During the last few months of his life he wrote his “Memoirs,” which was published soon after his death, which occurred on Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, N. Y., July 23, 1885.
His body found its final resting place in a magnificent mausoleum in Riverside Park, New York City, overlooking the Hudson River.
Shikellamy, Vicegerent of Six Nations, Died
in Shamokin, December 17, 1748
Shikellamy is the most picturesque and historic Indian character who ever lived in Pennsylvania. His early life is shrouded in mystery.
It has been claimed that he was a Susquehannock by birth, but others claim his father was a Frenchman. John Bartram, who accompanied Conrad Weiser and Lewis Evans to Onondaga in 1743, wrote of Shikellamy in his journal: “July 10, 1743—He was of the Six Nations, or rather a Frenchman born at Montreal, and adopted by the Oneidoes after being taken a prisoner, but his son told me that he (the son) was of the Cayuga Nations.”
Dr. Crantz, in the “History of the Brethren,” 1768, writes of Shikellamy:
“When he was spoken to concerning baptism, he said he had been baptized in infancy. We were informed afterward that he was born of European parents in French Canada, taken prisoner when a child two years old and brought up among the Indians. He was so much altered in his way of life that he was hardly distinguished from other savages.”
His name, according to Dr. George P. Donehoo, State Librarian and an eminent authority on the Indians of Pennsylvania, is a much corrupted form of the Oneida chieftain title, Ongwaternohiat-he, meaning, “It has caused the sky to be light for us.” The other name, Swataney, is a corrupt form of Onkhiswathe-tani, “He causes it to be light for us.”