The Delaware People’s Historical Presence in Pennsylvania

by Catherine Monck

Many people begin the history of the Delaware people around the same time the white settlers arrived in North America. The Delaware people were settled in the area that is now made up of the states of Delaware, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. They were considered to be one of the two most powerful Native American groups in North America. They lived in longhouses covered in grass and bark. Their language was Algonquin with three different dialects which were Munsee, Unami, and Unalactigo.

In the year 1610, Captain Samuel Argyll went into the area in which the Delaware people lived. He decided to name the area and the people that lived there “Delaware” in honor of his commanding officer, Sir Thomas West III Lord De La Warr, who was also the Provincial Governor of Virginia. This begins the unfortunate decline of the Delaware people. The white settlers were not respectable or understanding of the lifestyle that the Delawares had.

As more white settlers moved into the Delaware area, things began to change for the worse. The Delaware people had never been exposed to the idea of people owning land. They had always believed that “the Creator” owned all of the land, and they simply inhabited it. Yet, the white settlers had different ideas. In the beginning, the white settlers seemed to be relatively fair in their interactions with the Delawares in terms of land transactions. Then, the colonial government began to push for even more settlements and even more expansion. When the Delawares left their villages to go hunting or fishing, the land was viewed as abandoned and consequently taken. This is where many conflicts arose, and then became violent.

The once semi-fair economy began to spiral out of control as the white settlers gained more control. Soon the Delawares were running out of land in the original area to occupy. The colonial government consistently continued to push for more expansion. All of this led to more and more tensions and more clashes.

The last straw for the Delawares and the colonists was the 1737 Walking Purchase. A well-thought-out fraud from the beginning, the Walking Purchase was meant to determine how much land the Penn family (the family who helped settle Pennsylvania) would purchase. The agreement had been created while Thomas Penn was still the patriarch, and was then carried out by William Penn, who was Thomas’ son. The original idea was that the amount of land would be how far a man could walk in a day and a half. Each group of people had three men who would “walk” for them. The white settlers cheated though, training their men how to run for miles for many hours, cutting away underbrush along the way, having horses available to carry their supplies, and even boats to get them across rivers. When the Delawares protested the clearly unfair agreement, the Iroquois were called in. The Iroquois were happy to be involved in the finalization of the agreement, because they felt they had defeated the Delawares in the 17th century, and were pleased to have a title to the land.

After the 1737 Walking Purchase, the Delaware people slowly got pushed out and down south in the United States. The Native Americans and the white settlers could not coexist, and the white settlers had the power. The Delaware people slowly moved down, until many of them settled into what is now modern-day Oklahoma. Many of the living descendants of the Delawares live in Oklahoma and the surrounding areas.

The Delaware people had a difficult time in Pennsylvania. They were oppressed and abused. They were tricked and used by the white settlers. It is unfortunate that they were driven out of their land that they respected and held so dearly. Yet, despite all of these hardships, they still continue to live on and thrive. The culture is still in existence, and that is incredibly respectable.

Sources Cited

• http://www.easterndelawarenations.org/history.html
• http://delawarein.webs.com/delawarehistory.htm
• http://www.tolatsga.org/dela.html