INDIANA UNIVERSITY

AP2

L673

WILLIAM PENNY'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS,

WHEN HE FOUNDED THE PROVINCE OF PENNSYLVANIAIN NORTH AMERICA 1681

No. I.

THE LITERARY PORT FOLIO Will be published every Thursday, and on this day it will always be punctually delivered to subscribers in Philadelphia and New York, and sent off by mail to subscri bers in the country.

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Public Affairs.

In beginning our editorial labours, all that we have room to say under this head, is a few words upon the manner in which we shall hereafter endeavour to fulfil this part of our duty. We shall not have room for the messages of our Presidents; nor for the reports of future Conventions; nor for the constitutions of benevolent societies; nor for the interminable essays of —; nor even for the reports of Secretaries at War. We shall not even be able, in the small space we can give to this department, to condense all the important items of intelligence; but considering the whole as an open field to us, we shall select such subjects as shall to us seem best-considered in the compound ratio of their usefulness to our readers, and their adaptation to our editorial capacity.

In thus announcing our intention to meddle, when we judge it expedient, with political matters, we think it necessary to guard against alarming two classes of our subscribers: 1st. Those who may think us likely to encroach upon a province peculiarly belonging to themselves. To these we say, that we have no desire to distinguish ourselves in any of the dirty work now doing, and that we are as unlikely to become active politicians as if we were

and thus unfit it for what we have declared to be its object-the information and amusement of ladies as well as gentlemen; of the young as well as of the old :-to these we say, that our greatest desire is, to be useful-that is, in the favourite definition of the utilitarians, "to produce the greatest happiness to the greatest number”—and so sincere are we in this matter,

that we do not hesitate to declare that we would rather receive five thousand more good subscribers to this paper, than to receive fifty thousand votes for Governor of Pennsylvania. More and more arrivals from the Bay of Mexico, have lessened and lessened our hope of hearing from the HORNET, and we can now hope no longer. "The captain of a light brig who was in the edge of the tempest, represents it as having been the most appalling spectacle that he ever beheld. The sea was wrought into a foam as though a thousand water spouts were bursting over as many whirlpools, while the winds were driving with a fury that mountains only could resist. His own vessel was very light, and although but in the edge of the gale, he was borne almost through the air, he knew not how. The captain thinks that no heavy ship, or ship heavily laden, could have stood that awful tempest." We have heard the opinion of one of our highest naval officers, "that in.all probability the gale opened the seams of the Hornet, and she went down like a mass of iron."

The long uncertain fate of the Epervier, hung for months upon our imagination; but in the loss of this vessel we keenly feel that we have suffered a peculiar evil.

Lieutenant Daniel H. Mackey was a friend of whom we were proud. He was a man upon whom we should have absolutely relied in any difficulty or danger. In uprightness, in delicacy, in manners and in mind, he was a gentleman to whom we know no superior. As an officer he was strictly attentive to his duty, when on board; and we can testify from personal knowledge, that when on shore he was assiduous in those studies which better qualified him for serving his country. Whatever it was his duty to know, he knew thoroughly —and such is our opinion of his capacity, his prudence, and his knowledge, that we do not hesitate to assert, that could any accident have placed him at one step at the head of our Navy, he would have done honour to his station.

For the Literary Port Folio. PENN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS.

(See the accompanying Plate.)

The celebrated treaty under the Elm Tree at Shackamaxon, has received so much attention, and excited so much emotion in various quarters of the world, as to give it strongly the

character of an incident in romance. The spectacle was indeed singular in many respects;

1830.

and well calculated to act on the imagination. A band of humble religionists, who, through persecution and evil-speaking, had retained their determination to obey the scriptural mandate, "resist not evil," headed by a courtier of one king, and the cherished personal friend of another, the son of Cromwell's victorious admiral, himself forsaking the attractions of a court, to exercise his religion, and to colonize the desolate wilderness-these men entering a region hitherto distracted by incessantly repeated wars, and in which the only European lodgments were maintained by fortified posts, provided high-minded savage a peaceful purchase of soil, with cannon, and there transacting with the founded on reciprocal services, and only guaranteed by confidence in each other's good faith, a faith retained uninjured for a period of occurrence. Nor was the end less worthy of seventy years-such was indeed a remarkable history than the action or the men. To establish a government, under which entire personal liberty, and in particular, total freedom of conscience, for all denominations, should be sethe people to be governed; to institute the excured, by depositing the power in the hands of perimental trial of a regular, elective, representative republic, freed from the habitual conutterly at variance with the spirit of the age. nexion of church and state, was an undertaking In the reign of the second James, who incurred so much obloquy, and ultimately lost his throne, for the attempts he was believed to be making to re-establish the Catholic religion and Roman domination in the British islands, such an attempt, with the patronage of the question the reality of his supposed efforts at monarch himself, might even go far to call in overruling religious liberty at home. Well might the occurrence excite the attention, in a subsequent age, of the infidel satirist,* who declared this "the only treaty never ratified by an oath, and the only one that was never bro.

ken."

Nor were the aboriginal parties to the treaty devoid of personal interest. We have not now space to go into a discussion with the talented but prejudiced writer in the North American Review, who has expressed a contrary opinion; but we think any impartial person who will take the pains to examine the necessary documents, will be convinced of the truth of the statement originally made by Heckewelder, that the Delaware Indians held a high priority among the tribes of this continent, with the exception of the Six Nations, in the capacity of political leaders and of peace-makers. The famous title of Grandfather, uniformly claimed by them down to very recent treaties, and acknowledged by members of other tribes, procording to our ideas. Still, it appears from bably conveyed no very definite powers, actheir own statements, as preserved by the author just mentioned, that they laid aside, by that of women, with the distinct understanding treaty, the character of warriors, to assume that in this there was no degradation, but an honorary charge of peace-making, which could be given to none but a powerful and respected nation. This has been treated, in the review alluded to, as the self-flattering invention of a conquered tribe; and some of our own people have been found willing to back this supposition by appealing to the commands said to have been laid on them by the Six Nations, at the treaty of Easten, which they are represented to have obeyed, by removing to Wyoming. When we recollect that the Six Nations wore invited to assume and exercise this influence by the whites, at a period when the latter, with their Mohawk allies, vastly outnumbered and nearly surrounded the Delawares, and that the

Voltaire.

+ Hendrick Aupauaert's Narrative; Mom Pern, Hist. Soc. clip 1.4.75