Hockendauqua and the Walking Purchase of seventeen thirty-seven

Near this stretch of the Lehigh River once stood Hockendauqua, the Delaware Indian town of chiefs Lappawinzo and Tishcohan. In seventeen thirty-seven, the Penn proprietors of Pennsylvania presented those chiefs with a deed for a tract defined by how far a man could walk in a day and a half, based on an old agreement with William Penn. The chiefs expected a leisurely pace through the woods.

Instead, the Penns hired three of the fastest runners in the colony. They cleared a path in advance and pushed the walkers hard from dawn. Only Edward Marshall finished the full day and a half, covering about seventy miles and claiming far more land than the Delaware leaders believed they had agreed to surrender. The fraud displaced the Lenape from the Lehigh Valley and fueled lasting resentment and pushed many Lenape west to the Ohio Country or north to New France.