William Penn's Treaty with the Lenape
The Dutch and Swedes had episodic relations with the Lenape. The English Quaker William Penn would have more enduring and impactful interactions. In 1682, Penn came to the Delaware River valley to claim lands granted to him on a proprietary basis by King Charles II of England and to establish a haven in the New World for fellow members of the persecuted Quaker sect. He came to take possession of lands that reached throughout southeast Pennsylvania where the Lenape resided.18 The Quakers believed strongly in the principles of goodwill and friendship and Penn practiced these principles with the Lenape. Penn was determined to treat them as brothers and sisters as he believed they too were children of God. He entered into purchase agreements with the Lenape that brought lands deeded to his proprietorship under his absolute titleAlthough he took ownership rights, he still recognized and reserved certain lands where Lenape villages were located, not allowing them to be sold. Peaceful relations between the European settlers and the Lenape would disintegrate, however, not long after Penn’s death in 1718.

The Lenape famously lost all claims to the terrain they had inhabited for centuries in the fraudulent "Walking Purchase" deed of 1737. After purchase agreements with William Penn, the Lenape moved outward, but soon these lands would be claimed by growing numbers of European settlers in the countryside around Penn’s Philadelphia. In the 1730s, Penn’s sons reinterpreted an accord that Penn had reached with the Lenape in 1686, insisting that the Penn family claim extended a full day-and-a-half’s walking distance. Sending out so-called "walkers" to determine the extent of their asserted domain, the Penn family seized ownership of lands sixty-five miles to the north and west of the earlier purchase agreements, effectively adding 750,000 acres to the family estate< Today, Lenape communities are found in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ontario, and New Jersey. Since 1982, New Jersey has officially recognized the state’s Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape tribe, and its hometown of Bridgeton is called “Indian Town.” Ironically, Pennsylvania, once a hub of Lenapi culture, chooses to ignore this part of the state’s past.

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