Unfortunately for the Delawares, they knew too little of legal technicalities to notice that the deed did not state in what direction the northern boundary was to be drawn. They naturally expected it to be drawn to the nearest point on the Delaware. But the surveyor-general, to please Penn, decided that the line should run at right angles to the direction of the walk, which was almost exactly northwest. Draw a line from Mauch Chunk to the Delaware so that if extended it would pass through New York city, and another to the point where New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania meet. The first is the Indian's idea of the just way to lay out the northern boundary; the second is the line which Surveyor-General Eastburn actually finished marking out in four days after Marshall's walk ended.
And so the three hundred thousand acres which the Indians would have given to the Penns as the result of Marshall's walk were increased to half a million by taking selfish advantage of a flaw in the deed.
"THE INDIANS PROTESTED AGAINST THE SPEED"
The Lenni-Lenape had loved and trusted William Penn because he always dealt openly and fairly with them. "We will live in love with William Penn and his children," said they, "as long as the sun and moon shall shine." But the wrongs inflicted on them in the "walking purchase" aroused the deepest indignation. "Next May," said Lappawinzoe, "we will go to Philadelphia, each one with a buckskin to repay the presents and take back our land again." It was too late, however, for this to be done.
At last, in 1741, the Indians determined to resort to arms to secure justice. But the Iroquois, to whom the Delawares had long been subject, came to the aid of the Penns, and the last hope of righting the wrong was gone forever.
There seems a sort of poetic justice in the later experiences of the principal men in the affair. Marshall never got his five hundred acres of land, and his wife was killed in an attack by the Indians. Eastburn was repudiated by Thomas Penn, and his heirs were notified that they "need not expect the least favor." Penn himself was brought before the king and forced to disown many of his acts and agents in a most humiliating manner.
But all this did not repair the injury to the Delawares, and they never again owned, as a tribe, a single inch along the river from which they took their name.
A small monument, erected by the Bucks County Historical Society, marks the spot where the old chestnut-tree formerly stood. In order that this might not seem to condone an unworthy deed, the monument was dedicated, not to those who made or conducted the walk, but to the Lenni-Lenape Indians—"not to the wrong, but to the persons wronged."