New Jersey Investigation File – Warren PD
INTERVIEW OF SAKIMA – NEMAHTENOW (SACHEM) ANDERS CROW-FEATHER BY WARREN PD DETECTIVE WILLIAM HEINLEIN JULY 12, 1992.
Heinlein (H): Do I address you as Sachem or Sakima, Mr. Crow-Feather?
Crow-Feather (CF): Sachem is fine.
H: I want the record to reflect that I’m now handing you official correspondence from the United States Army Corps. of Engineers, specifically, Commander Erik Henson, giving permission for you to speak freely about events that occurred before, during and after the US Government’s Ramapo Fault Seismology Project activities commencing June 10, 1991, in Warren, New Jersey. Take a minute to read it, please.
CF: It appears to be in order. May I have this copy for my own file?
H: Of course. Moving forward – how was it you became involved in the Warren phase of the Ramapo Fault Seismology Project?
CF: I recall being visited by Officers of the New Jersey State police around 1980 and them showing me a sealed biohazard container that had what appeared to be large animal claws in it. They said the objects were taken from a 1979 or 1980 incident site involving the employee of a famous German restaurant in Warren. I was told the restaurant was closed shortly thereafter by the Warren Department of Health.
The NJ State Police Officers claimed that whatever the claws belonged to severely mauled a young man and ripped his arm off. They also believed that the thing – whatever it was – came from a void under the restaurant building and then disappeared back down into the earth, leaving behind a repulsive smell. The claws were enormous and had large, curved talons. They made my flesh crawl.
I was asked if my people knew anything about such an animal – whether I knew of a historical account of anything like it. They wanted to know if there were myths of a malevolent thing that stalked people in the Watchung ridge of Warren…
I told them of the Lenni Lenape legend of the Yakwahe – a Demon who hid in the mazes of tunnels and voids in the Gray Rock. How it took livestock and children during the night for food. And why my people considered the Watchung-Warren area mountain range to be so cursed by Manetuwak – supernatural spirits that hated mankind – that we avoided all contact with the place.
I told them that the claws they carried in the jar came from such a beast.
H: So you told them that this Yakwahe actually existed? That it still took victims that found themselves near rock openings in Warren, NJ?
CF: Yes. I told the State Police that according to my people’s history, the Lenni Lenape always avoided the Warren Rocks. That early German settlers dispatched groups of “Jaeger” – professional Huntsman and Game Wardens to track the Yakwahe who terrorized Warren farmers in the 1700’s.
The Germans employed “Schutze meisters” – snipers with special rifles – to lay in wait for the Demons when they emerged from rock formations or caves to hunt for human food. One “Schutze Meister” – named Ebersoll – actually is reputed to have shot a seven-foot Yakwahe in its face, killing it. When townsfolk went to retrieve the remains, the carcass was gone. A black slime trail led back into a Gray Rock crevasse. But the human abductions and livestock disappearances never stopped.
Yakwahe live deep in the Earth, inside the Gray Rock tunnels and fissures that have formed over centuries. It is foolish for so many whites to have built homes on top of where Yakwahe live. Yakwahe never migrate. And where Yakwahe are – they refuse to leave.
My people always knew this. That is why we avoided the Warren Gray Rock in the Watchung Ridge like the plague.
H: How did you know what the New Jersey State Police showed you inside that biohazard container were the claws of a Yakwahe? Did you ever see one before?
CF: The legends and histories of my people are maintained with great accuracy – and secrecy. There is much we don’t share with the white man.
H: In June of 1991, why did the US Army Corps. of Engineers bring you in on the Warren phase of the Ramapo Fault Seismology Project? Did it have to do with the legend of the Yakwahe?
CF: The US Army Corps. of Engineers knew about the history of people disappearing in Warren. They also knew that the NJ State Police showed me the claw in their biohazard jar. I told them that it was not the first such artifact of a Yakwahe I had seen.
They showed me three pictures…. of three little angels. Susan Cho, Annie Anselmann and Jane Berthold. They went missing weeks before the US Army transferred its heavy equipment to Warren, and the blasting began. The little girls apparently disappeared as they walked home from the Elementary School up Bardy Farms Road past the Copper Mine Quarry site. They were in the sixth grade. My heart broke contemplating their fate.
You know the official story. There was a sewage collection basin collapse and – as the three girls tried to walk around it – they fell in and were never seen again.
It’s only part true. Yes, there was a sewer pipe break in the area – but the little girls fell into one of many holes near the Copper mine. The exact spot they disappeared is unknown. I’m that told that screaming from somewhere deep in the Earth was faintly heard for days. Then it stopped – and audible screeching began. The US Army cured that sound with dynamite and C4.
The “sewer collapse” story was a clever artifice to explain away the vile stench emitted from the place where the girls disappeared. Yakwahe secrete intensely foul odors when they attack – like skunks. Their revolting scent clings to everything and lasts for months. That’s why the German Restaurant eventually had to close its doors after the 1980 Bier Garten incident. In that case, the putrid smell didn’t dissipate for years.
H: What did the blasting have to do with you, Sachem? Was the open-pit quarry somehow ground-zero for Yakwahe access to our world? Was it a portal? A location that required prayers to supernaturally seal its evil off from mankind?
CF: The Army people are well aware of the strange history of Warren, NJ. They brought me in to recite our ancestral prayers over their work site because my people are consulted in all matters concerning New Jersey lands that have historical connections to the Lenni Lenape tribe.
H: Do you think the little girls are gone forever?
CF: The Yakwahe are unforgiving and cruel. They hate humanity. We are its food source. That is the way of things.
The Old German settlers knew this. Why do you think they brought in Jaegers – essentially old-world Game Wardens – to hunt the Yakwahe? Because they knew Warren was a gigantic game preserve of human prey for these Demons. A feasting ground of endless bounty. The Jaegers knew the ways of hunter-killer animals. How they think.
Why do you think the Township is named Warren? It’s named after the maze of tunnels and underground shafts that the Yakwahe live in. That’s what the word Warren means – an interconnected system of burrows where rabbits live. Only the Yakwahe aren’t rabbits.
The lie that Warren Township is named after Revolutionary War Hero Anthony Warren, the Boston MD who was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill is just that – a lie. Anthony Warren never set one foot in New Jersey and died decades after the first German and English – actually, Welsh – settlers started calling their New Jersey community Warren. The Old English and Germans were under no illusions about what their Watchung Mountain homestead was – and the danger it’s Gray Rock concealed.
The Masonic Temple in Basking Ridge has a painting of Masons decked out in their aprons performing a cornerstone consecration ceremony at the First Episcopal Church on Mt. Horeb “Pike” in 1746. The engraved plate on the lower frame of the impressive canvas reads: “Laying of the Cornerstone at the First Episcopal Church in Warren, 1746″.
Warren is named after what it is – a honeycombed tunnel system deep in Watchung Gray Rock foundations. It’s not named after some obscure Boston Doctor who died in 1776 and never had anything to do with New Jersey. Unfortunately, naming the Town after a Revolutionary War “Hero” from a city 250 miles away is a more comfortable mythology to swallow than dealing with the truth.
H: Thank you, Sachem. As per the letter of US Army Corps. of Engineers Commander Hansen, I will keep this interview sealed in my investigation file until a Court of Law rules on its evidentiary use.
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