Benjamin West. Penn’s Treaty with the Indians. Printed by John Boydell, June 12, 1775.

West’s portrayal of the Treaty is one of the most famous paintings of American history, and this painting served to popularize the image of the Elm—in the years after “Penn’s Treaty” the Elm began to be more central in artistic renderings of the story of the Elm. However, the scene that iconicized the Elm was largely imagined by West himself. Among other falsifications, West showed the Lenape with weapons, which they would not have brought to a peace treaty. Painted after William Penn’s son tricked the Lenape out of over a million acres of land in the Walking Purchase of 1737, this image reinvented the legend of the Treaty in a way that put the Quakers in a position of moral superiority, excusing later acts of betrayal. In 1775, most Lenape had been pushed westward by colonists illegally occupying their land, and the new version of the myth that glorified Penn and the Quakers allowed Pennsylvanian colonists to absolve any guilt they might have felt for forcing the Indigenous people of Pennsylvania out of their traditional homeland.