Benjamin West, Penn’s Treaty with the Indians

[0:00] [music]

Dr. Beth Harris: [0:04] We’re in the beautiful galleries of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, looking at a painting that many of us might be familiar with from American history textbooks. This is Benjamin West’s “Penn’s Treaty with the Indians.”

[0:19] We have William Penn, he’s been granted this land by the king of England. He’s seeking to create a Quaker community, and he’s here shown negotiating peacefully with the Native Americans.

Monica Zimmerman: [0:33] The left side is dominated by the Quaker settlers as well as a group of merchants. Then, on the right side, you can see various groups of Native peoples.

Dr. Harris: [0:44] Now, Penn didn’t have to trade for the land because he was deeded the land by the king, but it’s his choice to come and do what he thinks is morally and ethically right, which is to compensate the Native Americans for their land.

Monica: [0:58] The myth that this painting has perpetuated is that in 1682, William Penn and his followers meet with the Lenni Lenape and the Delaware peoples under a great elm tree at Shackamaxon, and in exchange for gifts they trade for the land that will become Pennsylvania.

Dr. Harris: [1:15] So this all looks marvelous. The colonists came to Pennsylvania and because they were Quakers, they believed in the fundamental equality of all human souls. They believed in peace. And so here they are negotiating in this wonderful way that we very much want to believe was the way that colonization happened. This painting effaces that reality.

[1:40] This was painted about a hundred years later, and it was commissioned by the son of William Penn, Thomas Penn, whose negotiations with the Native Americans was far from fair.

Monica: [1:52] Thomas Penn commissions Benjamin West to paint this, ostensibly as a tribute to his father, William Penn. But he commissions it at a time when the Penn family legacy is at risk, not just because the second generation of Penns had less generous and less equitable relationships with the Indigenous communities around the area, but because there was also fracturing within the Quaker leadership of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Harris: [2:18] Thomas Penn, who inherited this, had almost royal authority over Pennsylvania Colony.

Monica: [2:25] That’s not a form of leadership that was popular on the eve of the revolution.

Dr. Harris: [2:30] But it’s helpful if you can point to a painting that shows how kind and benevolent you and your ancestors have been.

Monica: [2:38] It’s particularly helpful if you can point to a painting that indicates that a market for the goods that you had to offer was inevitable. And it’s critically important that the very center of the painting is occupied by a bright white bolt of cloth.

[2:54] West labored over these textiles, so not only does he show you the white bolt that’s currently being traded in the center of the painting, but you see a Native American wearing it in green, wearing it in yellow, in red, and even in the bottom right corner, there is a Native mother wearing a very well-ornamented piece of manufactured fabric.

Dr. Harris: [3:15] We call this a history painting because it’s in this European tradition of large paintings that show a heroic or noble image from history.

Monica: [3:24] Most scholars, at this point, agree that this moment never took place. This particular meeting under this particular elm tree with these particular leaders is probably a total myth. So we required a myth of this having been done right to allow ourselves to keep taking more and more in additional negotiations.

[3:46] It’s an important narrative for people in the colonies to believe that, at least here, we trade well with our neighbors, that we have business practices, and religious practices, and cultural practices that perpetuate peace.

[4:01] [music]

This painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Read about the Walking Purchase of 1737 at the official website of the Delaware Tribe

Read a booklet about the Walking Purchase from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

Read a biography of Benjamin West at the National Gallery of Art

Read how Benjamin West created his painting, and how it was distributed as a print, at the State Museum of Pennsylvania

Read about the life of William Penn at the Library of Congress

Explore this teaching guide about West’s Penn’s Treaty with the Indians

Read William Penn’s description of the Lenni Lenape

More Smarthistory images...

Key points

• Benjamin West’s Penn’s Treaty with the Indians illustrates a popular legend about the founding of Pennsylvania Colony. In this story, although he had been granted the rights to the land by King Charles II, Penn followed Quaker ideals and met peacefully in 1682 to trade with the leaders of the local Lenni Lenape peoples.
• This painting mythologizes the relationship between colonizers and local Native peoples. Painted about 100 years later, it was intended to establish the moral and ethical claims to this territory by illustrating the mutual benefits of this exchange of gifts for land. The painting was also meant to bolster the reputation of Thomas Penn, who had been less fair in the fraudulent Walking Purchase of 1737, and whose king-like authority made him unpopular in the Revolutionary War era.

More to think about

Although they are called history paintings, images like Penn’s Treaty with the Indians often create or perpetuate a myth or idealized story. What are some other examples you can think of where people were able to create their versions of history as the truth? Think of another historical legend where the popular version differs from the historical fact. Are there artworks that have helped create this fiction?