A Lenape Among the Quakers

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters University of Nebraska Press 2014 A Lenape among the Quakers Dawn G. Marsh [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples Marsh, Dawn G., "A Lenape among the Quakers" (2014). University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters. 266. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/266 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Nebraska Press at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. A Lenape among the Quakers Buy the Book Buy the Book A Lenape among the Quakers The Life of Hannah Freeman dawn g. marsh University of Nebraska Press Lincoln & London Buy the Book © 2014 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska Parts of this book have previously appeared in different form in “Hannah Freeman: Gendered Sovereignty in Penn’s Peaceable Kingdom,” in Gender and Sovereignty in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850, ed. Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarborough (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011), 102–22. All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marsh, Dawn G. A Lenape among the Quakers: the life of Hannah Freeman / Dawn G. Marsh. pages cm. Includes bibliographical references. isbn 978-0-8032-4840-3 (cloth: alk. paper)— isbn 978-0-8032-5419-0 (epub)— isbn 978-0-8032-5420-6 (mobi)— isbn 978-0-8032-5418-3 (pdf) 1. Freeman, Hannah, 1730 –1802. 2. Delaware women— Pennsylvania—Chester County—Biography. 3. Delaware Indians—Missions—Pennsylvania—Chester County. 4. Quakers—Missions—Pennsylvania—Chester County. I. Title. e99.d2f746 2014 974.8'00497345092—dc23 [B] 2013031268 Set in ITC New Baskerville by Hannah Gokie. Buy the Book For the Lenape people and Jesse, Whitney, and Harper Buy the Book Buy the Book publication of this book is supported by a grant from Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford Buy the Book Buy the Book Contents List of Illustrations x Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Chapter 1. The Examination of Hannah Freeman 7 Chapter 2. All Our Grandmothers 35 Chapter 3. The Peaceable Kingdom 74 Chapter 4. Lenapehoking Lost 106 Chapter 5. Kindness Extended 135 Chapter 6. The Betrayal 164 Epilogue 179 Appendix 1. The Examination of Indian Hannah alias Hannah Freeman 189 Appendix 2. Kindness Extended 191 Notes 195 Bibliography 203 Buy the Book Illustrations Figures 1. Hannah Freeman memorial marker, 1909 8 2. Chester County Alms House, Newlin 29 3. Lapowinska 47 4. Tishcohan 48 5. The Great Elm Tree of Shackamaxon 57 6. Penn’s Treaty with the Indians 59 7. Massacre of Indians at Lancaster by Paxton Boys 130 8. Preparations in Philadelphia to Prepare for the Arrival of the Paxton Boys 131 9. Hannah Freeman memorial marker, 2009 180 Maps 1. Historic occupation of the Lenapes at contact 36 2. Chester County and townships 75 3. Colonial Pennsylvania land cessions 107 4. Brandywine River valley 137 Buy the Book Acknowledgments This book began over a decade ago with my discovery of two eighteenth-century documents that inspired me with an inex- plicable obsession to “unsilence” Hannah Freeman’s story. I did not understand how far or how long that journey would take, but I have no regrets about my choice. I am wiser for the journey, but not weary, and my obsession is now a passion. Hannah Freeman taught me quite a few lessons along the way, and there is much work yet to do. There are far too many friends and colleagues who offered support and enthusiasm along the way to name individually. Please know that you are deeply appreciated and forever have a seat at my table. However, there are a few who must be named. The first are my children: Jesse Preston Otawka, Whitney Morgan Otaw- ka, and Harper Mackenzie Valentine Otawka. They were the first reasons I embarked on the more difficult of the paths available. They continue to inspire me to be a better human being. Jesse gave me his steadfast loyalty and strength throughout the most difficult times. His sense of humor, kind heart, and compassion kept us together. He is my superhero. My oldest daughter, Whit- ney, inspired me to never let go. Her tenacity and her passion for her own career remind me how lucky we are to be doing work that we love, and her exuberance and joy teach me to enjoy the ride. Finally, Harper, a gifted writer and poet, reinvigorated my own aspirations as a writer. Her love of language and words are always with me. Her empathy for those suffering injustice re- minds me that words are powerful weapons we must use wisely. Buy the Book Professional support came from many sources. Sharon Salin- ger and Rebecca “Monte” Kugel recognized capabilities I had not yet discovered in myself and provided intellectual space and support during my graduate program at the University of California, Riverside. Laurie and Diane Rofini and the staff at the Chester County Historical Society and Chester County Ar- chives introduced me to the Albert Cook Meyers Collection and more. Their expert insights were invaluable. There are many colleagues past and present who listened and advised along the way, but several stand out and must be noted: Helen Hornbeck Tanner, Susan Sleeper Smith, Theda Perdue, and Nancy Shoe- maker—trailblazers all. My thanks go also to Matt Bokovoy, who recognized the importance of Hannah’s story. His mentoring made me a far better storyteller. I must also thank the Philips Fund for Native American Research administered through the American Philosophical Society, which provided the seed mon- ey for the project, and acknowledge the generous support of the Library Scholars Grants at Purdue University and the Pur- due Research Foundation Grant, which provided crucial funds during revisions of the manuscript. A few final acknowledgments go to my new extended family in Lafayette, Indiana. I accepted an appointment at Purdue University in 2007 under the most trying and difficult of per- sonal circumstances. In a very short time and with very little effort I found myself surrounded with good friends, both on cam- pus and off. I cooked, you ate—you shared your families, and I shared mine. We laughed, argued, teased, and hugged. Some moved on and are missed dearly, but new friends continue to enter my life. All of you eased my transition from Californian to midwesterner and continue to help me call this strange and marvelous place home. You know who you are. A finer group of miscreants and charlatans cannot be found. xii Acknowledgments Buy the Book A Lenape among the Quakers Buy the Book Buy the Book Introduction On July 28, 1797, Hannah Freeman, an elderly indigent Le- nape woman, stood before Moses Marshall, Chester County’s newly appointed almsman, and delivered a brief account of her life; two hundred years later one anthropologist credited it as a Native American biography “that predates by nearly one hundred years the earliest Native American story now known.”1 But few historians note her existence as anything more than incidental to the larger narrative of Pennsylvania history and eighteenth-century indigenous-white relations. However, Hannah Freeman’s story plays a critical role in the popular construction of Pennsylvania’s past on a regional level and provides a portal to examination of the complex dynamics of indigenous-white relations in eighteenth-century North America more general- ly. A careful study of Hannah Freeman gives us an opportuni- ty to critique the colonialist memorials to her life spent among the Quakers but, more important, her life merits attention because it is a story of Lenape survivance that demonstrates the means by which she and other indigenous peoples found new ways to live in their historic homelands despite the enormous pressures of colonization.2 The story of Hannah Freeman is an imperfect history. The paucity of primary documentary evidence and the generational layers of oral accounts, family histories, and intentional silences make the endeavor of unearthing her story all the more daunt- ing. The effort is worth it because Hannah Freeman’s experiences as a Native American woman living deeply entrenched Buy the Book in a colonial settler community challenge our understanding of Indian-white interactions beyond the borderlands, frontiers, and middle grounds that are usually addressed in scholarship. Her experiences and the accounts by those who knew her of- fer an alternate history of a colonial community during a century of upheaval and transformation that enveloped all who lived through it. Hannah Freeman’s life story provides a valuable perspective on several levels of Pennsylvania, colonial, and women’s history. Her role as the “last of her kind” in southeastern Pennsylva- nia gave regional historians critical proof that indigenous peoples in Pennsylvania vanished with her death.3 This belief held sway in the region from a generation after her death to the present. The power of this communal memory, the extent to which the region’s residents continue to protect, commemorate, and preserve that story, begs to be reevaluated since it conceals day- to-day realities of others like Hannah who refused to abandon their homelands and their indigenous identities. The complex- ities of interdependencies, obligations, and kinshiplike adapta- tions are made visible in a close study of the intimate exchang- es between Hannah Freeman and her neighboring Quakers. Further, analysis brings to light the ways in which her Quaker neighbors, despite their most benevolent and pacifist intentions, dispossessed Native peoples of their lands.

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