The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

Cultural Collisions 43

west of the Delaware River, insisting only that it be
named Pennsylvania, in honor of the admiral. In
1682 Penn founded Philadelphia. The Duke of York
then added Delaware, the region between Maryland
and the Delaware Bay, to Penn’s holdings.
William Penn considered his colony a “Holy
Experiment.” He treated the Indians fairly, buying title
to their lands and trying to protect them in their deal-
ings with settlers and traders. Anyone who believed in
“one Almighty and Eternal God” was entitled to free-
dom of worship. Penn’s political ideas were paternalis-
tic rather than democratic; the assembly he established
could only approve or reject laws proposed by the gov-
ernor and council. But individual rights were as well
protected in Pennsylvania as in New Jersey.
Penn’s altruism, however, did not prevent him from
taking excellent care of his own interests. He sold both
large and small tracts of land to settlers on easy terms
but reserved huge tracts for himself. He promoted
Pennsylvania tirelessly, writing glowing, although per-
fectly honest, descriptions of the colony, which were cir-
culated widely in England and, in translation, in Europe.
These attracted many settlers, including large numbers
of Germans—the Pennsylvania “Dutch” (a corruption
ofDeutsch,meaning “German”).

William Penn was neither a doctrinaire nor an ivory

tower philosopher. He came to Pennsylvania himself

when trouble developed between settlers and his repre-

sentatives and agreed to adjustments in his first Frame of

Government when he realized that local conditions

demonstrated the need for change. His combination of

toughness, liberality, and good salesmanship helped the

colony to prosper and grow rapidly. Of course the pres-

ence of well-settled colonies on all sides and the richness

of the soil had much to do with this happy state of

affairs. By 1685 there were almost 9,000 settlers in

Pennsylvania, and by 1700 twice that number, a heart-

ening contrast to the early history of Virginia and

Plymouth. Pennsylvania produced wheat, corn, rye, and

other crops in abundance and found a ready market for

its surpluses on the sugar plantations of the West Indies.

Cultural Collisions

Since the Indians did not worship the Christian God

and indeed worshiped a large number of other deities,

the Europeans dismissed them as contemptible hea-

thens. Some insisted that the Indians were servants of

Satan. “Probably the devil decoyed these miserable

savages hither,” one English colonist explained. Such

Historian James Merrell notes several errors in Benjamin West’s famous 1771 painting, William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians.

In 1682, when the treaty was negotiated, Penn (in brown coat) was not yet so fat; the colonists’ clothing and brick buildings

resemble a scene in Philadelphia in the 1750s, not the 1680s; and the Indians are implausibly posed like Greek and Roman

statues. Most important, the painting includes no translator, the one indispensable figure in the proceedings. All Indian and

settler exchanges required “go-betweens” or “negotiators” to help each group explain itself to the other.