Seal of Confidence

Sarah and I stumbled upon an interesting seal etched into the wall at our local mall yesterday. It's from the old Philadelphia dept. store Strawbridge & Clothier (later Strawbridge's and most recently absorbed by Macy's). The seal displays William Penn making his famous treaty with Lenape chief Tammany and reads "Strawbridge & Clothier...Seal of Confidence".

Now, call me crazy, but if I wanted an image that would send of a message of honesty and trust and would assure potential customers that my prices were fair and that their children's, children's, children would not come to look back on their purchases with deep regret. I don't think I'd choose a picture of a European striking a land deal with a native American. I'm just saying...

In fairness to William Penn and Tammany, the moment depicted in the seal (and displayed somewhat more elegantly by Benjamin West) represents one of the brighter points of early colonization. Penn was remarkable for his deep desire to deal fairly with the native peoples of Pennsylvania and his respect for them as human beings, and relatively equitable and peaceful relations continued through his and Tammany's lives.

Those who followed them were not as just. In 1737 (to name one famous example) the Penn family, desirous of more Lenape land, produced a document which they claimed was a treaty promising the Penn's all the land between the Delaware and Lehigh rivers and extending as far from the junction of the two rivers "as a man could walk in a day and a half." The document was almost certainly a forgery, but the Lenape accepted it at face value, acknowledging that they often measured distance by the rate at which a man could walk.

"Walk," however, is an ambiguous term. To the Lenape it meant a steady but unhurried pace along existing trails. To the Penn's it meant something else. They scoured the colony for the three fastest runners available and sent our scouts to find the easiest and most direct paths. The scouts were followed by woodsmen who cleared and leveled the ground to make the route as smooth and easy as possible. The runner's set out at top speed, stopping only to sleep briefly in the night. Their pace was so intense that two of the three were forced to abandon the trek before the allotted time has passed. But the third persevered, covering somewhere around 60 miles. As a result, the Penn's claimed an area of about 1,200 sq. miles (about the size of Rhode Island). The Lenape, though they eventually accepted the claim, were not pleased. To their mind the accepted distance for a day-and-a-half walk was about 40 miles, and the difference between their expectations and what the Penn's runners accomplished was vastly exaggerated by the course of the Delaware. In the image below, the dotted lines represent the length of the walk which, along with the solid line and the Delaware River, enclose the ceded land. The yellow lines might roughly represent what the Lenape thought they were agreeing to; the red lines represent what they actually gave up after the "walk."