Historic Philadelphia

PROLOGUE
BEFORE THERE WAS A CITY
THE LENNI LENAPE
“Wapsiypayat.” The White, he comes.
That word, recorded in the Walam Olum, the sacred writings of the Lenni Lenape, announced the
ultimate doom of the Native Americans who lived on the banks of the Delaware River, where one
day Philadelphia would be built.
They were an old, proud nation. They believed that God had created them first upon the earth.
Their very name, Lenni Lenape, means “the original people.” In ancient times, they had conquered
this continent. The Europeans would take it away from them.
THE
EXPLORERS
Englishman Henry Hudson, probing for a shortcut to India on behalf of Dutch merchants,
poked briefly into Delaware Bay on August 28, 1609. He thought it was too shallow for his ship,
and pushed north to discover the river that later was given his name. To the Dutch in 1609, the
Hudson was the North River, the Delaware the South River.
In 1610, a ship commanded by Sir Samuel Argall, an Englishman, wandered into the South River.
Thomas West, governor of the three-year-old colony at Jamestown, Virginia, had sent Argall to Bermuda
to buy hogs. Instead, Sir Samuel went to New England and bought fish. His reasons for the detour are
unknown, but on his way home, he did some sightseeing on the river. He decided that it should be
named to honor Sir Thomas, whose title was Baron de la Ware, and the Delaware River it became.
THE
DUTCH
Captain Cornelis Jacobsen Mey showed up in 1614, named one shore of the bay Cape May after
himself, and claimed the river for the Dutch. In 1623, Mey returned, on a ship called New
Netherlands, with thirty families to be the first settlers. Most of the colonists went to the North
River, but four married couples and some military men came to the Delaware.
Captain Mey took the families to an island far up the river, where they built a brick house. The
soldiers and sailors erected a log fort on the east bank of the river, opposite the mouth of the
Schuylkill ( Dutch for “hidden river.”) These were the first Europeans to live in the Delaware Valley.
It’s not known how long they stayed or why they left.
The Dutch made another attempt to colonize the area in 1631, this time down on the bay, near
the present Lewes, Delaware. They insulted the local Lenni Lenape, who destroyed the colony. In
1632, Dutch colonization of the Delaware Valley was suspended.
✧
This fragment of a map of the Delaware
River, drawn in 1655 by Peter Lindstrom,
royal Swedish engineer, shows early
European spellings of Native American
place names familiar today: Passayung,
Meneyackse (Manayunk), Kackamensi
(Shackamaxon), Penipackakyl (Pennypack),
and Poaetguessingh (Poquessing.) With
letters and numbers, Lindstrom also
footnoted such enduring names as
Tinnaconck (Tinicum) and Kinsessing.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
THE
SWEDES
Several Dutchmen still wanted to establish a presence on the Delaware, including Peter Minuit,
who had been fired after six years as governor of the Dutch settlement on Manhattan Island. They
applied to King Adolphus Gustavus of Sweden, who was killed in battle in 1632. His daughter,
Christina, became queen at age six. Her adult advisers granted the Dutch adventurers twenty years
exclusive trading rights on the Delaware River.
The new company raised funds to outfit two ships, which arrived on the Delaware in March
1638. In July a load of furs purchased from the Indians was shipped home. Their sale brought
PROLOGUE
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