Chief Little Owl

Quiet and family-oriented, Bethany Beach cuts a lower profile than Delaware’s other coastal towns. However, when driving into town, one figure rises above the landscape, welcoming visitors. This statue, known as “Chief Little Owl,” is one of a collection of wooden sculptures found across North America, part of a series known as the Trail of the Whispering Giants.

The statue was not created by an Indigenous sculptor. Rather, the artist is Peter Wolf Toth, whose family fled Hungary during the 1956 uprising. Resettling in Akron, Ohio, Toth began to read about America’s Indigenous population, identifying with the violence and repression of his childhood culture. Beginning with a rock sculpture in La Jolla, California (since destroyed), he began to travel the country, making sculptures, creating at least one for every American state as well as several Canadian provinces.

Delaware was the 22nd stop on his artistic journey. In December 1976, Toth carved a statue named “Chief Little Owl” from a poplar tree, placing it at the entrance to Bethany Beach. Chief Little Owl is based on an actual historical figure, a member of the Nanticoke Indian Tribe who was also known as Charles Cullen Clark.

Pre-contact, the Nanticoke were a small band located on the Eastern Shore, and allies of the larger Powhatan Confederacy. More than 100 years of fighting the colony of Maryland came to a head in 1742, when a revenge plot was discovered by the colonists. Most Nanticoke would flee, but a few remained, establishing themselves along Delaware’s Indian River. 

Most of the remaining members of the Nanticoke would assimilate, and the last Nanticoke speaker, Lydia E. Clark (Nau-Gau-Okwa), would pass away in 1856. The Nanticoke Tribe would be recognized in 1881, and in 1921, Clark’s descendant, Chief Wyniaco, would establish the Nanticoke Indian Association. Chief Wyniaco would die in 1928, and his son, Chief Little Owl, would take over the association in 1933, leading it for nearly 40 years until his death in 1971.

Delaware’s Whispering Giants sculpture was built to honor Chief Little Owl, however, the original statue ended up being relatively short-lived. It was felled in a storm in January 1992, and the damage was found to be irreparable due to termites and rot. The sculpture was said to be given to the Nanticoke Indian Museum, but it proved to be too damaged to preserve. A second sculpture was created by Dennis Beach, but it too quickly rotted, and it had to be removed in 2000.

This time, Toth himself was called upon to replace the sculpture, and his new Chief Little Owl was made using Alaskan red cedar. This new sculpture, the 69th in the Whispering Giants series, is the one seen today. At the ceremony, it was blessed by Charlie “Little Owl” Clark IV, one of Chief Little Owl’s descendants.

The sculpture is at once a tribute to Delaware’s Nanticoke heritage and somewhat out of place. Although frequently and inaccurately called a totem pole, which would not be regionally appropriate, Toth was careful to distinguish his work as a separate matter entirely–it was art that “depicts an Indian, not copies of Indian art.” Nevertheless, as art that depicts Indigenous peoples created by a non-Native artist, its presence remains controversial.

Meanwhile, the Nanticoke culture has survived and in fact thrived since the days of Chief Little Owl, surviving a leadership schism. Today, the Nanticoke are seeing a new revival of enthusiasm for the culture and heritage among its tribal members. In fact, 2023 saw the release of the first book ever to be written in the Nanticoke language, ensuring that Nanticoke culture will persevere and will forever be tied to the land of the Delaware beaches.