Pennsylvania: Indigenous people

Video

Duration

2:43

Poster Image

The Lenni Lenape had lived in the Delaware Valley long before Penn's arrival, and his treaties had made Pennsylvania's early Native relations notably peaceful. By 1776, however, that peace was strained by decades of land loss. In December 1776, Chief White Eyes of the Delaware nation traveled to Philadelphia and addressed Congress, offering an alliance. Congress promised ten thousand dollars in goods and, remarkably, a sovereign Lenape state in Ohio with full representation in Congress. The Fort Pitt Treaty of 1778 formalized the alliance, and White Eyes's people fought alongside American forces in the Ohio country. The promises were never honored. White Eyes died in 1778 under suspicious circumstances, officially of smallpox but, his people believed, murdered by American militiamen. His speech survives in the papers of Jasper Yeates, one of the only direct addresses from a Native leader to the Continental Congress.

Interviewees

David Brigham
- President and CEO, Historical Society of Pennsylvania
William Ewald
- John J. O’Brien Professor of Comparative and International Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School

More Native American perspectives

View details

Connecticut

Native Americans
Delaware

Native Americans
Georgia

Native Americans
Maryland

Native Americans
Massachusetts

Native Americans
New Hampshire

Native Americans
New York

Native Americans
North Carolina

Native Americans
Rhode Island

Native Americans
South Carolina

Native Americans
Virginia

Native Americans

Native Americans

More Native American perspectives

Native Americans

Native Americans

Native Americans

Native Americans

Native Americans

Native Americans

Native Americans

Native Americans

Native Americans

Native Americans

Native Americans

More from Pennsylvania

Context

Declaration

Memory

African Americans

Politicians