RECEPTION OF PENN.
He found the inhabitants of this province, Swedes, Dutch and English, to amount already to between 2,000 and 3,000—“plain, strong and industrious people.” There were six religious societies established, three of Swedish Lutherans and three of the Quakers. “The land itself,” he wrote, “was good, the air clear and sweet, the springs plentiful, and provisions good and easy to come at; an innumerable quantity of wild-fowl and fish; in fine, what an Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would be well contented with.”
“Tradition,” says Bancroft, “describes the journey of Penn and his friends from Chester, in an open boat, in the earliest days of November, to the beautiful banks, fringed with pine-trees, on which the city of Philadelphia was soon to rise.” Markham had already began to build, on Pennsbury Manor, “a stately brick house” as the proprietary residence.
After visits to East and West Jersey and to New York, in compliment to his friend, the duke, and after a meeting with the Friends of Long Island, Penn returned to Chester, where the first assembly was convened. The body of freemen present amounted to seventy-two, and these petitioning that they, “owing to the fewness of the people and their unskilfulness in matters of government, might constitute both assembly and council,” it was enacted that, in future, “the assembly should consist of thirty-six members only, six from each county, to be chosen annually, with a council composed of three members for each county, to hold their seats for three years, one to be chosen each year. The governor and council to possess, jointly, the right of proposing laws.” This latter enactment, as regarded the power of the proprietary governor, which was now made at the special request of the assembly, gave rise to after dissatisfaction and reproaches against Penn as a violation of his original engagement.
It was about this time, in the winter season, that Penn made his celebrated treaty with the Indians, under the great elm-tree of Shakamaxon, which was then leafless, and not heavy with foliage as represented by West. Here Penn met the delegated Indians of the Leni-Lenape, or Delaware confederacy, not for the purchase of land, but to cement with them the covenant of friendship of which he had written. He had written to them as to men and brethren, to whom the same moral obligations referred; he had promised, and his agent Markham had carried out the same principle, that they should be secure in their pursuits and possessions, and that all differences should be adjusted by a peaceful tribunal, composed of an equal number of each race. The representation of this treaty, by West, is not accurate. Bancroft gives it to us thus:—“The delegated chiefs of the forest, men of lofty demeanour and grave aspect, are assembled without their weapons; the old men sit in a half-moon upon the ground; the middle-aged are in a like figure at a little distance behind them; the young foresters form a third semicircle in the rear. Before them stands William Penn, graceful in the summer of life, in dress distinguishable only from his friends, principally young men, by whom he was surrounded, by a light blue silk sash, which was bound round his waist.”
William Penn stood thus in the dignity of noble manhood, upright intentions and brotherly love; and gazing around, beheld, “far as his eye would carry,” the plumed and painted chieftains of the forest gathering round him. It was like the realisation of Christ’s own mission of peace and good will to man; the bow and the tomahawk of the savage were laid aside, and the oldest sachem of the peaceful Delawares announced to the benevolent Onas that “the nations were ready to listen to his words, believing him to be a messenger sent to them from the Great Spirit.”
“We meet,” said William Penn, in reply, “on the broad pathway of good works and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain, for that the rains might rust, or a falling tree break. We are the same as if one man’s body were divided into two parts; we are all one flesh and blood.”
The simple sons of the forest, believers in the “Great Spirit,” comprehended these words in their inmost soul; and receiving in good faith Penn’s presents, returned the wampum belt of peace. “We will live,” said they, “in love with Father Onas and his children as long as moon and sun shall endure;” and so saying, the treaty was formally signed, the chieftains marking the emblems of their various tribes. The purchases of Markham were ratified, and others made.
PENN AND THE INDIANS.