PENN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS. 281 for that the rains might rust, or a falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man's body was to be divided into two parts; we are all one flesh and blood." Then he gave them presents, and they in turn handed him a belt of wampum as a pledge of their fidelity. They were delighted with his divine words, and believed in his noble promises. "We will live in love with William Penn and his children," they said, "as long as the sun and moon shall endure." And they did. Not a drop of the blood of a Quaker was ever shed by an Indian. William Penn had achieved a marvellous victory over the savage arm and the savage spirit. While in other colonies the might of the sword and musket, of the arrow and the hatchet, were making fearfully red records of crime; while the savages were in fierce array, secretly and openly, against the pale-faced intruders, Penn had conquered and subdued those of Pennsylvania by love. There were not even contentions between the races there. "We have done better," said the Friends, in their Plantation Speech, in 1684, "than if, with the proud Spaniards, we had gained the mines of Potosi. We may make the ambitious heroes whom the world admires, blush for their shameful victories. To the poor, dark souls round about us, we teach their rights as MEN." Significant is the question of the historian: "Was there not progress from Melendez to Roger Williams? from Cortez and Pizarro to William Penn?" There is no written record of that treaty made in the open air on the banks of the Delaware. We have accounts of the personal character of the council. Penn was then a graceful man, strong built and of fair complexion, and thirty-eight years of age. Most of his companions were younger than himself, and all were dressed in the garb of the Quakers-the fashion of the more simple Puritans during the Protectorate of Cromwell. The Indians were clad in the skins of beasts, for it was on the verge of winter-their harvest time was over. Frost and expanding buds were stripping the trees of their foliage, and every aspect of the scene was becoming dreary excepting the bright council-fire under the great elm around which the high contracting parties were gathered. Penn was accompanied by the deputy governor and a few others; and the Indian sachems brought their wives and children, who sat upon the ground modestly back. From that treaty place, Penn journeyed through New Jersey to New York and Long Island, visiting Friends and preaching with fervor. Then he returned to the Delaware, and on the seventh of November he went to Uplands (now Chester), where he met the first Provincial Assembly of his province. There he made known his benevolent designs toward all men, civilized and savage, and excited the love and reverence of his hearers. The Assembly tendered their grateful acknowledgments to him, and the Swedes authorized one of their number to say to him in their name that they would "live, serve and obey him with all they had," declaring that it "was the best day they ever saw." He informed the Assembly of the union of the "territories" (as Delaware was called) with his province, and received their congratulations. Then was laid the foundations of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. From Chester, Penn went to Maryland to confer with the third Lord Baltimore concerning their boundary lines, but did not make a satisfactory arrangement. On his return, he A PLEDGE OF FRIENDSHIP. went up the Delaware in an open boat to Wicaco, to attend the founding of a city, to which allusion had been made in his "Concessions, &c.," in 1681. Before his arrival in this country he had determined to give to the future city the name of Philadelphia-a Greek word signifying brotherly love-as a token of the principles in which he intended to govern his province. Near a block-house which the Swedes had built, and which they had changed into a church, he purchased lands extending from the high banks of the Delaware fringed with pines to those of the Schuylkill. There his surveyors laid out the city of Philadelphia upon a plan which would embrace twelve square miles. Although the efforts of Raleigh and Coligny to make settlements in the warmer portions of North America had utterly failed, and the country south of the James River was untrodden by the foot of the white man unless by the few survivors of the lost colony of Roanoke Island or around the Spanish fort at St. Augustine, the desire to plant colonies there remained strong, and finally led to the wished-for result. From time to time restless, discon?ented, adventurous or greedy persons went there to find homes for them EMIGRATION TO NORTH CAROLINA. 283 selves and their children, or to acquire fortunes, but no permanent settlement was planted until past the middle of the seventeenth century. So early as 1609, some colonists under the direction of Captain John Smith left Jamestown and seated themselves on the Nansemond River, near the Dismal Swamp. In 1622, the ambitious Porey, Secretary of the Virginia colony, penetrated the country southward to the tide-waters of the Chowan River. He told, in earnest words, of the beauty and richness of the country, but did not induce settlers to go there. Eight years later, as we have observed, Sir Robert Heath, the Attorney General of Charles the First, obtained from his king a charter for a domain south of Virginia, six degrees of latitude in width, and extending westward to the Pacific Ocean. This included the region between Albemarle Sound and the St. John's River in Florida. That patent was declared void in 1663, because neither the proprietor nor his assigns had fulfilled their agreements. Sufferers from the oppression of the State Church in Virginia looked to the wilderness for freedom, as the Huguenots and the Pilgrims had done. In 1653, a few Presbyterians from Jamestown settled on the Chowan River near the present village of Edenton. Other non-conformists followed, and the settlement flourished. Already the New England colonies had begun to swarm. The Massachusetts hive had become too small; and in 1661, some adventurous New Englanders appeared in a small vessel, in the Cape Fear River, in search of a home in a more genial climate. They purchased lands of the Indians, and were making the experiment of establishing a colony of farmers and herdsmen there, when news came that the whole region had been given by Charles the Second to some of his favorites. The New Englanders had partners in their enterprise, in London. These pleaded, in behalf of the claims of the colonists, their prior purchase of the soil, and also their right to self-government. A compromise was offered by the patentees, yielding to every claim of the settlers excepting the ownership of the soil; and that they offered at a yearly rent of a half-penny an The soil was not inviting enough for those who might choose a dwelling-place from almost an entire continent. Most of the New Englanders returned home and "spread a reproach on the harbor and the soil" at Cape Fear. acre. The grant alluded to was made to several of the rapacious courtiers of Charles the Second, the most of them men past middle-life in age, and possessed of the easy virtue which distinguished the reign of that monarch. They begged the domain of the king under the pretence of "a pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel" among the heathen. Their real object was to rob the "heathen" of their lands, and to accumulate riches and honor |