William Penn’s Quakerism and the Treaty With the Lenape

by Victor Medina Del Toro, Colin Frederickson, Faith Danglo, and William Fox

A common thread in the histories of William Penn and the Penn Treaty is that his Quaker principles made his interaction with Native Americans different from those of previous settlers. The assumption in narratives of Penn, the establishment of the Pennsylvania colony, and especially the Penn Treaty is that Penn’s Quakerism made his dealings with the Lenni-Lenape exceptional. Although other colonies had “purchased land from the Indians on the spot,” this had only been a “matter of expediency rather than right, and rum and the threat of force were used as handy instruments in the bargaining” (Drake, 1944). There is no denying that Penn’s Quaker values informed his approach to negotiating and interacting with the Lenape; however, attributing the exceptionalism of the Penn Treaty entirely to Penn’s values is overly-simplistic.

There are at least two other factors that also influenced Penn’s interactions with the Lenape that are often not accounted for in his legend: the effectiveness of other means and the Lenni-Lenape willingness to negotiate. First, Drake’s history claims that “violence was the rule…by which white men and red strove to drive each other from the land.” Although he accepts that early Pennsylvania settlers were “too few in number and weak in military power to threaten the Indians in their ample hunting grounds,” he attributes the negotiation of peace to the later settlers’ Quaker religion (Drake, 1944). Knowing that previous colonists had been in conflict with Native Americans would have also discouraged Penn from attempting a land grab against a well-established group.

Second, in Penn’s 1638 account of the Lenni-Lenape he describes the ceremony where they conducted all of their negotiations, including land treaties. Penn’s description challenges the idea that the Penn Treaty is an exceptional event that resulted from Penn’s benevolent Quaker ideals because it was a typical way of conducting business and because he was in a subservient role during the ceremony. In Penn’s description of typical negotiations, the “King” did not speak to Penn, but instead sent one of his advisors to speak “in the Name of his King” (Penn, Myers; 1937). Penn was astounded by the “natural sagacity, considering them without the help…of Tradition” and any man would “deserve the Name of Wise, that Outwit[ed] them in any Treaty about a thing they [understood]” (Penn, Myers; 1937). Though Penn’s religion added unique aspects to his approach to relations with the Lenape, the Penn Treaty was equally shaped by the existing political structures of the Lenape.

Penn’s legend has overshadowed the history of Pennsylvania’s founding because it has become the history of a great man instead of a nuanced history. Not only has this limited our understanding of Penn as a complex individual with a variety of motives, but it has also excluded the Lenni-Lenape from histories of Pennsylvania. Penn’s legend is then in front of his own history and the history of the Lenape people.