The Swedes on the Delaware

Penn found that the want of a seaboard for his province would be a serious bar to its future prosperity. He coveted Delaware for that purpose, and resolved to have it if possible. It was claimed by Lord Baltimore as a part of Maryland, and had been a matter of dispute between him and the Duke of York. The latter, for the sake of peace, offered to buy the territory of Baltimore. The baron would not sell. Penn then assured the duke that Lord Baltimore's claim was "against law, civil or common." The duke gladly assented to the opinion, and the worldly-wise Quaker obtained from his grace a quit-claim deed for the territory comprising the whole State of Delaware, then, as now, divided into the counties of Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex; also for all of his interest in the soil of Pennsylvania.

When Penn had gained these coveted possessions, he made immediate preparations for going to America; and within a week after the bargain was officially settled, he set sail in the ship Welcome with about one hundred emigrants, many of whom died of small-pox on the voyage. That was at the close of August, 1682. On his arrival at New Castle early in November, he found almost a thousand new emigrants there. These, with the three thousand old settlers-Swedes, Dutch, Huguenots, Germans and English-composed materials for the solid foundation of a state. There, in the presence of the people, he received from the agents of the Duke of York a formal surrender into his hands of that fine domain. The Dutch had, long before, conquered and absorbed the Swedes on the Delaware; and by virtue of his charter, giving him a title to all New Netherland, the duke claimed this territory as his own. By this transfer, Penn inherited for himself and descendants a dispute with the proprietors of Maryland. In honor of the duke, the courteous Quaker called Cape Henlopen Cape James, but the two capes of the Delaware-Henlopen and May-have preserved their original name given to them by the Dutch.

Having secured his domain, Penn went many miles up the Delaware River, to the present Kensington district of Philadelphia, and there, under a wide-spreading elm, just shedding its foliage, he concluded a treaty with Indian chiefs, not for the purchase of lands, but to confirm what Markham had promised them for him, and to make an everlasting covenant of peace and friendship with them. "We meet," Penn said, "in the broad pathway of good faith 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 might break. We are the same as if one man's body was to be divided into two parts; we are all one flesh and blood." Then he gave them presents, and they in turn handed him a belt of wampum as a pledge of their fidelity. They were delighted with his divine words, and believed in his noble promises. "We will live in love with William Penn and his children," they said, "as long as the sun and moon shall endure." And they did. Not a drop of the blood of a Quaker was ever shed by an Indian.

William Penn had achieved a marvellous victory over the savage arm and the savage spirit. While in other colonies the might of the sword and musket, of the arrow and the hatchet, were making fearfully red records of crime; while the savages were in fierce array, secretly and openly, against the pale-faced intruders, Penn had conquered and subdued those of Pennsylvania by love. There were not even contentions between the races there. "We have done better," said the Friends, in their Plantation Speech, in 1684, "than if, with the proud Spaniards, we had gained the mines of Potosi. We may make the ambitious heroes whom the world admires, blush for their shameful victories. To the poor, dark souls round about us, we teach their rights as MEN." Significant is the question of the historian: "Was there not progress from Melendez to Roger Williams? from Cortez and Pizarro to William Penn?"

There is no written record of that treaty made in the open air on the banks of the Delaware. We have accounts of the personal character of the council. Penn was then a graceful man, strong built and of fair complexion, and thirty-eight years of age. Most of his companions were younger than himself, and all were dressed in the grab of the Quakers-the fashion of the more simple Puritans during the Protectorate of Cromwell. The Indians were clad in the skins of beasts, for it was on the verge of winter-their harvest time was over. Frost and expanding buds were stripping the trees of their foliage, and every aspect of the scene was becoming dreary excepting the bright council-fire under the great elm around which the high contracting parties were gathered. Penn was accompanied by the deputy governor and a few others; and the Indian sachems brought their wives and children, who sat upon the ground modestly back.