians – the first hostile tribe of humans in Island Heights

top row: from left to right: man, woman, woman, man, woman; bottom row: man, man, woman, ?, man

In 1401, the first humans arrived on “The Isle of Heights” which today is known as Island Heights, New Jersey.
The Hickatucks were angry savages with imposing height and weight.  Etchings on the walls of the underground tunnels that snake beneath the town, prove the men stood an average height of 6′ 6″ and tipped the water displacement scale at 350 lbs.

According to modern Hickatuck translation of ancient Hickatuck dialect, these Indians were known as “Grandish Brute Godkas.” A loose translation means: “Grand vicious gods” or, the loosest layman’s term: “Giant, mean Indians.”

Golden waves of Hemp and lush fig trees grew everywhere on the island and the Hickatuck’s future-telling Gazing Pond told them what they could do with those growths.  It instructed them to: use all of the hemp plant to make some items, and most of the fig tree to make everything else.  However, the Gazing Pond warned not to use both the hemp plant and fig tree to make any one item.  If anyone did, then the angry god of Mixed Blessings would rain down bloody hell on the Isle of Heights.

So the Hickatucks got busy making: hemp camping tents, fig tee pees, tribal chiefs’ hemp hair-weaves, fig knives, hemp arrows, three-wheeled fig beer wheel barrows, hemplon kites, fig light shades, hempy hair care pomade, figmonaide –like lemonaide, hemp bear traps, fig skull caps, hemp boots, gloves with matching chaps, fig dice (for a game like craps), hemp shoe taps, fig satchel straps and much, much more than that.

Hickatuck Indian teen girl posing with hemp knitting needle

The Hickatucks pitched colorful teepees along the Dead Body Bay – which was later renamed the Barnegat Bay.  They ate clams for breakfast and herring for lunch but no written record exists to show what they ate for a sensible dinner.  However,  Grandpappa Kaiser’s diary shows a sketch that suggests that the Hickatuck’s evening meal looked tougher than herring and looser then clams.

They worshiped the Vital Force within themselves and knew that the Dead Body Bay synchronized with it.  The giant quartz crystal that lay deep in the muck of the bay might have held clues to their connection with that body of water.  Grandpappa Kaiser’s diary states:

“That crystal was half a mile wide and half a mile long and worked like a giant transceiver / receiver – switching on and off with the current of the bay’s vortices.  It’s all in one of Ernst Steele’s papers.”

The Indians called the treasured body of water the Dead Body Bay because of their unorthodox burial ritual.  The Hickatucks never buried their dead in the earth on the Island.  Their Gazing Pond sternly warned them not to – threatening a bloody curse upon the land of anyone who did.  Eventually, the third white man to arrive on the Isle of Heights was the first of many who made that grave mistake – and to this day there are homes built on “restless earth.”

editors note:  To this day, there exists a serious threat of spirit possession through lower plane astral biophoton exchanges between those possessed by evil spirits and those who disturb them.

Obeying the Gazing Pond, the Hickatucks used hemp twine and tethered their dead to fig rafts and when the moon was new, they administered one last evening meal, placed a small quartz crystal in the left palm of the deceased then hemp-twined the fingers closed to form a fist.  Then they launched the spiritual death craft out into the Dead Body Bay.

It’s then, according to Grandpappa Kaiser, that the small quartz would emit a violet glow that appeared through the back of the lifeless hand.  This indicated that the body synchronized with the pulse of the bay’s magnetically charged negative vortices.  As the surface tension of the water increased, the vessel rose slightly above the water and floated the body away along the Dead Body Bay.  From the Isle of Heights, it sailed unobstructed and perfectly guided – until it reached the sugar-sand shores of the Pine Barrens deep in the low hill swamps of Tuckerton.

Once there, the Piney People seasoned the body with Frankincense and Myrtle then plugged all orifices with pine-sarsaparilla sap. They then took two jugs of moonshine Piney Man Lightnin’ Scotch Whiskey and nestled them into each arm’s woble.  The Piney’s waited for the return tide, then launched the celebratory death ship back up the Dead Body Bay toward the Isle of Heights.

At the first glimpse of the returning loved one, three Hickatuck scouts would wade waist deep in the bay to prevent the craft from reaching shore.  They chanted blessings, placed their hands on the edge of the raft, then with an upward thrust, flipped the body in the bay to complete the traditional Hickatuck tippaboat burial at bay.  Then the three Hickatucks would scuba down into the water where two Indians would fetch the two jugs of Piney Man Lightnin’ scotch whiskey and the third would take the love one’s hand, cut the hemp twine from the lifeless fingers then pocket the valuable quartz crystal for the next traditional Hickatuck tippaboat burial at bay.

The arrival of the little Lenni Lenape Indians 

In 1411, the Gazing Pond told the Hickatucks that they needed structured electron living water to protect their spirit’s Vital Force.  This healing water was also needed to ward off poison waters that would one day trouble the entire Isle of heights.  The Gazing Pond had another message – a demand.  Babies.  It needed lots and lots of babies to appease the Island’s impatient “god of youth.”

Grandpappa Kaiser’s diary told his theory about the baby request:

“Them Hickatuck Indian broads weren’t pumpin’ out the papooses fast enough.”

At the rise of the new moon, eleven Hickatuck scouts left the Island for a far out journey to Crystal  Mountain, in Shohola, Pennsylvania.  Once there, they found the cave that hid the crystal spring. They dipped hundreds of empty Piney Man Lightnin’ jugs and filled them all with crystal clear living water. 

Water leads to water. Hickatuck scouts paddle to the structured water springs to fill their jugs

Then came the problem of how to appease the impatient “god of Youth.”

The eleven Hickatucks tried for ten days and nights but each morning they awoke to empty baby traps.  They needed a solution.  The scout elder took a piece of quartz crystal, ground it on a stone and blew the glistening powder into their Travel Gazing Pond. 

They waited for eleven minutes and then the solution appeared.  They camped, then awoke on the eleventh morning – went into the woods to check their baby trap-cages – and stood stunned.  Lots and lots of babies in all the traps!  But disappointment soon crossed each Hickatuck’s face as they stared down at their bounty.  The babies were the ugliest babies that any Hickatuck Indian ever gazed eyes on!  They didn’t understand what went wrong until they got home to the Isle of Heights to ask their island Gazing Pond.  What they learned was that their mistake was even uglier then the ugliest baby in the trap. It turns out that what the Hickatucks thought were babies, were in fact , full grown Indian men and women – except none of them stood taller than a half stalk of corn – or as the Indians call it: Maize.

The Hickatucks stared stymied by the wee-statured specimens.  They had never seen a baby adult before.

Grandpappa Kaiser disagrees and states in his diary:

“They knew what they had in the baby traps.  In fact, a popular American catch-phrase was born when one of the Hickatucks looked into that cage, pointed and cried out:

“Hey, look at the midget!”

“Not facially appealing, yet compact, robust and a force to reckon with.” Grandpappa Kaiser’s diary quote

The Hickatucks found that their miniature “thems” were an angrier Tribe then they.  Those baby adults ran quick circles around everything in their path and their speech was high-pitched with a shivering vibrato. “Speech like constant chilly.” said the Hickatucks.

These Indians had statures and mannerisms starkly opposed to the Hickatucks who were big and beefy and ran lumbering circles around nothing.  A Hickatuck’s voice consisted of words that plopped out stiff off a swollen tongue forming sentences delivered in long, breathy whines – much like Zoogz – the god of fat impatient tongue.

Annoyed, the Hickatucks plotted against the baby adult tribe.  A Hickatuck elder decided an accident would happen – right around baby bath time.

According to tunnel etchings and pages from Grandpappa Kaiser’s Hickatuck scrapbook, the accident happened like this: One sunny Saturday afternoon – at baby bath time – on the rocks at Pavilion Point., five Hickatuck elders lured the mini Indians into their holding cages, secured the hatch with hemp twine, then threw them into the Dead Body Bay where they quickly sunk to the bottom like a cage full of little Indians.  The Hickatucks leaned over the edge to look for little bubbles but astonishingly, there was not one!  Hickatuck scouts dove into the bay, got the traps back on the rocks and saw that the crafty bastards had long breathing rods in their mouths. 

Paintings in my museum show that the Hickatucks then tried another method to rid themselves of the problem tribe.  They summoned the tallest Hickatuck of their tribe to stand at Pavilion Point with an outstretched arm.  To the arm they attached a little piece of hemp rope and fashioned a noose at the end of it.  Another Hickatuck Indian grabbed one of the little Indians and hoisted him up on the big Hickatucks shoulders.  Then, they placed the noose around his pencil neck and at the count of six, the other Hickatucks shook the big Hickatuck back and forth.  The baby adult hung on tight using his developed calf muscles.  It never dropped off the Hickatuck’s shoulders.  At sunset, the baby adult got a ”Sunset Pardon” and was free to go back in his cage until morning when they’d try a different baby -perhaps one with under-developed calf muscles.

That night as the Hickatuck elders stared into the gazing pond a warning appeared.  A vivid one.  If death came to one of the baby adult Indian tribe, then the Hickatucks would suffer a crippling shrinking curse!  Fearing for the height of future generations, the paranoid Hickatucks changed their murderous minds and instead, brought strawberry figs to the little Indians as a peace-offering and apology for trying to drown then hang them.  The Hickatucks then opted to adopt the little anomalies for better or for worse.

Grandpapa kaiser states:  “Around this time, the Hickatucks started calling the smaller Indians: “ruby elder- babushkas”.”

editors note:  Checking with experts, I learned that the phrase loosely translates into: “red old babies.”

Over time, the Hickatucks began to understand the pantomimes and vibrating verbiage of the red old babies and shortened their name to Lenni Lenape.  For centuries, no one knew how the Hickatucks arrived at that name for the red old babies but thanks to the underground tunnel etchings, we do know that the Hickatucks were a tidy tribe and the Lenni Lenape’s were messy.

editors note: It’s this historians educated assumption that when the little red old baby’s constantly cried out to:

“Let me Live Sloppy” , The Hickatucks heard: Lenni Lenape.

The violence between the two tribes never escalated above a few surface wounds

Both tribes still hated each other but shared the neutral Gazing Pond which kept the conflicts contained to bickering, sarcasm and practical jokes.  There was no bloodshed between the tribes.

That changed instantly when the first white man appeared on the Isle of Heights.

Next Installment: The Hickatuck Indians – Gazing Pond predictions for our modern world:

Why were the Hickatucks forced to vacate prime real estate in Island Heights?

How did the Hickatucks’ Gazing Pond know that the white man would bring Hydraulic Fracturing – or fracking – to the Delaware River and that it would threaten to contaminate the drinking water in the hidden living water springs in Island Heights?

Why did the Lenni Lenape Indians refer to this area as The Gasland?

Did the Hickatucks’ Gazing Pond predict the 2011 earthquake on the east coast?

These questions find answers here: The Gazing Pond