Moses Tatamy: The Delaware Diplomat

Moses Tunda Tatamy was a Delaware Indian who built a life at the crossroads of two worlds. In seventeen thirty-eight the Penn family patented him more than three hundred acres northeast of here, an unusual grant that recognized his standing in colonial Pennsylvania. In seventeen forty-five he became the first Native American baptized by the missionary David Brainerd, whose journals later inspired generations of American Protestant missionaries.

Tatamy went on to serve as an interpreter and diplomat, carrying messages between colonial officials and tribal leaders during some of the most tense years of frontier negotiation. His reputation for honest dealing was recognized on both sides. The borough of Tatamy in Northampton County, incorporated in eighteen ninety-three, took his name, a Pennsylvania place name that honors a Native American individual by name.