Frontier Country. Patrick Spero
Native peoples in other colonies complained of deceptive land practices, and the strife in these colonies often frustrated English imperialists’ plans for their colonial domains. Penn believed that direct negotiations between Indian groups and himself (or his representatives in his absence) would create more formalized and peaceful diplomatic protocols for acquiring land. Such procedures also reduced the chance for individuals to hold competing titles. By purchasing all land directly from Indians through formal diplomatic treaties and alliances, the transfer would thus rest on the theory of consent facilitated through diplomacy between the proprietor and Indian nations. Penn’s approach to land also revealed something else about his vision for expansion. While he was willing to defer to colonists in governing settled areas, Penn’s land policy meant he controlled the acquisition of all new territory.11
There was one thing wrong with the ritual. While Penn planned to assert his rights to all of the land outlined in his charter, he intended this growth to occur peacefully. The livery of seisin, however, occurred at a fort, a symbol of war, militarization, violence, and all the emotions such a structure conjured: fear, anger, hatred, and desperation. Penn wanted none of these things in his realm. As he promised his Indian neighbors, “The people who come with me are a just, plain, and honest people that neither make war upon others nor fear war from others because they will be just.” With his designs for an ordered expansion through just treatment of Indians and good governance, Penn expected to build bridges, roads, and markets connecting people, not forts that divided. There would be no frontiers in Penn’s woods.12
Penn knew that good relations with Native Americans were the foundation upon which his promise of peace rested. He used the Concessions to reinforce this pledge by regulating interactions between colonists and Native Americans. Penn acknowledged that disputes over trading practices had led to conflict in other colonies. In Pennsylvania, he wanted to create a means of guaranteeing open and fair trade by regulating it. He limited trading to specific areas designated as public markets, mandated that all traders receive a license through the governor, required all goods to be inspected and stamped by colonial officials to protect against fraud, and placed heavy fines on those dealing in “goods not being good.”13
He also knew that the daily interactions of cross-cultural contact caused tensions. He thus declared that Indians should receive the same protections of the law that colonists enjoyed. If any settler wronged an Indian, Penn warned that the colonist should expect to “incur the same penalty of the law, as if he had committed it against his fellow planter.” Penn seemed particularly worried that settlers might seek retribution if they felt wronged by an Indian. Penn warned that under no circumstances were settlers to take the law into their own hands, stating that colonists “shall not be his own judge upon the Indian, but he shall make his complaint to the governor of the province, or his lieutenant, or deputy, or some inferior magistrate near him.” Penn also proposed a novel way to handle the inevitable conflicts that would arise between Indians and colonists: juries composed of equal numbers of Indians and colonists. Penn’s goal was to create an environment of just treatment that avoided rash action.14
Penn’s laws revealed his political acumen. He was a visionary, a theorist, and an optimist, but he was also a realist. Penn saw trade as an opportunity for both unity and friction. In theory, Penn believed fair dealing and brisk trade would help bring colonists and Indians together. In practice, he recognized that intercultural relationships were difficult and that colonists might try to defraud Indians of goods and lands. Penn the realist visionary anticipated this human inclination and saw government as the only means of safeguarding against it.
Penn applied this same foresight to controlling expansion. He envisioned developing any newly purchased land through a Land Office staffed by a Superintendent and various deputies. He would build some manors, but he would sell other land to individuals, most likely through a public auction that distributed lands fairly and evenly. All landowners would pay an annual quitrent to the proprietor for the protection and prosperity that proprietary offices provided them. The quitrent would not be onerous, but it would give Penn some compensation for his troubles and allow him to continue to develop the colony.
All of this planning would promote prosperity, peace, and stability. It was neither utopian nor cynical. Like so much else Penn had done to prepare, the plan sounded good in theory and appeared realistic from the drawing rooms in London.
“Be Soe Good and Kind a Neighbor”
Soon after arriving in his colony, Penn discovered a challenge to his expansionary vision: the imagined borders outlined in his charter conflicted with those of his English neighbors. Many of these overlapping jurisdictions existed only in the abstract because colonial settlement still hugged the eastern seaboard. No one, for instance, seemed to notice that Virginia’s claims to the Ohio River were the same as Pennsylvania’s, or that Connecticut might assert ownership to parts of the territory. Such was not the case when it came to Penn’s southern neighbor, Lord Baltimore, the proprietor of Maryland. Penn’s charter gave Penn rights to what is today Delaware. Lord Baltimore, however, grew enraged by Penn’s ownership, claiming that Marylanders already legally possessed it. Indeed, Baltimore argued that much of the land granted to Penn, including even Philadelphia, was already his. He also began to grumble that Penn’s western plans interfered with his own. If Baltimore’s understanding proved correct, then Penn’s dreams for his colony’s future would die.15
The dispute revealed the difficulties imperial planners faced when building an empire on a vast tract of foreign land. For those who sat an ocean away and drew lines on maps of North America, the specific location of borders looked clear and a minor detail when they saw so much open space on the parchments sitting before them. But for those whose personal wealth was tied to these lands, the ambiguities surrounding a few square miles were hard to accept. Baltimore and Penn thus marshalled legal arguments to justify their dueling claims and then looked to England for clarity.
The main sticking point in the south had to do with whether or not Europeans had settled on the southern portions of the Delaware River before English ownership. If Europeans (notably the Swedes and then the Dutch) had, then the land would have transferred to the Crown after the English defeated the Dutch in 1664 and the territory would thus be Penn’s. Baltimore argued that the land was never in European hands and was rightfully his because his charter gave him the right to all undeveloped areas of the Delmarva Peninsula (the name for the spit of land that Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia now share). If Baltimore’s argument won out in English courts, then Penn would lose the only waterway that provided his colony with access to the Atlantic. At stake was the future of each colony. The outcome would also shape the English Empire in this burgeoning region.16
The second dispute regarded the fortieth degree, or the northern border of Maryland, and proved much trickier to resolve. Here too the disagreement was over a river—this time, the Susquehanna—that both proprietors saw as a gateway to the west. Without the river, Penn worried that his western lands would become nothing more than “a dead lump of earth” because Baltimore would control all trade. Penn’s charter stated that his colony’s southern border was the “beginning of the fortieth degree.” According to Penn’s maps, his colony started below where the Susquehanna River met the Chesapeake, giving him the entirety of the potentially lucrative river. Baltimore’s charter, in contrast, contained the passage that his colony went up to “that part of the Bay of Delaware … which lieth under the fortieth degree.” Today, such phrases may seem very specific designations, and indeed, they were meant to be exactly that. In an era of poor instrumentation and mapmaking, however, such descriptions proved troublesome. And this too was no small matter. Whoever controlled the Susquehanna would control trade with and expansion into the interior.17
Once Penn caught wind of Baltimore’s concerns, he tried to settle their differences in a series of meetings. He asked Baltimore “to be soe good and kind a neighbour as to afford him but a back door” to his colony. Penn’s friendly talk won him no favors. Baltimore appeared displeased and uninterested—if not downright hostile—at every meeting. And he had just cause. Many people at the time and quite a few historians since believed that by the letter of the law, Baltimore had a stronger case in both disputes. Penn, however, disagreed and pressed Baltimore on both fronts.18
Matters