The Famous Indian Walk - PLAQUE
Allen Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
... of a day and a half from Wrightstown, Bucks County to near the present Mauch Chunk was performed for the Penn proprietors of Pennsylvania September 19-20, 1737 by Edward Marshall and his associates who slept at the end of his first day near Hockendauqua Indian Town which was 1 1/2 miles to the south and the next morning passed near this point. The survey line of the Walking Purchase was run later in 1737 a half mile east of this marker by BENJAMIN EASTBURN surveyor general of Pennsylvania.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
This marker follows the route of the 1737 "Walking Purchase," the day-and-a-half walk from Wrightstown that Pennsylvania's proprietors used to lay claim to a vast swath of Lenape land. Edward Marshall and his fellow walkers pressed nearly to present Mauch Chunk, passing Hockendauqua Indian Town on the way; a formal survey line was run afterward by Surveyor General Benjamin Eastburn. The lands taken stretched far beyond anything the Delaware believed they had agreed to.
Why it matters
The Walking Purchase stands as one of the most infamous land grabs of the colonial era, a betrayal that helped shatter the Lenape's trust in Penn's Pennsylvania.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the 1730s, Pennsylvania had passed from the hands of its founder into those of his heirs, and the spirit of the enterprise had shifted with it. William Penn had built a reputation for dealing fairly with the Lenape and other Native nations. His sons, the proprietors who now ran the colony, were land-hungry and pressed by debt, and they eyed the fertile country north of the settled districts with growing appetite.
The land in question ran up from Bucks County into the Lehigh Valley and beyond, toward the mountains near present-day Jim Thorpe (long known as Mauch Chunk). It was Lenape homeland, valley and forest laced with creeks and Native towns. To the colony it looked like the next frontier of settlement; to the Lenape it was simply home.
The device the proprietors used to claim it was a peculiar one: a walk. An old and disputed agreement was said to grant them land as far as a man could travel in a day and a half. In September 1737, that abstract measurement was turned into a very physical event on the ground you now stand near.
People & events
On September 19 and 20, 1737, a walk set out from Wrightstown in Bucks County and pressed northward at a pace no ordinary traveler would keep. This was no leisurely stroll to pace off a modest tract. The walkers had been chosen and prepared for speed and endurance, and Edward Marshall emerged as the one whose name history attached to the feat.
The marker traces their route through this part of Northampton County. Marshall and his associates slept at the end of the first day near Hockendauqua Indian Town, a Lenape settlement a mile and a half to the south, and the next morning they passed near this very point as they drove toward the country near present Mauch Chunk. A day and a half of hard walking swallowed an enormous stretch of land.
Once the walk fixed the distance, the boundary still had to be drawn. Later in 1737, Benjamin Eastburn, the surveyor general of Pennsylvania, ran the survey line — passing about half a mile east of this marker. Between the walkers' legs and the surveyor's chains, an immense claim was made concrete, far larger than the Lenape had ever understood themselves to be surrendering.
Its place in the American story
The event this marker commemorates is remembered as the Walking Purchase, and it became one of the most infamous land transactions in colonial America. It stands as a case study in how paper, measurement, and technicality could be marshaled against Native nations who had negotiated in good faith.
What stung was not only the acreage lost but the manner of the loss. A colony that had staked its identity on honest dealing used a strained reading of an old deed and a specially trained fast walk to take far more than the Lenape believed was ever on the table. The betrayal corroded trust that had taken decades to build.
The consequences reached beyond this valley. Embittered relations here fed into the larger unraveling of Native-colonial peace in the mid-Atlantic, tensions that would later erupt into frontier warfare. The Walking Purchase is thus not a footnote but a hinge — a moment when the promise of Penn's Pennsylvania visibly cracked.
If you visit
You are standing on a route, not just a spot. The marker's power comes from the line it traces across the countryside — the path of a walk that reshaped a region in thirty-six hours. As you look north toward the mountains near Jim Thorpe, imagine the distance those walkers covered and the far larger territory their pace defined.
Look to the terrain. The rolling farmland and the Lehigh Valley beyond are the very stakes of the story, land measured out by human legs and a surveyor's chain. Knowing that Hockendauqua Indian Town lay a mile and a half to the south, and the survey line ran half a mile to the east, turns an ordinary rural view into a map of a historic injustice.
This marker pairs naturally with others in the area that follow the same 1737 walk, so it fits a thoughtful driving loop through Northampton County. Take it slowly. The point is not a photograph but a shift in how you see the ground — as contested, remembered, and hard-won.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Edward Marshall
- · Benjamin Eastburn
Related events
- · Walking Purchase
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Walking Purchase
Allen Township, PA · est. 1948
In 1737 Pennsylvania's proprietors invoked a supposed 1686 deed that promised land stretching as far as a man could walk in a day and a half. Rather than an honest stroll, Thomas Penn hired trained runners and cleared paths to push the boundary to its farthest possible limit, seizing far more Lenape land than the tribe expected. In doing so he abandoned the fairer dealings of his father, William Penn, and poisoned relations between the colony and its Native neighbors.
Walking Purchase
Allen Township, PA · est. 1947
In September 1737, colonial officials invoked a disputed deed to claim as much land as a man could walk in a day and a half, and the swift Edward Marshall and his companions covered a startling distance well beyond what the Lenape had expected. Their route carried them past this point, across Hokendauqua Creek, and near a Native town, seizing far more territory than the Lenape believed they had agreed to surrender. The so-called Walking Purchase became infamous as a symbol of colonial deception.
Hockendauqua - PLAQUE
Allen Township, PA · est. 1925
In the tangled early history of Penn's Woods, this ground sat beside an Lenape (Delaware) town near the Lehigh River, home to leaders the colonists knew as Lappawinzo and Tishcohan. Their names are bound to the notorious Walking Purchase of 1737, when Pennsylvania's proprietors used a decades-old, dubiously drawn deed to claim land measured by a day-and-a-half's walk. The colony hired fast, trained walkers like Edward Marshall, who strode far beyond what any ordinary traveler could cover, extending the boundary and stripping the Lenape of vast holdings.
Meniolagomeka Memorial
Eldred Township, PA
In the mid-1700s the Moravians, German-speaking Protestants known for their missions among Native peoples, established a station called Meniolagomeka in the Pennsylvania backcountry that operated from 1749 to 1755. Like other Moravian missions of the era, it drew Indigenous converts into a shared community until frontier tensions in the 1750s brought it to an end. The Moravian Historical Society set this memorial in 1901 to keep the vanished settlement's memory alive.