Earlier: It Was Never Stolen Land, It Was Bought And Paid For. Now The Indians Are Trying To Renege

The National Park Service recently decided to remove a statue of William Penn, founder of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, from a park in Philadelphia. But apparently owing to the outcry, this plan was canceled. 

Now the Indian tribes are saying they didn’t request the change anyway.  From the Associated Press:

The National Park Service’s proposal to remove a William Penn statue from a historic site in Philadelphia–-quickly withdrawn amid a backlash—wasn’t a priority for some of the Native Americans the agency was required to consult with as it prepared to renovate the deteriorating plaza. Uprooting the statue of Pennsylvania’s founder from Welcome Park also wasn’t a major point of discussion as park service officials and tribal representatives met to plan the renovation over video last year, said Jeremy Johnson, director of cultural education for the Delaware Tribe of Indians. Rather, what tribal representatives had envisioned for the plaza is an exhibit that would highlight the culture, history, traditions and perceptions of the Native Americans who had lived there for thousands of years before Penn arrived, Johnson said.

The tribes wanted to promote their history. Removing William Penn’s statue wasn’t a priority, by Marc Levy, Associated Press, January 11, 2024

It is impressive that the cancellation of William Penn was so abruptly cancelled.  

“We do still speak highly of William Penn,” Johnson said. But tribal representatives, he said, “were really just focusing on our culture and our history and that, in a way, he was an important part of it, but ... it was a small interaction compared to our overall history.”

Of course we should always be vigilant in case they try to do this again.     

Announced quietly on Friday [January 5], the plan quickly and—perhaps unexpectedly—laid bare the sensitivities around the image of the colonial founder of Pennsylvania and threatened to become the latest front in a fight over how to tell the nation’s history through its monuments.

A top state Republican lawmaker, Bryan Cutler, said removing Penn’s statue to “create a more inclusive environment takes (an) absurd and revisionist view of our state’s history.” Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro pressed the Biden administration to keep the statue in its “rightful home.”

Governor Shapiro tweeted this:

My team has been in contact with the Biden Administration throughout the day to correct this decision. I’m pleased Welcome Park will remain the rightful home of this William Penn statue — right here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Penn founded. https://t.co/awSTpcyrNp

— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) January 8, 2024

The National Park Service said it had consulted with Indian tribes.

The park service said it consulted with representatives of the Haudenosaunee [the Iroquois], the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, whose ancestors were displaced by the Pennsylvania colony. Such consultation with the federally recognized tribes is required under the National Historic Preservation Act.

So Oklahoma Indian tribes are supposed to have a say in this, because of where their ancestors lived.

But leaders of the Shawnee Tribe and the Eastern Shawnees, both now based in Oklahoma, like the Delawares, said they hadn’t had any discussions about it. Ben Barnes, chief of the Shawnee Tribe, said his tribe hadn’t received a customary “dear chief” letter from the agency—and he objects to removing the statue.

“William Penn was an ally of the Shawnee,” Barnes said. “As long as he lived, he kept his promise. As long as he was able to speak on behalf of the colony in western Pennsylvania, the Shawnees had a home there. ... Of all the terrible human beings that inflicted tragedy upon native peoples, I don’t put William Penn in that category.”

Historians say Penn’s willingness to negotiate with Indians for lands distinguished him from previous colonizers in the Chesapeake and New England where early colonial regimes were more willing to use armed force in bloody confrontations to expand their settlements.

But Penn’s legacy has been mythologized, to some extent, and his mission still led to the dispossession of natives, historians say.

So what are they saying? Even though the treaty was successful, it still led to dispossession of natives, because they sold the land?

In 1682, William Penn made the Treaty of Shackamaxon with Chief Tamanend of the Delaware Indians, which allowed the Indians to continue to hunt on the land they had sold to the English. That treaty outlived both Penn and Tamanend and endured until 1755, during the French and Indian War. And it was the Delaware Indians that broke it, with the Penn’s Creek Massacre.

As a Quaker, Penn sought peaceful interactions with the Lenape people, said Jean Soderlund, a retired professor of history at Lehigh University.

But his goal as the “proprietor” of the colony was to obtain their land so that he could sell it to European immigrants, Soderlund said.

It was “conquest through treaty,” said Michael Goode [pictured right], an associate professor of history at Utah Valley University.

So, says Professor Goode, [Email him/Tweet him], Penn’s treaty was ”conquest through treaty.” Does that mean that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is illegitimate?

It was the English settlement of the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States of America.  Is the USA illegitimate?