Fitzpatrick, Laurie

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Genre

Thesis/Dissertation

Date

2018

Author

Fitzpatrick, Laurie

Advisor

Roney, Jessica C. (Jessica Choppin), 1978-
Glasson, Travis

Department

History

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/2840

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand how the Seventeenth-century Lenape Indians were pushed off their Delaware River land by Europeans, starting with the so-called good colonists: the Swedes and Finns. From the time of earliest Lenape and European contact in the 1630’s through mid-century, the Lenape held power in their homeland, Lenapewhittuck, along the Delaware River. By 1700, English colonizers had succeeded in removing many Lenape from this area. A closer examination of this period reveals how the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden who in some current historiographies are promoted as ‘good colonizers,’ were anything but as they acted in their own self-interest through their focus on daily survival and individual land acquisition around the Delaware River. Their presence created conditions that attracted increased numbers of European colonizers to the area, and these colonizers through the creation of a market in land pushed the Lenape away from their homeland. Recent historiography has revealed how the Seventeenth-century Lenape Indians were a powerful group who controlled their land. By understanding the Lenape in this way, Swedish and Dutch accounts of Indian and European violence and peacemaking coalesce to reveal Lenape power in the region. ‘Seeing’ Lenape power reveals how the creation of a European land market along the Delaware was key in tipping this balance in power that ensured Lenape departure. Swedish and Finnish possession of the area, when combined with the ability to securely own the land one farmed and pass that land to heirs, invited increasing numbers of settler colonists into the area. Translated land treaties made between the Lenape, the Dutch, and the Swedes and later English land survey deeds provide evidence of the establishment of a market in land along the Delaware River. Court records from the 1650’s recorded land transactions that demonstrate the incursion of individual European settler colonists through a newly established economic condition: individual land ownership. As more Europeans entered the area to possess land through their understanding of land use, these individual settler colonists challenged former Lenape land ‘sale’ treaty terms that had included the condition of shared usufruct rights. Overtime, this understanding changed as European land owners grew to regard their possession of land as ownership, to the exclusion of other Europeans and the Lenape.

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Theses and Dissertations

"As Is His Right," Seventeenth-century Scandinavian Colonists as Agents of Empire in the Delaware Valley