Independent Arts News Reporting Pennsbury Manor to Display Luminous Turkey Feather Cape Woven by Lenape Artist
Reported on Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Pictured Above: Rebecca by tree. Photo Credit: Contributed.
NEWRSOOM POST: BUCKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
The Cape of a Matriarch by Rebecca Haff Lowry Will Be on View at William Penn’s 17-Century Estate from July 2026 through July 2027
Bucks County, PA — Pennsbury Manor– William Penn’s reconstructed 17-century estate along the Delaware River – will display The Cape of a Matriarch by contemporary Lenape artist Rebecca Haff Lowry from July 2026 to July 2027.
Lowry, a poet, educator, and citizen of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, created the cape as a tribute to Lenape matriarchs, past, present, and future, and to honor the return of Lenape people to their homelands. The work debuted at Brooklyn Public Library in 2022 and has also been exhibited at Brooklyn Museum and the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey.
“Legend holds that when William Penn died, Lenape people sent a feather cape to Hannah Penn to comfort her in her mourning,” said Doug Miller, Historic Site Administrator at Pennsbury Manor. “To display Rebecca Haff Lowry’s The Cape of a Matriarch at Pennsbury Manor is a powerful way to connect that history with contemporary Lenape art, voice, and presence.”
The Lenape are Indigenous people whose homelands include areas from what is known today as western Connecticut to Delaware. Lenape people have lived in many different places, adapting and using the materials available to them to continue expressions of Lenape beauty and ancestral knowledge.
The cape is made from turkey feathers woven into hemp netting, with a collar decorated with dentalium shells and glass beads. Dentalium shells, which come from sea mollusks, are a traditional material widely traded and used by Indigenous artists across the continent. Lowry learned feather-weaving techniques from her mother-in-law, Sandra Lowry, a member of the Yurok Tribe of northwestern California, and asked Sandra to sew 2,000 beads into the collar to symbolize the Milky Way.
Wild turkeys were once abundant in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homelands, before European colonization. Lenape peoples made garments from the bird’s strong, warm feathers, and turkey-feather garments were an important part of Lenape clothing for men and women. As Lenape people were forced from their homelands, the knowledge of how to make these garments became less common.
Historically, Lenape women played important roles in peacemaking, made and distributed gifts to non-Lenape people in strategic ways, gave gifts to colonists to recognize current agreements and understandings, helped settle land disputes and uphold cultural rules, decided whether to accept or reject the efforts of missionaries, made decisions about adoption and kinship, shared visions and knowledge that impacted their community, had equal status, held authority and asserted their voices, and maintained kinship responsibilities by traveling throughout the vast region of Lenapehoking. Lenape women still hold leadership roles today in tribal government and businesses, education, cultural traditions and revitalization of art forms.
Lowry has previously visited Pennsbury Manor with members of the Delaware Tribe to help interpret Lenape history and is expected to return to the historic site for a poetry reading later this year.
Rebecca wrote the following poem, after completing the cape in 2021:
The Cape of a Matriarch
Shells pave the Milky Way.
Feathers lift our little words.
We carry the heavy. We carry the light.
Always this loss. Always this joy.
Weave on.
Fearless.
Not faceless.
We are not oyster middens.
We speak for ourselves.
“Working with the Delaware Tribe is one of Pennsbury Manor’s most meaningful privileges,” Miller said. “This exhibition gives visitors a chance to better understand Lenape history not as something confined to the past, but as a living culture shaped by knowledge, adaptation, kinship, and return.”
The Cape of a Matriarch will be on view in the Visitor’s Center main hallway and is included with regular admission to Pennsbury Manor.
About Pennsbury Manor
Pennsbury Manor is the 43 acre reconstructed estate of William Penn in Pennsylvania. Penn purchased the land for his home from Pennsylvania first people, the Lenape. Today the site is operated by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, under the direction of Governor Josh Shapiro, Chair Hayley Haldeman, and Executive Director Andrea Lowery, with the assistance of the 501(c)(3) Pennsbury Society.
About Rebecca Haff Lowry
Rebecca Haff Lowry is a citizen of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, a federally recognized band of Lenape, headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. She is a poet, artist and curriculum development specialist. Working with partners across the state of California, Lowry helped produce the state’s first ever K-12 Native American Studies Model Curriculum. Her turkey feather cloak, The Cape of a Matriarch, has been exhibited at Brooklyn Public Library, Montclair Art Museum and Brooklyn Museum. In collaboration with Dutch artist, Inge Meijer, Lowry led a “Walking Poetry” reading, in October 2025. This event presented the poem, “Final Inscription,” an intervention on the narrative inscribed in the plaque at Shorakkapoch Rock, at Inwood Hill Park, Manhattan. Five of Lowry’s poems appear in Lenapehoking: An Anthology, which was produced by the Brooklyn Public Library and the Lenape Center. Lowry completed a curriculum for the de Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, designing youth engagement strategies for their Native arts galleries. Lowry currently works as a Curriculum Development Specialist for the Academy of Professional Excellence, School of Social Work, at San Diego State University.
