Besides his Peaceable Kingdoms, Edward Hicks painted signal events in American history, including Washington Crossing the Delaware, the Declaration of Independence, and, most famously, Penn’s Treaty with the Indians. This latter theme provided Hicks with a political and historical “event” that he could cite as an example of the partial fulfillment of biblical prophecy of a peaceable kingdom on earth. After about 1830, Hicks began to paint the scene individually for his Quaker friends.

The event portrayed refers to the disembarkation of the Quaker William Penn in 1682 and his meeting with Native Americans in Delaware at Shackamaxon to exchange gifts for land. Quakers viewed this meeting as a model of mutual consent, which they believed should rule future negotiations with the indigenous civilizations. In fact, Penn did meet with the Lenape Indians, but no documentation of a treaty exists. The story is now thought to be apocryphal, and Benjamin West’s version of the event an eighteenth-century idealization of colonial relations.

In the painting, the portly Penn stands at center, pointing to the charter, surrounded by his Quaker colleagues, who include Penn’s secretary James Logan (holding the scroll), the Quaker minister Thomas Story (behind Penn), and the deputy governor Thomas Lloyd (cloaked). At left, the Lenapes survey the presents assembled, including bolts of cloth. Penn’s landing on Dock Street is featured in the background and derives from another print source included in John F. Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania (1830).

Related examples: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, Virginia; Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Mercer Museum of the Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown, Pennsylvania; Delaware County Historical Society, Chester, Pennsylvania; Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont; NGA; Meyer P. Potamkin, Philadelphia; private collection, New York (ex coll. The Dietrich American Foundation, Philadelphia). Four others are owned anonymously.

Adapted from book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.