On April 25, 1778, a party of fourty-seven Oneida warriors departed Kanonwalohale (located in present-day Vernon, New York) into a cold and snowy April. Among them was a woman named Polly Cooper. They carried baskets of white corn and walked over two hundred miles south to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington’s Continental Army was starving.
When they arrived on May 15, a soldier recorded their presence in his journal: “A few days ago, 40 Indians, of the Oneida [Indian] nation, arrived at our camp . . . to scout near the lines” (1). He made no mention of Cooper, but Oneida oral traditions have preserved her name and her story. Much of what is known about Polly Cooper originates in firsthand verbal accounts that have been recorded by Oneida historians such as Chief William Honyost Rockwell (1870-1960), an Oneida leader and descendant of Polly Cooper who heard the stories as a child and wrote them down (2). FOR MORE
