For our study in The World Turned Upside Down, I have decided to focus on the Delaware Walking Purchase. According to the book, the Lenni Lenape Indians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania signed approximately 800 deeds of land to colonist between 1630 and 1767. Thomas Penn, certainly aware of the vast amount of land treaties, claimed to have found a treaty from 1686 claiming that his fathers and their heirs were granted lands "as far as a man can go in a day and a half." Basically, the treaty allowed Penn and others to claim as much land as he could cover on foot in the time allotted.
The Pennsylvanians involved, however, took advantage of the generosity of the treaty. Instead of sending a man out to walk for a day and a half, they cleared a path ahead of time and chose three runners to cover as much land as possible. By the end of the allotted time, they had covered 65 miles, taking the last lands the Indians had claim to in the upper Delaware and Lehigh valleys.
Though the Delaware Indians filed a complaint against the Walking Purchase, they were met with a rude reply making it clear that their "opinion" regarding rights to the land was not of value, and neither was their culture.
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