Before Colonization

Humans began to establish permanent settlements in the vicinity of Philadelphia approximately 2,800 years ago, centuries before Europeans claimed the lands along the Delaware River for the colonies of New Sweden, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. By the time Europeans arrived in the seventeenth century, the Lenape people inhabited a region along the Mid-Atlantic coast between the Delaware Bay and New York Bay, including the future location of Philadelphia.

Topics: Before Colonization

Hog Island

Hog Island, at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, exemplifies many broad trends in the environmental history of the region. Once improved for agriculture, the natural landscape ultimately deteriorated through overexploitation, leading to its conversion for industrial, commercial, and other forms of development. No longer productive in the early twentieth century, the island ⇒ Read More

Lehigh Valley

Over the centuries, strong ties of transport, investment, and culture grew between the Greater Philadelphia region and the Lehigh Valley. The valley was carved by retreating glaciers twenty thousand years ago and maintained by its namesake river running from the Pocono Mountains, through Blue Mountain, south and east into the Delaware River. Only in recent ⇒ Read More

Lower Delaware Colonies (1609-1704)

The colonies that became the state of Delaware lay in the middle of the North American Atlantic coast, extending about 120 miles north from the Atlantic Ocean along the southwestern shore of the Delaware (South) Bay and River to within 10 miles of Philadelphia. Between 1609 and 1704, the area was a contested borderland between ⇒ Read More

Native American-Pennsylvania Relations 1681-1753

Indian-brokered alliances more than Quaker pacifism anchored the “long peace” in the decades that followed Pennsylvania’s founding in 1681. The Iroquois Covenant Chain and the Lenapes’ treaties with William Penn (1644-1718) established the diplomatic parameters that made the long peace possible and allowed Pennsylvania to avoid the kind of destructive frontier warfare that engulfed the ⇒ Read More

Native Peoples to 1680

Native Americans lived in what became southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and northern Delaware for more than 10,000 years before the arrival of Europeans in the early seventeenth century. By emphasizing peace and trade, the Lenapes retained their sovereignty and power through 1680, unlike native peoples in New England and Virginia who suffered disastrous conflicts ⇒ Read More

Pine Barrens

New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, the forest and wetlands area also known as the Pinelands or the Pines, have played a varied but vital role in the region’s cultural and economic history. The Pine Barrens have, over time, been a home to Native American populations, a center of early American industry, a hub of military activity, ⇒ Read More

Prehistoric Native Americans and Archaeology

For thousands of years before European settlement, Native Americans inhabited North America and left behind evidence of their lives in the form of artifacts, which archaeologists have studied and interpreted. The archaeological record for Philadelphia and the surrounding area reveals the complex relationship between prehistoric peoples and the region’s changing environment. Archaeologists also have learned ⇒ Read More

Smoking and Smoking Regulations

The origins of smoking tobacco in the Philadelphia region can be traced to the era before European colonization and evolved from pipes and cigars to the commercialization of cigarettes beginning in the late nineteenth century. Philadelphia-area farmers grew tobacco, local manufacturers produced cigars and cigarettes, and the N.W. Ayer advertising agency helped Camel cigarettes become ⇒ Read More

Trails (Indian)

In the Philadelphia region prior to European settlement and during the colonial period, the Lenapes and other Indians used their knowledge of the landscape to engineer the most efficient routes through forests, mountains, and often shallow, treacherous waterways. Their complex system of overland paths crisscrossed the region to reach east to the shell fisheries on ⇒ Read More

Trees

Trees have been culturally, environmentally, and symbolically significant to the Philadelphia region since the city’s founding. They were believed to improve public health, they beautified and refined city streets, parks, and other green spaces, and several were revered as living memorials to past historical events. Trees also faced their fair share of destruction during the ⇒ Read More

West New Jersey

Between 1674 and 1702, New Jersey was divided in half: The proprietary West New Jersey colony faced the Delaware River while East New Jersey looked toward the Hudson. Although this political division lasted less than three decades, it represented long-standing geographical orientations of the Lenape and Munsee native inhabitants and European colonists. Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) ⇒ Read More

Gallery: Before Colonization

Wampum: Wampum

Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Explore in Treaty of Shackamaxon).

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Timeline: Before Colonization

: 10600 B.C.E-8000 B.C.E.: Paleo-Indian Period. Glaciers recede from region, rivers form, and forests develop, permitting limited human habitation.

8000 B.C.E.-1000 B.C.E.: Archaic Period. Small bands of hunters and gatherers reach the region; late in this era, settlements are created near rivers.

1000 B.C.E.- European contact: Woodland Period. Mid-Atlantic region is on the periphery of Woodland culture (centering in Ohio Valley). Archaeological evidence reveals ceramics and cultivated plants.

At the time of European contact (1609): The Lenni Lenape people inhabit a region along the Mid-Atlantic coast between Delaware Bay and New York Bay, including future location of Philadelphia.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
: At the time of European contact (1609): Native Americans depend heavily on wood, bark, and vegetable fibers to construct houses and other material goods. The Lenni Lenape use fire to manage forests, clear land for agriculture, and burn underbrush to encourage the growth of young plants that attract deer and other small game. When villages exhaust forests after a few decades, communities settle in new sites a few miles away and the process begins again.

1682: By tradition, Treaty of Shackamaxon between William Penn and the Lenni Lenape (wampum belt said to be a gift from the Lenape to Penn, shown here).

Image credit: Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia