DELAWARE APPEAL TO GEORGE II

Yesterday I was in Calais. You can just spot the White Cliffs of Dover on the Horizon from Bleriot Plage. A nice lunch at Le Channel and a number of bottles of wine were obtained from Carrefour. 

This is a dish called avocado and prawns revisited. It is well worth a visit. Tee hee.

I reported on the 17^th September that in 1778 the United States had entered into its first written treaty with the Lenape-Delaware Indians. The authors of the treaty were apparently knowingly dishonest and deceitful. I now find that 41 years earlier, on the 20^th September 1737 there had been another ‘treaty’ with the Lenape-Deleware tribe.

The Walking Purchase (or Walking Treaty) was a purported agreement between the Penn family, the proprietors of Pennsylvania, and the Lenape (also known as the Delaware). The 20^th September 1737 was the finish of the Walking Purchase which forces the cession of 1.2 million acres (4,860 km²) of Lenape-Delaware tribal land to the Pennsylvania Colony.

By it the Penn family and proprietors fraudulently claimed an area of 1,200,000 acres (4,860 km²) and forced the Lenape to vacate it. The Lenape appeal to the Iroquois for aid on the issue was refused.

In Delaware Nation –v- Pennsylvania (2004), the current nation claimed 314 acres (1.27 km²) included in the original purchase, but the US District Court granted the Commonwealth's motion to dismiss. It ruled that the case was nonjusticiable, although it acknowledged that Indian title appeared to have been extinguished by fraud. This ruling held through the Circuit Court Appeal. The US Supreme Court refused to hear the case. 

Justiciable -Essentially, justiciability in American law seeks to address whether a court possesses the ability to provide adequate resolution of the dispute; where a court feels it cannot offer such a final determination, the matter is not justiciable. How convenient.

In 2006 the Delaware Nation claimed in its appeal that the King of England-not Thomas Penn-was the sovereign over the territory that included Tatamy's Place. Therefore, Thomas Penn could not extinguish aboriginal title via the Walking Purchase and, consequently, the Delaware Nation maintains a right of occupancy and use. This claim got them nowhere.

How sad is it that the American Indian tribes kept on believing in the various ‘white men’ who made promises they consistently failed to keep. Is that just being naïve of is it a natural decency and dignity that allows them to see the best in others rather than the worst? Perhaps I’m being naïve.