In 2004, the Delaware Nation of Oklahoma, in Anadarko, filed a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Delaware Nation based its lawsuit on “the doctrine of discovery,” and the royal charter that King Charles II of England issued to William Penn in 1681.

In that charter, Charles II says that William Penn came to him and “humbley besought Leave of Us to transport an ample Colonie [of people] unto a certaine Country hereinafter described.” There is a critical point that the charter does not make: the “Country” that the king purported to grant to Penn was the territory of our Lenape Nation, sometimes also known as the Delaware Nation. The charter says that the lands were in the parts of “America not yet cultivated and planted.” In other words, our Lenape Nation territory had not yet been colonized and dominated by Christendom.

The royal charter further explained that Penn had requested the grant from Charles II “out of a commendable Desire to enlarge our English Empire, and [to] promote such useful commodities as may bee of Benefit to us and Our Dominions.” But the king said there was another part of Penn’s desire, which was “to reduce the savage Natives by gentle and just manners to the Love of Civil Socieitie and Christian Religion.”

The use of the word “Love,” and the phrase “gentle and just manners,” skillfully deflects attention away from Penn’s dehumanizing intention to “reduce” “savage Natives.” The word “reduce” means “to make less,” or “to diminish.” The question arises: To make less than what? To diminish downward from what to what? The answer is this: It was Penn’s intention to reduce us from our original free and independent existence as a distinct Lenape Nation down to a form of subjection under a “Civil Society” based on the “Christian religion.”