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Chapter 7 Land and Words: William Penn’s Letter to the Kings of the Indians Among the major figures in seventeenth‑​­ century European‑​­ Indian relations, one is usually portrayed standing alone above the messy everyday business of politics, brokers, and deal‑​­ making, somehow exempt from the matrix of trade, land, and power. “William Penn told the Indians that he loved them all; their Men, Women and Children, and that he held Councils with them to perpetuate the Remembrance of his Affection towards them,” said the Cones‑ toga chief Tawenna in 1729. Echoing a refrain sung repeatedly by Indians and English alike in the early eighteenth century, Tawenna hoped “that all those things which Governour Penn Spoke to them may ever be remembred and imprinted on our and their hearts, so as to be observed inviolably.”1 Nothing seems more in keeping with such memories than a remarkable document that dates almost—​­ but not quite—​­ to the very founding of Penn’s North American experiment. On 18 October 1681—​­ a little over eight months after Penn received the royal charter for his colony and, as it would turn out, just about a year before he first visited the place—​­ he wrote a letter “to the Kings of the Indians.” Two period copies bearing Penn’s signature along with several manuscript versions made in later years can be found today at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The document has also appeared in print many times, most recently and authoritatively in the scholarly edition of the Penn Papers edited by Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn.2 Although it is thus well known to historians, Penn’s letter has not received much close attention, perhaps because it seems to consist mostly of airy declarations of good will. Those declarations are what the historians who have noticed the 136 European Power and Native Land document have emphasized. As Francis Jennings observed, the letter “is an earnest and moving statement, unique in the literature of Indian‑​­ European relations.”3 Addressing the Native leaders as “My Freinds,” the Quaker proprietor an‑ nounced that There is one great God and Power that hath made the world and all things therein, to whom you and I and all People owe their being and wellbeing, and to whom you and I must one Day give an account, for all that we do in this world: this great God hath written his law in our hearts, by which we are taught and commanded to love and help and do good to one an other, and not do harme and mischeif one unto one another: Now this great God hath been pleased to make me concerned in your parts of the World, and the king of the Coun‑ trey where I live, hath given unto me a great Province therein, but I desire to enjoy it with your Love and Consent, that we may always live together as Neighbours and freinds, else what would the great God say to us, who hath made us not to devoure and destroy one an other but live Soberly and kindly together in the world? Now I would have you well to observe, that I am very Sensible of the unkindness and Injustice that hath been too much exersised towards you by the People of thes Parts off the world, who have sought themselvs, and to make great Advantages by you, rather then be examples of Justice and Goodness unto you, which I hear, hath been matter of trouble to you, and caused great Grudgeings and Animosities, sometimes to the shedding of blood, which hath made the great God Angry. But I am not such a Man, as is well known in my own Country: I have great love and regard towards you, and I desire to Winn and gain your Love and freindship by a kind, just and peaceable life; and the People I send are of the same mind, and shall in all things behave themselvs accordingly; and if in any thing any shall offend you or your People, you shall have a full and Speedy Satisfaction for the same by an equall number of honest men on both sides that by no means you may have just Occasion of being offended against them; I shall shortly come to you my self. At what time we may more largely and freely confer and discourse of thes matters; in the mean time, I have sent my Com‑ missioners to treat with you about...

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