There was no great change in political conditions in Pennsylvania until about the year 1755.The French in Canada had been gradually developing their plans of spreading down the Ohio and Mississippi valleys behind the English colonies.They were at the same time securing alliances with the Indians and inciting them to hostilities against the English.But so rapidly were the settlers advancing that often the land could not be purchased fast enough to prevent irritation and ill feeling.The Scotch-Irish and Germans, it has already been noted, settled on lands without the formality of purchase from the Indians.The Government, when the Indians complained, sometimes ejected the settlers but more often hastened to purchase from the Indians the land which had been occupied."The Importance of the British Plantations in America," published in 1731, describes the Indians as peaceful and contented in Pennsylvania but irritated and unsettled in those other colonies where they had usually been ill-treated and defrauded.This, with other evidence, goes to show that up to that time Penn's policy of fairness and good treatment still prevailed.But those conditions soon changed, as the famous Walking Purchase of 1737 clearly indicated.
The Walking Purchase had provided for the sale of some lands along the Delaware below the Lehigh on a line starting at Wrightstown, a few miles back from the Delaware not far above Trenton, and running northwest, parallel with the river, as far as a man could walk in a day and a half.The Indians understood that this tract would extend northward only to the Lehigh, which was the ordinary journey of a day and a half.The proprietors, however, surveyed the line beforehand, marked the trees, engaged the fastest walkers and, with horses to carry provisions, started their men at sunrise.By running a large part of the way, at the end of a day and a half these men had reached a point thirty miles beyond the Lehigh.
The Delaware Indians regarded this measurement as a pure fraud and refused to abandon the Minisink region north of the Lehigh.
The proprietors then called in the assistance of the Six Nations of New York, who ordered the Delawares off the Minisink lands.
Though they obeyed, the Delawares became the relentless enemies of the white man and in the coming years revenged themselves by massacres and murder.They also broke the control which the Six Nations had over them, became an independent nation, and in the French Wars revenged themselves on the Six Nations as well as on the white men.The congress which convened at Albany in 1754was an attempt on the part of the British Government to settle all Indian affairs in a general agreement and to prevent separate treaties by the different colonies; but the Pennsylvania delegates, by various devices of compass courses which the Indians did not understand and by failing to notify and secure the consent of certain tribes, obtained a grant of pretty much the whole of Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna.The Indians considered this procedure to be another gross fraud.It is to be noticed that in their dealings with Penn they had always been satisfied, and that he had always been careful that they should be duly consulted and if necessary be paid twice over for the land.But his sons were more economical, and as a result of the shrewd practices of the Albany purchase the Pennsylvania Indians almost immediately went over in a body to the French and were soon scalping men, women, and children among the Pennsylvania colonists.It is a striking fact, however, that in all the after years of war and rapine and for generations afterwards the Indians retained the most distinct and positive tradition of Penn's good faith and of the honesty of all Quakers.So persistent, indeed, was this tradition among the tribes of the West that more than a century later President Grant proposed to put the whole charge of the nation's Indian affairs in the hands of the Quakers.The first efforts to avert the catastrophe threatened by the alliance of the red man with the French were made by the provincial assemblies, which voted presents of money or goods to the Indians to offset similar presents from the French.The result was, of course, the utter demoralization of the savages.Bribed by both sides, the Indians used all their native cunning to encourage the bribers to bid against each other.So far as Pennsylvania was concerned, feeling themselves cheated in the first instance and now bribed with gifts, they developed a contempt for the people who could stoop to such practices.As a result this contempt manifested itself in deeds hitherto unknown in the province.One tribe on a visit to Philadelphia killed cattle and robbed orchards as they passed.
The delegates of another tribe, having visited Philadelphia and received 500 pounds as a present, returned to the frontier and on their way back for another present destroyed the property of the interpreter and Indian agent, Conrad Weiser.They felt that they could do as they pleased.To make matters worse, the Assembly paid for all the damage done; and having started on this foolish business, they found that the list of tribes demanding presents rapidly increased.The Shawanoes and the Six Nations, as well as the Delawares, were now swarming to this new and convenient source of wealth.
Whether the proprietors or the Assembly should meet this increasing expense or divide it between them, became a subject of increasing controversy.It was in these discussions that Thomas Penn, in trying to keep his family's share of the expense as small as possible, first got the reputation for closeness which followed him for the rest of his life and which started a party in the province desirous of having Parliament abolish the proprietorship and put the province under a governor appointed by the Crown.
