Penn sits with Tamanend at Shackamaxon; the two men sign a treaty of friendship

Most colonial governors in 1683 dealt with Native Americans through force, fraud, or studied indifference. Penn, an English Quaker whose land grant from King Charles II came with no instructions to be decent about it, chose a different approach. At Shackamaxon — near what is now Kensington in Philadelphia — Penn sat with Tamanend, leader of the Lenape, and formalized a treaty of friendship grounded in his Quaker conviction that Native Americans held rights worth respecting. The agreement was never violated, and Pennsylvania's next several decades looked nothing like its neighbors'…