Hundreds of such treaties have been made. The remarkable part
about Penn's dealings with the Indians was that such promises as
he made he kept. The other Quakers, too, were as careful as Penn
in their honorable treatment of the red men. Quaker families of
farmers and settlers lived unarmed among them for generations
and, when absent from home, left children in their care. The
Indians, on their part, were known to have helped white families
with food in winter time. Penn, on his first visit to the colony,
made a long journey unarmed among the Indians as far as the
Susquehanna, saw the great herds of elk on that river, lived in
Indian wigwams, and learned much of the language and customs of
the natives. There need never be any trouble with them, he said.
They were the easiest people in the world to get on with if the
white men would simply be just. Penn's fair treatment of the
Indians kept Pennsylvania at peace with them for about seventy
years--in fact, from 1682 until the outbreak of the French and
Indian Wars, in 1755. In its critical period of growth,
Pennsylvania was therefore not at all harassed or checked by
those Indian hostilities which were such a serious impediment in
other colonies.

The two years of Penn's first visit were probably the happiest of
his life. Always fond of the country, he built himself a fine
seat on the Delaware near Bristol, and it would have been better
for him, and probably also for the colony, if he had remained
there. But he thought he had duties in England: his family needed
him; he must defend his people from the religious oppression
still prevailing; and Lord Baltimore had gone to England to
resist him in the boundary dispute. One of the more narrow-minded
of his faith wrote to Penn from England that he was enjoying