(gentle music)
- [Host] We're in the beautiful galleries
of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, looking
at a painting that many of us might be familiar with
from American history textbooks.
This is Benjamin West's "Penn's Treaty with the Indians."
So we have William Penn.
He's been granted this land by the King of England.
He's seeking to create a Quaker community,
and he's here shown negotiating peacefully
with the Native Americans.
- [Host] The left side is dominated by the Quaker settlers
as well as a group of merchants, and then on the right side,
you can see various groups of native peoples.
- [Host] Now, Penn didn't have to trade for the land because
he was deeded the land by the king.
But it's his choice to come and do what he thinks
is morally and ethically right, which is
to compensate the Native Americans for their land.
- [Host] The myth that this painting has perpetuated
is that in 1682, William Penn and his followers meet
with the Lenni Lenape and the Delaware peoples
under a great elm tree at Shackamaxon,
and in exchange for gifts, they trade for the land
that will become Pennsylvania.
- [Host] So this all looks marvelous.
The colonists came to Pennsylvania, and because they
were Quakers, they believed in the fundamental equality
of all human souls, they believed in peace.
And so here they are negotiating in this wonderful way
that we very much want to believe
was the way that colonization happened.
But this painting effaces that reality.
This was painted about a hundred years later,
and it was commissioned by the son
of William Penn, Thomas Penn, whose negotiations
with the Native Americans was far from fair.
- [Host] Thomas Penn commissions Benjamin West
to paint this, ostensibly as a tribute
to his father, William Penn.
But he commissions it at a time when the Penn family legacy
is at risk, not just because the second generation
of Penns had less generous and less equitable relationships
with the indigenous communities around the area,
but because there was also fracturing
within the Quaker leadership of Pennsylvania.
- [Host] Thomas Penn, who inherited this,
had almost royal authority over Pennsylvania colony.
- [Host] And that's not a form of leadership
that was popular on the eve of the Revolution.
- [Host] But it's helpful if you can point to a painting
that shows how kind and benevolent
you and your ancestors have been.
- [Host] It's particularly helpful if you can point
to a painting that indicates that a market for the goods
that you had to offer was inevitable.
And it's critically important that the very center
of the painting is occupied
by a bright white bolt of cloth.
West labored over these textiles, so not only does
he show you the white bolt that's currently being traded
in the center of the painting,
but you see a Native American wearing it in green, wearing
it in yellow, in red, and even in the bottom right corner,
there is a Native mother wearing a very well ornamented
piece of manufactured fabric.
- [Host] We call this a history painting 'cause it's
in this European tradition of large paintings
that show a heroic or noble image from history.
- [Host] And most scholars at this point agree
that this moment never took place.
This particular meeting under this particular elm tree
with these particular leaders is probably a total myth.
So we required a myth of this having been done right
to allow ourselves to keep taking more
and more in additional negotiations.
So it's an important narrative for people in the colonies
to believe that, at least here, we trade well
with our neighbors, that we have business practices
and religious practices and cultural practices
that perpetuate peace.
(gentle music)