Middle Colonies Native American Relations

Indian-brokered alliances more than Quaker pacifism anchored the "long peace" in the decades that followed Pennsylvania's founding in 1681. The Iroquois Covenant Chain and the Lenapes' treaties with William Penn (1644-1718) established the diplomatic parameters that made the long peace possible and immune Pennsylvania to avoid the kind of destructive frontier warfare that engulfed the Chesapeake and New England during Salary's Rebellion and King Philip'south State of war (1675-76). By the third decade of the eighteenth century, all the same, the fragile residuum betwixt Indians and colonists unraveled every bit Pennsylvania officials, with Iroquois permission, expropriated native lands in order to conform the westward migration of English, German, and Scots-Irish colonists. Few colonists appreciated in 1753 how their dispossession of Indian communities motivated the Lenape and other Indian groups to assail Pennsylvania'southward frontier towns during the Vii Years' State of war (1754-1763).

photograph of a woven wampum belt. the belt itself is a tan color with darker diagonal lines a a depiction of two human silhouettes holding hands — This wampum belt, on exhibit at the Philadelphia History Museum, was said to be given to William Penn by the Lenapes at the time of the 1682 treaty. (Philadelphia History Museum)

In the mid-1600s, upheavals among Indians in the Slap-up Lakes and Ohio Valley regions helped clear the way for the European settlement of the Delaware Valley. The Iroquois, equipped with Dutch (and after English language) firearms, struck out against the Huron and other native groups to secure fur trading routes and take captives to furnish their numbers, which had been decimated past European diseases. By the time Charles Ii (1630-85) granted Penn his colonial charter, Iroquois raids had largely depopulated the Susquehanna Valley of its native inhabitants.

The Lenapes, or Delawares, who lived on both sides of the Delaware River, had been dealing with Dutch and Swedish colonists for decades and in 1675-77 sold lands in what became West New Jersey to English Quakers. Beginning in 1682, the Lenapes ceded lands on the w banking company of the Delaware to Penn in commutation for textile, guns, powder, alcohol, and other trade appurtenances. Lenape chiefs such every bit Tamanend (Tammany) did not "sell" land every bit much as grant shared usage rights in the hopes of establishing a human relationship with a potentially powerful European marry.

Common Benefits

With the Susquehanna Valley open for hunting beaver and other pelts that Europeans prized for Atlantic markets, the Lenapes were tending to negotiate with Penn, a man they called Miquon (meaning "feather," or quill pen, a Delaware pun on his last name). Penn, in return, promised he would deal with Indians honestly and fairly. These early treaties cemented Pennsylvania's reputation as a peaceable colony where beloved and friendship prevailed between Indians and colonists, as famously portrayed later by the paintings of Benjamin West (1738-1820) and Edward Hicks (1780-1849).

William Penn, the Quaker founder and proprietor, badly needed Indian partners. New York and Connecticut each claimed territory south of where Pennsylvania stock-still its northern border, while Maryland'southward Charles Calvert (1637-1715), Lord Baltimore, hotly disputed the location of Pennsylvania's southern boundary. One reading of Maryland's charter, in fact, placed that colony's upper border northward of Philadelphia. Penn used Indian titles to legitimate his country claims and ward off rivals. He also coveted Indian lands in the Susquehanna Valley, west of Philadelphia. By the early 1690s, Indians, fleeing warfare and colonization elsewhere, began settling the Susquehanna, including Lenape communities relocating to escape the growing colonial population in the Delaware Valley. They were joined by returning Susquehannocks (the original inhabitants of the region, now known as "Conestogas"), Shawnees, Mahicans, Senecas, Cayugas, Nanticokes, and Conoys, among others. These native settlers formed polyglot, multiethnic communities in Indian towns similar Conestoga, Pequea, and, a little subsequently, Shamokin.

Even before Penn consulted with Indian leaders in those communities, he sold colonists subscriptions to lands in the Susquehanna. Penn viewed the lower Susquehanna, with its access to the Chesapeake, every bit strategically vital to Pennsylvania'south commercial success. By attracting colonists there, he as well hoped to redirect the lucrative Indian fur trade away from Albany, New York.

Fortunately for Penn, Indians in the Susquehanna had good reasons to accommodate colonists. The Iroquois claimed the region by right of conquest (attributable to their mid-seventeenth-century raids), and through their Covenant Chain alliance with New York, they too claimed to speak on behalf of all Indian groups living there. Subsequently Governor Thomas Dongan (1634-1715) of New York sold Penn his merits to the Susquehanna for a meager £100, Shawnee, Conoy, and Conestoga leaders seized the opportunity to recognize Pennsylvania's potency in 1701. In doing so, they sought political legitimacy (at the expense of the Iroquois) as well equally a valuable trading partner. As he did near 2 decades earlier, Penn promised his Indian allies that his government would protect them from unruly colonists and dishonest traders.

Peace Preserved by "Become-betweens"

The 1701 treaty ensured Pennsylvania's "long peace" would continue, although uneasily. It was held together past diplomatic "go-betweens," Indian and colonial, who smoothed over the inevitable conflicts that arose in a borderland zone of multiple and overlapping native jurisdictions and where Pennsylvania held little authority. In one notable case, in 1722, the murder of an Indian named Sawantaeny (d. 1722) by an English trader, John Cartlidge (1684-1722), during a drunken ball touched off a diplomatic crisis that sent Pennsylvania officials to the Susquehanna Indian boondocks of Conestoga (and the governor to Albany because Sawantaeny was a Seneca Iroquois). The willingness of the Iroquois, provincial government, and Susquehanna Indians to overlook the murder and forgive Cartlidge (who eventually was freed after the Iroquois received restitution) demonstrated the value of maintaining good relations on the frontier, where political stability was necessary for peaceful coexistence and the continued profitability of the fur merchandise. It also demonstrated that the Pennsylvania government understood the importance of observing Indian diplomatic protocols, especially during a political crisis.

The provincial official who led Pennsylvania's investigation of Sawantaeny's murder, James Logan (1674-1751), had an interest in maintaining order in the Susquehanna. The son of Scottish Quaker converts, Logan came to Pennsylvania in 1699 to serve as Penn's provincial secretarial assistant. Shortly before leaving the colony in 1701, Penn entrusted Logan to wait after his proprietary interests and manage his estate at Pennsbury. Logan remained in Pennsylvania for the remainder of his life. During that fourth dimension, he became a major political figure, serving, among other positions, as provincial councilor, land commissioner, and Pennsylvania's master Indian diplomat. He ran a successful merchant concern in Philadelphia that supplied Indian customers using a cartel of traders who hauled his dry out appurtenances and rum into the Susquehanna on "Conestoga" wagons. By 1720, Logan had monopolized the fur trade and became i of the wealthiest colonists in Philadelphia.

Logan likewise engineered the "Walking Purchase," one of the most infamous chapters in the history of Native American-Pennsylvania relations. In 1737, Logan and Thomas Penn (1702-75), so acting as Pennsylvania'southward governor, claimed to possess a 1686 deed from the Lenape chief Mechkilikishi granting William Penn all the Indian lands that could be caused within a 24-hour interval-and-a-one-half's walk from Wrightstown in Bucks County. Although the deed was probably forged, the Iroquois sanctioned the "walk," which took identify in September with three of the colony'due south fastest runners roofing more than threescore miles. Logan used the "running walk," as the Lenape termed it, to claim over a thou square miles of Indian territory in the Delaware Forks (or in Lenape, Lechauwitank), where the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers converge (and where Allentown and Bethlehem are now located). Nether pressure from the Iroquois, the Lenape in the region, along with their leader, Nutimus, were forced to relocate to the Wyoming Valley (near present-mean solar day Wilkes-Barre) and Shamokin.

The Walking Buy and the colonization of the Susquehanna Valley left a bitter legacy in Pennsylvania-Native American relations. The Lenape chief Teedyuscung (c. 1700-63), who was among those displaced from the Delaware Forks, reemerged in the Wyoming Valley as a warrior who conducted periodic raids on Euroamerican settlements in eastern Pennsylvania during the Seven Years' War. In a strange twist, he took part in the Treaty of Easton in 1758 as an ally of the Quakers and helped to broker a peace between the Pennsylvania government and Ohio Valley Indians, primarily Lenapes and Shawnees who had been displaced earlier from the Susquehanna. Murdered in 1763 by arsonists who burned his motel nether mysterious circumstances (likely colonists from Connecticut's Susquehanna Company), Teedyuscung did not live to encounter many of his people forced to relocate again, under British regal and Iroquois pressure, west of the Appalachians. His life and decease, still, symbolized the entangled and intimate relations of Pennsylvanians and Native Americans through the beginning one-half of the eighteenth century.

Michael Goode is an Assistant Professor of Early on American History at Utah Valley Academy, Orem, Utah. (Writer information current at time of publication.)

Gallery

Wampum Belt

Philadelphia History Museum

This wampum belt was said to exist given to William Penn by the Lenape tribe at the time of the 1682 treaty. The belt, donated in 1857 to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania by a corking grandson of Penn, is made of white wampum with darker accent beads and depicts two figures property easily, oftentimes interpreted as a sign of friendship and peace. Wampum refers to the shell beads used equally currency by Native Americans in the eastern United States. The chaplet are made of clam and whelk shells and were used as retentiveness aids, ofttimes given to commemorate of import events such as engagements, marriages, or funerals. Wampum could be fashioned into a belt and used to keep an oral history. The belts were also used every bit currency and—every bit seems to be the case here—to mark the creation of treaties.

Penn'southward Treaty with the Indians

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Penn Treaty Park is at 1341 North. Delaware Avenue in Philadelphia's Fishtown section, almost one-and-a-one-half-miles upriver from Penn's Landing on the Delaware River. Traditional accounts say William Penn's peaceful treaty with the Lenni Lenape was negotiated on state now occupied by the park. The iconic upshot is depicted equally Benjamin Westward imagined it in his painting Penn's Treaty with the Indians. The site of the agreement was said to exist marked by the Groovy Elm, located to the right in the image. The original elm fell during a storm in 1810, and ii hundred years afterward, in May 2010, a descendant elm was planted in its place. Though no first-hand prove of the treaty exists, West and other artists have contributed to the legend through their fine art, and the park's establishment helped perpetuate information technology every bit well.

Friends Coming together House and Old Court House

Library Company of Philadelphia

Friends Meeting Business firm (at left in this image) and Old Court House, both on Market Street nearly 2nd Street, served as important coming together places during the colonial era. In 1728, rumors of hostility and skirmishes between European settlers and local Delaware, Shawnee, and Susquehannock tribes almost erupted into a war. Tensions heightened later 3 Delaware men were murdered in the Susquehanna River Valley. Pennsylvania Governor Patrick Gordon, using fur traders as intermediaries, quelled tensions with meetings at the Friends Meeting House in July and at the Court Firm in Oct of that year.

The Friends Coming together House was built in 1696 and rebuilt on the same location in 1754. Information technology was abode to some of the most of import meetings for the Lodge of Friends in the eighteenth century and was demolished in 1804 when it was replaced by the Curvation Street Meeting Business firm at Fourth and Arch Streets. The Onetime Court Business firm was congenital betwixt 1707 and 1710 and served every bit a center of justice for the city until the structure of the Philadelphia County Court House in 1780. The Old Court House was demolished in 1837.

Walking Purchase Survey Map in 1737

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Produced presently after three Philadelphia "walkers" ran miles beyond the distance expected by the Delaware Indians, this map by surveyor John Chapman in 1737 shows the layout of the newly claimed territory of the Walking Purchase. Wrightstown, the area where the "walkers" started their solar day-and-a-one-half journey northwest, is near the bottom right of this map. The mount range to the upper left of this map shows the northern boundary that was angled northeast towards the Delaware River, greatly increasing the total acreage of the land for Thomas Penn, John Penn, and James Logan. Drawings of a man walking with a dog, and 2 other animal drawings, embellish the map.

Teedyuscung Statue

Peeking from behind a boulder, this is the elevation portion of a twelve-foot statue carved in the likeness of Lenape Chief Teedyuscung (1700-63) that sits high to a higher place Wissahickon Creek in the Wissahickon Valley Park section of Fairmount Park. The statue was originally made of wood, but was replaced with this limestone replica in 1902. It was designed by John Massey Rhind for Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Henry, a wealthy Philadelphia couple who wished to create a more permanent tribute.

A member of the Delaware, or Lenape, tribe, Teedyuscung grew up near what is now Trenton, New Jersey, and came in close contact with European settlers. As a young man he became familiar with European customs, language, and religion and when he relocated to Pennsylvania he used his cognition to advocate to the colonists on behalf of the Lenape who could non speak English or appeal to the colonial government. Later in his life, Teedyuscung proclaimed himself "King of the Delawares" and through negotiations with the colonial government in Philadelphia, attempted to secure a permanent Lenape settlement in the Wyoming Valley. After being refused a permanent Lenape homeland by the Iroquois in 1763, Teedyuscung was murdered by arsonists who burned his dwelling house while he slept. The Lenape were never granted land in the Wyoming Valley and were moved w of the Appalachian Mountains nether provisions of the Proclamation of 1763. (Photo by Donald D. Groff for the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)

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