William Penn and the native inhabitants (Lenape) of what would become Pennsylvania

In 1682 Charles II granted Pennsylvania to a religious dissenter, William Penn. Having been expelled from Oxford and arrested for his Quaker beliefs, Penn entertained the curious notion that his grant did not override native rights to the land. Before beginning his “Holy Experiment”—a colony with religious tolerance—Penn sent William Markham to negotiate the purchase of southeast Pennsylvania. In November, Penn arrived and signed a treaty at Shackamaxon (Philadelphia) with Tammamend, the sachem chosen by several groups of Lenape to represent them for the occasion. The agreement has been described by Voltaire as “the one treaty with the Indians that the whites never broke.” Believing the land west of the Lenape belonged to the Susquehannock, Penn returned to England without establishing the western boundaries of his purchase. When he returned in 1699, he discovered the Susquehannock needed Iroquois permission to sell land. The Lenape did also but had failed to mention this in 1682.

During Penn’s lifetime, things went relatively well. To make room for the English, the Lenape moved west to the upper Schuykill, Brandywine, and Lehigh valleys. By 1718, the Iroquois had assumed complete control of the affairs of the Lenape—an arrangement encouraged by Pennsylvania governors to insure the Lenape would not come under the influence of the French. The “covenant chain” provided little benefit for the Delaware, usually only demands for warriors to serve as Iroquois auxiliaries, two-thirds of whom were killed in the King William’s War (1689-96). The admission of the Tuscarora as the sixth member of the Iroquois League in 1722 only emphasized the Iroquois’ low opinion of the Lenape. Settlers in Pennsylvania continued to push west against the uncertain boundaries of the 1682 treaty. Germans from New York moved to the upper Schuykill, and the Brandywine villages were next. After they ceded the cession of the Susquehanna Valley in 1732, all that remained of the Lenape homeland was a small part of New Jersey and the Lehigh Valley (Allentown) in northeast Pennsylvania.

Upon his death in 1718, Penn’s three sons by his second marriage inherited his estate but none of his honesty. In 1737 Pennsylvania authorities “found” the infamous Walking Purchase agreement, a treaty supposedly signed in 1686 in which the Lenape ceded the land between the junction of Delaware and Lehigh Rivers as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half (about 40 miles). This was bad enough, but Penn’s son Thomas hired three of the fastest men in the colony and offered a prize to the one who could cover the greatest distance. Running on a prepared path, the winner went twice the distance the Delaware had anticipated which cost them most of the Lehigh valley. Realizing they had been cheated, the Delaware expected the Iroquois to defend their interests, but the Iroquois were furious that the Delaware had signed a treaty without their permission. Pennsylvania also took the precaution of bribing them to stay angry and enforce the agreement. The ultimate humiliation came during a 1742 meeting of the Delaware, Iroquois, and the Pennsylvania governor. When the Delaware sachem Nutimus rose to protest the Walking Purchase, the Iroquois representative Canasatego silenced him with, “We conquered you. You are women, we made women of you. Give up claims to your old lands and move west. Never attempt to sell land again. Now get out.”

source: Lee Sultzman