William Penn's heirs, John Penn and Thomas…

1737 CE

William Penn's heirs, John Penn and Thomas Penn, claim a deed from the 1680s by which the Lenape had promised to sell a tract beginning at the junction of the Delaware River and Lehigh River (modern Easton, Pennsylvania) and extending as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half.

This document may have been an unsigned, unratified treaty, or even an outright forgery (Encyclopædia Britannica refers to it as a "land swindle").

The Penns' agents had begun selling land in the Lehigh Valley to colonists while the Lenape still inhabit the area.

According to the popular account, Lenape leaders had assumed that about forty miles (sixty kilometers) was the longest distance that could be covered under these conditions.

Provincial Secretary James Logan, the legend continues, had hired the three fastest runners in the colony, Edward Marshall, Solomon Jennings and James Yeates, to run on a prepared trail.

They are supervised during the "walk" by the Sheriff of Bucks County, Timothy Smith.

The walk occurs on September 19, 1737; only Marshall finishes, reaching the modern vicinity of present-day Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, seventy miles (one hundred and thirteen kilometers) away.

At the end of the walk, Sheriff Smith draws a perpendicular line back toward the northeast, and claims all the land east of these two lines ending at the Delaware River.

This results in an area of one million two hundred thousand acres (four thousand eight hundred and sixty kilometers), roughly equivalent to the size of Rhode Island, located in the modern counties of: Pike, Monroe, Carbon, Schuylkill, Northampton, Lehigh and Bucks.

The Delaware leaders appeal for assistance to the Iroquois confederacy, who claim hegemony over the Delaware.

The Iroquois leaders decide that it is not in their political best interest to intervene on behalf of the Delaware.

James Logan had already made a deal with the Iroquois to support the colonial side.

As a result, the Lenape have to vacate the Walking Purchase lands.

Chief Lappawinsoe and other Lenape leaders continue to protest the arrangement, as the Lenape are forced into the Shamokin and Wyoming valleys, already crowded with other displaced tribes.

Some Lenape will later move west into the Ohio Country.

Because of the Walking Purchase, the Lenape grow to distrust the Pennsylvania government, and its once good reputation with the various tribes is lost forever.

In Delaware Nation v. Pennsylvania (2004), the current nation claimed three hundred and fourteen acres (one point twenty-seven square kilometers) included in the original purchase, but the US District Court granted the Commonwealth's motion to dismiss.

It ruled that the case was nonjusticiable, although it acknowledged that native title appeared to have been extinguished by fraud.

This ruling held through the United States courts of appeals.

The US Supreme Court refused to hear the case.