2014
Pen and Ink
8 inches x 8 inches
We used to say “from Five Points you go up the Wyandotte Street Hill…” That is where the Indian Maiden stands: her arm raised symbolically over the Lehigh Valley where she has been for eight decades, gesturing stoically.
Millions of eyes have followed her when they pass her perch—making the Indian Maiden an icon that if removed, would put many residents in a stir.
That exact thing happened in 1974. She disappeared. The owner of the building had removed it because of attempted theft, and over the years found that everyone had used it as a landmark.
Many people were concerned with the Indian Maiden immediately. Where did it go? Why? And would it ever return?
History has it that eighty years ago, at the top of Wyandotte Street was the now-defunct Universal Concrete Works owned by a Fred Koehler. His son was contacted by the present owner of the Indian Maiden who remembered it as being from the 1920s. He added that a similar one was delivered to Greentown, Pike County, to overlook Lake Wallenpaupack. So she was repainted using paint chips from the original statue for color accuracy. In 2002, after an absence of twenty-five years, the Indian Maiden came home to South Bethlehem in time for Thanksgiving.
She was one of the Bethlehem icons I have always wanted to draw.
I sat at her feet, doing my best, meeting the many interested renters there as I worked. Once completed, in a fit of inspiration, I had it in my mind to find or recreate the five foot Indian Maiden on my own somehow. It would look great overlooking the sea at my home in New Jersey! Pictures were as far as I got.
Years later I drove the River Road and stopped at a concrete casting operation doing a business along the Delaware. It turned out that this company had purchased Universal’s casts for statuary: but not hers. Did they have access to this sculpture? Did they know anything about the Indian Maiden? We perused every catalog she had and searched the back of Paolini’s yards to no avail. She promised to keep an eye out and took my card.
“Do you know,” she remarked to me as I turned to leave, “You are the third person to ask about Bethlehem’s Indian Maiden this year.”