Walking Purchase
Allen Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The fleet-footed Edward Marshall and associates in the day and a half walk on Sept.19-20,1737, crossed Hokendauqua Creek below this point. They spent the first night in the woods near Hockendauqua Indian Town.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The Walking Purchase stands as one of the most notorious frauds in the history of colonial land dealings, embittering relations with the Lenape and helping drive them from their Delaware Valley homeland.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1730s, the Lenape people — often called the Delaware — still lived across the valleys and creek bottoms of eastern Pennsylvania, in a landscape of villages, fields, and well-worn paths. The colony William Penn had founded a half-century earlier had a reputation for fairer dealing with Native nations than many of its neighbors, but by this time that reputation was wearing thin.
Pennsylvania was hungry for land. A growing colonial population and the financial needs of Penn's heirs put enormous pressure on the remaining Lenape holdings in the Delaware Valley. The stage was set for one of the most infamous land transactions in colonial America.
This particular stretch of country — the creeks and woods of what is now Northampton County — sat squarely in the path of that ambition. The Hokendauqua Creek and the Native town nearby were part of a living landscape that was about to be measured, walked, and taken.
People & events
The marker commemorates the "Walking Purchase" of September 19–20, 1737, and names the man at its center: Edward Marshall, remembered as remarkably fleet of foot. The colony claimed a deed allowing it to take as much land as a man could walk in a day and a half — and then it chose its walkers, and its route, to cover the greatest possible distance.
Marshall and his companions did not stroll. They moved at a punishing pace through prepared paths, crossing the Hokendauqua Creek below this point and spending the first night in the woods near the Native town. The Lenape, who had expected something closer to an ordinary day's walk, watched an enormous tract slip away from them.
The result was a land grab far larger than the Lenape believed they had agreed to surrender. The speed and the planning behind the "walk" turned what was framed as a fair measurement into what many have long regarded as a calculated deception.
Its place in the American story
The Walking Purchase became a byword for how colonial land dealing could curdle into fraud. It embittered relations with the Lenape and helped push them from their Delaware Valley homeland, with consequences that rippled through the decades that followed.
It is also a window into a pattern that would repeat across the continent: agreements interpreted to the letter when the letter served the colonizers, and stretched past all fairness when it didn't. The story here is local and specific, but the dynamic it captures shaped the whole American frontier.
Remembering it plainly matters. The displacement of Native nations was not an accident of history but the product of particular decisions made by particular people — and this walk, on these creeks, is one of the clearest examples.
If you visit
The drama of this site is in the landscape and the distance. Picture walkers setting out and moving hour after hour across country like this, and the crossing of the creek below the marker as one measured step in a day-and-a-half ordeal that swallowed a homeland.
There's no grand monument to the event — and that quietness is part of the point. Read the inscription, look at the ordinary woods and water around you, and recognize that ordinary-looking ground was the stage for an extraordinary injustice.
If your trip takes in the broader history of the Lenape and the Delaware Valley, let this marker anchor it. It turns an abstract phrase — "the Walking Purchase" — into a real creek crossing you can stand beside and take seriously.
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
Related events
- · Walking Purchase
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
The Famous Indian Walk - PLAQUE
Allen Township, PA · est. 1925
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.
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.
Heckewelder House
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1953
This 1810 house recalls John Heckewelder, the Moravian missionary who spent decades among Native peoples on the frontier as a preacher, interpreter, and keen observer of their lives. His written works on American Indian languages and customs became important early sources, drawn on by scholars and even by novelists shaping the nation's image of the frontier. In an age of mounting conflict and displacement, Heckewelder tried to bridge two worlds through faith and the written word.