1 February 2022
Detail of a 1685 map showing the area of Pennsylvania settled by Europeans, i.e., Philadelphia and the surrounding environs and what is now Delaware
The eastern portion of what is now Pennsylvania was part of Lenapehoking, the land of the Lenape people. Indigenous peoples who lived in what are now the central and western portions of the state included the Susquehannock, Shawnee, Iroquois, and Erie. Additionally, the Nanticoke, an offshoot of the Lenape, migrated into what is now Pennsylvania from Delaware following contact with Europeans. Most of the Indigenous peoples who once dwelled in what is now Pennsylvania were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma and elsewhere. As a result, Pennsylvania is one of the thirteen states with no government-recognized tribes, but Indigenous communities unrecognized by the settler-colonist government still dwell there today.
The English colony was founded by William Penn as a Quaker colony in 1681 by King Charles II. The king granted the charter to pay off a £16,000 debt he had owed to Penn’s father, Admiral Sir William Penn, and insisted the colony be named for the admiral as part of the debt repayment. The younger Penn had wanted to name it New Wales, but when the king weighed in he decided to call it Penn + sylvania (Latin: woodlands), so Pennsylvania literally means Penn’s woodlands. The 1681 charter reads:
Whereas His Majesty in consideration of the great merit and faithful services of Sir William Penn deceased, and for divers other good Causes Him thereunto moving, hath been Graciously pleased by Letters Patents bearing Date the Fourth day of March last past, to Give and Grant unto William Penn Esquire, Son and Heir of the said Sir William Penn, all that Tract of Land in America, called by the Name of Pennsylvania.
Discuss this post
Sources:
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
“The King’s Declaration to the Inhabitants and Planters of the Province of Pennsylvania” (2 April 1681). A Brief Account of the Province of Pennsylvania. London: Benjamin Clark, 1681, 4–5.
Native-languages.org, accessed 14 December 2021.
Image credit: Christopher Browne, 1685, A New Map of Virginia, Maryland, and the Improved Parts of Pennsylvania & New Jersey. Library of Congress.