Penn's Peaceable Kingdom: Shangri-La Revisited

The history of indigenous Pennsylvania and William Penn's peaceable kingdom is often considered an exception to the standard narrative of violence, dispossession, and conquest in the broader account of colonial North America. The story of Hannah Freeman, a Lenape woman who lived in the Quaker colony, counters that standard narrative, despite the best efforts of regional and state historians to offer Hannah Freeman as an artifact of Penn's benevolent conquest. This essay examines that process of commemoration relative to Freeman's life in southeastern Pennsylvania.