The Native Americans

“The Native Americans”, by William Penn, is a 1683 description of the Native people encountered by early English settlers in the northeastern United States in the seventeenth century.

William Penn (1644-1718) was an English-born man who came to America in the 1680s and founded the colony of Pennsylvania. Penn and his fellow colonists were Quakers, who were at odds with both the Anglican establishment of England and the Puritan colonists of New England.

As a result, Penn and fellow English Quakers sought to establish their own colony in North America. In 1681, the English king Charles II granted Penn a land charter to Pennsylvania. Penn wrote the colony’s first constitution. It was one of the first constitutions to guarantee freedom of religion.

Unlike other Anglo-American colonies, Penn and his fellow Quaker colonists in seventeenth century Pennsylvania maintained good relations with local indigenous groups. The two largest groups in Pennsylvania in the late seventeenth century were the Lenape and Susquehanna, both of whom enjoyed close relations with Pennsylvania. In this 1683 text, Penn shows sympathy towards the Native American peoples he had encountered, and something of an admiration for their culture.

Penn’s descriptions of indigenous American customs and cultural practices in “The Native Americans” likely refer primarily to the two above groups, the Lenape and Susquehanna. The Lenape spoke an Algonquian language, while the Susquehanna spoke an Iroquoian language. Both groups were farmers, who cultivated corn (maize), supplemented by hunting and gathering.

The Susquehanna were eventually absorbed into the Iroquois nation. Many of their descendants were forced to move westward under the Indian Removal Act in the nineteenth century. The Lenape, also known as the Delaware, who remained in the eastern United States, were also forced to move westward under the Removal Act. Today most descendants of the Lenape of Pennsylvania live in Oklahoma.