Friends and Enemies in Penn's Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania
Two powerfully contradictory images dominate historical memory when we think of Native Americans and colonists in early Pennsylvania. To one side is William Penn’s legendary treaty with the Lenape at Shackamaxon in 1682, enshrined in Edward Hicks’s allegories of the “Peaceable Kingdom.” To the other is the Paxton Boys’ cold-blooded slaughter of twenty Conestoga men, women, and children in 1763. How relations between Pennsylvanians and their Native neighbors deteriorated, in only 80 years, from the idealism of Shackamaxon to the bloodthirstiness of Conestoga is the central theme of Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods.

William Pencak and Daniel Richter have assembled some of the most talented young historians working in the field today. Their approaches and subject matter vary greatly, but all concentrate less on the mundane details of how Euro- and Indian Pennsylvanians negotiated and fought than on how people constructed and reconstructed their cultures in dialogue with others. Taken together, the essays trace the collapse of whatever potential may have existed for a Pennsylvania shared by Indians and Europeans. What remained was a racialized definition that left no room for Native people, except in reassuring memories of the justice of the Founder.

Pennsylvania came to be a landscape utterly dominated by Euro-Americans, who managed to turn the region’s history not only into a story solely about themselves but a morality tale about their best (William Penn) and worst (Paxton Boys) sides. The construction of Pennsylvania on Native ground was also the construction of a racial order for the new nation. Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods will find a broad audience among scholars of early American history, Native American history, and race relations.

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Friends and Enemies in Penn's Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania
Two powerfully contradictory images dominate historical memory when we think of Native Americans and colonists in early Pennsylvania. To one side is William Penn’s legendary treaty with the Lenape at Shackamaxon in 1682, enshrined in Edward Hicks’s allegories of the “Peaceable Kingdom.” To the other is the Paxton Boys’ cold-blooded slaughter of twenty Conestoga men, women, and children in 1763. How relations between Pennsylvanians and their Native neighbors deteriorated, in only 80 years, from the idealism of Shackamaxon to the bloodthirstiness of Conestoga is the central theme of Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods.

William Pencak and Daniel Richter have assembled some of the most talented young historians working in the field today. Their approaches and subject matter vary greatly, but all concentrate less on the mundane details of how Euro- and Indian Pennsylvanians negotiated and fought than on how people constructed and reconstructed their cultures in dialogue with others. Taken together, the essays trace the collapse of whatever potential may have existed for a Pennsylvania shared by Indians and Europeans. What remained was a racialized definition that left no room for Native people, except in reassuring memories of the justice of the Founder.

Pennsylvania came to be a landscape utterly dominated by Euro-Americans, who managed to turn the region’s history not only into a story solely about themselves but a morality tale about their best (William Penn) and worst (Paxton Boys) sides. The construction of Pennsylvania on Native ground was also the construction of a racial order for the new nation. Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods will find a broad audience among scholars of early American history, Native American history, and race relations.

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Friends and Enemies in Penn's Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania

Friends and Enemies in Penn's Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania

Friends and Enemies in Penn's Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania

Friends and Enemies in Penn's Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania

Overview

Two powerfully contradictory images dominate historical memory when we think of Native Americans and colonists in early Pennsylvania. To one side is William Penn’s legendary treaty with the Lenape at Shackamaxon in 1682, enshrined in Edward Hicks’s allegories of the “Peaceable Kingdom.” To the other is the Paxton Boys’ cold-blooded slaughter of twenty Conestoga men, women, and children in 1763. How relations between Pennsylvanians and their Native neighbors deteriorated, in only 80 years, from the idealism of Shackamaxon to the bloodthirstiness of Conestoga is the central theme of Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods.

William Pencak and Daniel Richter have assembled some of the most talented young historians working in the field today. Their approaches and subject matter vary greatly, but all concentrate less on the mundane details of how Euro- and Indian Pennsylvanians negotiated and fought than on how people constructed and reconstructed their cultures in dialogue with others. Taken together, the essays trace the collapse of whatever potential may have existed for a Pennsylvania shared by Indians and Europeans. What remained was a racialized definition that left no room for Native people, except in reassuring memories of the justice of the Founder.

Pennsylvania came to be a landscape utterly dominated by Euro-Americans, who managed to turn the region’s history not only into a story solely about themselves but a morality tale about their best (William Penn) and worst (Paxton Boys) sides. The construction of Pennsylvania on Native ground was also the construction of a racial order for the new nation. Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods will find a broad audience among scholars of early American history, Native American history, and race relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780271023854
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Publication date: 06/15/2004
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 336
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.78(d)

About the Author

Bill Pencak is Professor of History at Penn State University. He has co-edited three books published by Penn State Press: with John Frantz, Beyond Philadelphia: The American Revolution in the Pennsylvania Hinterland (1998), with William Alan Blair, Making and Remaking Pennsylvania's Civil War (2001), and with Randall Miller, Pennsylvania: The History of the Commonwealth (2002).

Daniel K. Richter is Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also the Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. His most recent book, Facing East from Indian Country: Rediscovering Colonial North America ( 2001) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He also co-edited, with James H. Merrell, Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600–1800, which was re-issued by Penn State Press in 2003.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Maps and Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Daniel K. Richter and William A. Pencak

Part I: Peoples in Conversation

1. New Sweden, Natives, and Nature

Michael Dean Mackintosh

2. Colonialism and the Discursive Antecedents of Penn's Treaty with the Indians

James O Neil Spady

3. Imagining Peace in Quaker and Native American Dream Stories

Carla Gerona

4. Indian, Métis, and Euro-American Women on Multiple Frontiers

Alison Duncan Hirsch

Part II: Fragile Structures of Coexistence

5. Female Relationships and Intercultural Bonds in Moravian Indian Missions

Amy C. Schutt

6. The Death of Sawantaeny and the Problem of Justice on the Frontier

John Smolenski

7. Justice, Retribution, and the Case of John Toby

Louis M. Waddell

8. The Diplomatic Career of Canasatego

William A. Starna

Part III: Toward a White Pennsylvania

9. Delawares and Pennsylvanians after the Walking Purchase

Steven C. Harper

10. Squatters, Indians, Proprietary Government, and Land in the Susquehanna Valley

David L. Preston

11. Metonymy, Violence, Patriarchy, and the Paxton Boys

Krista Camenzind

12. "Real" Indians, "White" Indians, and the Contest for the Wyoming Valley

Paul Moyer

13. Whiteness and Warfare on a Revolutionary Frontier

Gregory T. Knouff

Afterword: James H. Merrell

Abbreviations

Notes

Contributors

Index

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