William Penn

[Josh]

The Christian Indians around here tended to get massacred, like the group in Gnadenhuten that is now a museum.

[Ken]

What Penn did was more honorable than what every other settler of the west did.
England wresting PA from the Dutch, and the then granting Penn the colonizational rights is in some way different that the American government wresting the west from Mexico England and Spain, and then granting that land to American settlers and homesteaders with no regard whatsoever to the Indians? All those Indian wars and massacres? Yet Penn is the colonizer and Americans aren’t?

Where do you get that notion?

America was very clearly a colonial nation from its very beginning with the ....wait for it....13 COLONIES.

And the 19th Century westward expansion as characterized by both the Mexican American war and endless wars against native peoples was the very definition of colonialism. We even had a name for it that they still teach in the history books: Manifest Destiny.

We even had a very systematic process of conquering lands whereby once independent native lands would FIRST become territories and then graduate up to states when sufficient white population arrived to govern themselves.

In fact Hitler and the Nazis used the 19th century westward expansion in the US with its systems of concentration camps (reservations) as a model for their own eastward expansion into Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. And they also looked to America's system of Jim Crow segregation and race laws in the south as a model for how to deal with the Jews. But that's a different topic.

The main difference was that the Nazis made the mistake of attacking people who could fight back with their own industrial might and acquire powerful allies.

[RZehr]

What Penn did was more honorable than what every other settler of the west did.
England wresting PA from the Dutch, and the then granting Penn the colonizational rights is in some way different that the American government wresting the west from Mexico England and Spain, and then granting that land to American settlers and homesteaders with no regard whatsoever to the Indians? All those Indian wars and massacres? Yet Penn is the colonizer and Americans aren’t?

Where do you get that notion?

America was very clearly a colonial nation from its very beginning with the ....wait for it....13 COLONIES.

And the 19th Century westward expansion as characterized by both the Mexican American war and endless wars against native peoples was the very definition of colonialism. We even had a name for it that they still teach in the history books: Manifest Destiny.

We even had a very systematic process of conquering lands whereby once independent native lands would FIRST become territories and then graduate up to states when sufficient white population arrived to govern themselves.

In fact Hitler and the Nazis used the 19th century westward expansion in the US with its systems of concentration camps (reservations) as a model for their own eastward expansion into Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. And they also looked to America's system of Jim Crow segregation and race laws in the south as a model for how to deal with the Jews. But that's a different topic.

The main difference was that the Nazis made the mistake of attacking people who could fight back with their own industrial might and acquire powerful allies.

Slow down there, tiger! Did you notice the question mark? It was a rhetorical question, not a statement. And the answer to the rhetorical question, is no. No, there isn’t a difference between America and England.

[barnhart]

In fact Hitler and the Nazis used the 19th century westward expansion in the US with its systems of concentration camps (reservations) as a model for their own eastward expansion into Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. And they also looked to America's system of Jim Crow segregation and race laws in the south as a model for how to deal with the Jews. But that's a different topic.

The main difference was that the Nazis made the mistake of attacking people who could fight back with their own industrial might and acquire powerful allies.

This is tangential to Penn but I am sympathetic to your thesis, many of the sins of the Nazis were borrowed from the Allied nations who had gone through that phase 150 years earlier. One might oversimplify the crimes of the Nazis as Anachronism (misplaced in time) and the fact they applied the proven techniques of colonization against Europeans, not for them.

[Ernie]

In fact Hitler and the Nazis used the 19th century westward expansion in the US with its systems of concentration camps (reservations) as a model for their own eastward expansion into Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. And they also looked to America's system of Jim Crow segregation and race laws in the south as a model for how to deal with the Jews. But that's a different topic.

The main difference was that the Nazis made the mistake of attacking people who could fight back with their own industrial might and acquire powerful allies.

This is tangential to Penn but I am sympathetic to your thesis, many of the sins of the Nazis were borrowed from the Allied nations who had gone through that phase 150 years earlier. One might oversimplify the crimes of the Nazis as Anachronism (misplaced in time) and the fact they applied the proven techniques of colonization against Europeans, not for them.

And I would say that Putin/Russia are trying it again 90 years later.

[Ken]

In fact Hitler and the Nazis used the 19th century westward expansion in the US with its systems of concentration camps (reservations) as a model for their own eastward expansion into Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. And they also looked to America's system of Jim Crow segregation and race laws in the south as a model for how to deal with the Jews. But that's a different topic.

The main difference was that the Nazis made the mistake of attacking people who could fight back with their own industrial might and acquire powerful allies.

This is tangential to Penn but I am sympathetic to your thesis, many of the sins of the Nazis were borrowed from the Allied nations who had gone through that phase 150 years earlier. One might oversimplify the crimes of the Nazis as Anachronism (misplaced in time) and the fact they applied the proven techniques of colonization against Europeans, not for them.

And I would say that Putin/Russia are trying it again 90 years later.

Yes, although colonialism and imperialism are somewhat different flavors and I would argue that Russia is acting more imperialist than colonialist in Ukraine. They don't so much want to colonize Ukraine as exert imperial control over it. Although there is definitely a lot of overlap.

[Josh]

It's amazing how some people can find ways to bring up Nazis and Hitler in virtually every topic. Even William Penn, who predates WWII by two centuries.

[temporal1]

COMMON SENSE ISN’T COMMON

USA TODAY / “Native tribes don't want statue of William Penn removed. They want their story told.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 267233007/

.. Tribal officials told USA TODAY they are still puzzled by the uproar, saying none of them asked or advocated for removal of Penn's statue. Instead, they said, they simply wanted to make the park more inviting to the public and a place where they could gather as they once did.

"We want to show the ways in which we shaped what the city became," Jeremy Johnson, director of cultural education for the Delaware Tribe of Indians, also known as Lenni-Lenape, told USA TODAY. "The areas we inhabited, how we showed the colonizers how to survive there, where to build."

Johnson has worked with museums, cultural institutions and schools in Philadelphia and its surrounding areas, though he and the Delaware Tribe are based in Oklahoma.

"We are always building on those relationships as we return in small ways to our lands," he said. "We have been in Oklahoma for 150 years, and that’s the longest we’ve been able to stay in one place over the last 300 years. Now we are focused on revitalizing our cultural history and rebuilding relationships on our homelands."

Not exactly a welcoming space

Few of the thousands of tourists who visit Independence National Park in Philadelphia seem to realize Welcome Park exists, and with good reason.

Welcome Park, in short, seems anything but welcoming.

Blocks away from Independence Hall, Carpenters Hall and the Liberty Bell, Welcome Park is near cobblestoned alleys and across from a now-closed Colonial tavern that dates to the 1770s. It's next to the Thomas Bond House, a 1769 home of a prominent physician and now a bed and breakfast.

But it's also surrounded by modern condominiums and a six-story brick parking garage attached to a movie theater. Bright blue Indego bikes are attached to metal racks for people to rent, and few people stop to take in the aging signs telling the story of Penn, Philadelphia's founding father.

Most of the people at Welcome Park are only moving through on their way to their cars or taking a shortcut between city streets. It's clear the park, built in 1982 and named for the ship that brought Penn to the state that's named for him, needs improvements.

In March 2020, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that members of an Iroquois delegation came from New York to Philadelphia to visit Welcome Park. The park in 1755 was given to the Six Nations from the Iroquois Confederacy (also called Haudenosaunee) by Penn's grandson John, according to contemporary reports cited on Hidden City Philadelphia.

Members of the 2020 Iroquois delegation were disappointed at what they found, some saying they felt Native American links to the site had been erased.

When the Inquirer asked the city about ownership of the parcel, the Philadelphia Department of Records told the paper "every inch of ground between those streets is now owned by either the United States of America or by the condominium owners at the Moravian Condos." ..

There’s more .. then this:

Barnes is puzzled not only by the Shawnee Tribe's inclusion in the NPS statement but also by any discussion about William Penn's removal from the park: "I take no offense to William Penn," he said, adding that he learned through his research at the American Philosophical Society that Penn had been pressured to force Native tribes from the area − but resisted that pressure.

Johnson said that the Delaware Tribe was part of the discussions which began in 2022, but they never raised any objections to Penn being part of Welcome Park.

"That never came up," he said. "Our community still speaks highly of (Penn). He never broke any treaties; his sons did.
Our purpose was not to raise up or remove William Penn; it was to highlight our culture and history in that area in a way that was accurate."

Johnson described the park in its present state as "kind of barren in a way."

"It feels easily overlooked, and even if it's just there to highlight William Penn's history, it's still not a very inviting place."

Johnson said the tribes discussed how the National Park Service could transform Welcome Park into a greener place with native plants and trees, a place where Indigenous people can gather together and with the wider community:

"We're not trying to minimize William Penn. We're trying to maximize our presence."

^^As-if Dr Alveda King isn’t the only down-to-earth being.

USA TODAY / “Native tribes don't want statue of William Penn removed. They want their story told.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 267233007/


photo from elsewhere

[temporal1]

^^this report aligns with the OP article.

[temporal1]

P.1:

https://apnews.com/article/william-penn ... 1f94ecd477

Did William Penn attempt "conquest through treaty"? If "yes", was this wrong?

If what William Penn did was "conquest through treaty" then I suppose that is what virtually every property owner engages in, as well as every merchant who "conquests goods through treaty" and then sells them on at a markup.

I'm not in favor of whitewashing the past and pretending people like Christopher Columbus were saints,
but the attempts by some folks to make every prominent historical figure into a scoundrel is nonsense.

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