Minguannan: Where the Lenape Sold Their World

Near this spot stood Minguannan, a Lenape town associated with the chief Machaloha. In sixteen eighty-three, Machaloha and other Lenape met with William Penn and signed away a large stretch of territory.

The Lenape called themselves Lenni-Lenape, meaning roughly the original people. Penn prided himself on negotiating rather than seizing, and this deed was genuine in that sense. But the scale of the cession was staggering, and the Lenape who signed could not fully anticipate what European settlement would mean for the land their ancestors had lived on for thousands of years. The town of Minguannan is gone now, absorbed into Chester County farmland, remembered only by this marker.