The history of Pennsylvania is traceable to the first modern indigenous peoples that occupied the area of present-day Pennsylvania. These included the Lenape, Susquehannocks, Haudenosaunee, Erie, Massawomeck, Shawnee and other Native American tribes.
In the early 17th century the area on the east side of the Delaware River was claimed by both the Dutch and the Swedes. Dutch presence was limited to Fort Beversreede, a trading post located in present-day Philadelphia. The Dutch abandoned the fort in 1651 due to Swedish encroachment. In 1655, the Swedes surrendered control of the area to New Netherland, but in 1664 the Dutch surrendered New Netherland to the British. In 1681, Pennsylvania became a British colony when William Penn received a royal deed from King Charles II of England.
Penn, a Quaker, established his colony based on religious tolerance. It was settled by many Quakers along with Philadelphia, its largest city, which was also the first planned city. In the mid-1700s, the colony attracted many German and Scots-Irish immigrants. Most of the Indigenous tribes were driven off or reduced to remnants as a result of diseases, such as smallpox.
While each of the Thirteen Colonies contributed to the American Revolution, Pennsylvania, and especially Philadelphia, was a center for the early planning and eventual launch of rebellion against King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain, which was then the most powerful political and military empire in the world.
Philadelphia served as the capital of the new United States between New York City and the establishment of Washington, D.C.. During the 19th century, Pennsylvania established its northwestern, northeastern, and southwestern borders, and Pittsburgh emerged as one of the nation's largest and most prominent cities of the day. The state played an important role in the Union's victory in the American Civil War. Following the war, Pennsylvania grew into a Republican political stronghold and a major manufacturing and transportation center.
During the 20th century, following the Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s, Pennsylvania moved away from being dominated by industry and farming and towards the service and financial sectors economically and became a swing state politically.
Native Americans
Pennsylvania's history of human habitation extends to thousands of years before the foundation of the Province of Pennsylvania. Archaeologists generally argue that the first settlement of the Americas occurred at least 15,000 years ago during the last glacial period, though it is unclear when humans first entered present-day Pennsylvania. There is an open debate in the archaeological community regarding when the ancestors of Native Americans expanded across the two continents to the tip of South America, with the range of estimates being between 30,000 and 10,500 years ago. The Meadowcroft Rockshelter contains the earliest known signs of human activity in Pennsylvania, and perhaps all of North America, as it contains the remains from over 10,000 years ago and possibly pre-dated the Clovis culture. By 1000 C.E., in contrast to their hunter-gatherer ancestors, the native population of Pennsylvania had developed agriculture and a mixed food economy. Pennsylvania later went through what's called the Archaic period. This period culminated in the Woodland period and the massive cross-woodland Hopewell exchange network.
Sources for Pennsylvania's prehistory come from a mix of oral history and archaeology, which pushes the known record back another 500 years or so. The Haudenosaunee called some of the previous inhabitants of the region the Alligewi (better written AdegoweFroman, Francis and Keye, Alfred J. English-Cayuga/Cayuga-English Dictionary 2014.). It is said that this is where the term Allegheny comes from (Adegoweni).Hale, Horatio The Iroquois Book of Rites 1884. Many groups of migrating Iroquoians moved through the region over the course of history. The shores of Lake Erie were inhabited by the Erie. An offshoot of them are called the Massawomeck crossed the Ohio and were the Monongahela culture, but later merged with the Susquehannocks due to warfare with the Haudenosaunee. The Monongahela were moundbuilders and built stone mounds like some of their neighbors to the south. They were part of the likely multiethnic Fort Ancient culture. The Suquehanna river watershed was inhabited by a variety of groups many of which are scarcely attested such as the Scahentoarrhonon, Tehotitachsae, Akhrakouaeronon and Juniata. The Scahentoarrhonon lived in the Wyoming valley and their country was called by other Iroquoians, Scahentowanen. To their south was the most powerful nation of the watershed the Susqueuhannock, many of the previously mentioned nations may have been subgroups or close relatives of the Susquehannock. Finally the Delaware river watershed was inhabited by the Lenape, they call their country Lenapehoking."On the Susquehannocks: Natives having used Baltimore County as hunting grounds – The Historical Society of Baltimore County". www.HSOBC.org. Retrieved August 17, 2017. Later many more nations moved into the region due to colonialism and associated warfare such as the Shawnee, Cherokee, Mohicans, Wyandot, Piscataway, Tutelo, Saponi and Nanticoke.
Disease, mass settlement, land seziures and constant warfare to fulfill european economic demands weakened many of these nations. Many of the Algonquian peoples on the east coast were forced to flee into Pennsylvania to receive the protection of the powerful Haudenosaunee confederacy. As they lost numbers and land, they abandoned much of their western territory and moved closer to the Susquehanna River and the Iroquois and Mohawk to the north. Northwest of the Allegheny River was the Iroquoian Erie,"Early Indian Migration in Ohio". GenealogyTrails.com. Retrieved August 17, 2017. They were fragmented during the Beaver Wars and fled further south becoming what Europeans called the Westo.
A people known as the Trokwae were said to have settled by the westernmost Susquehannocks along the Ohio River. They may be the same as the Tockwogh, a small algonquian tribe from the Delmarva Peninsula (In many surviving Iroquoian languages, 'r' is silent.) previously long allied to the Susquehannock. They, however, did not survive the Beaver Wars. After their war with the Susquehannocks ended in the 1670s, they pushed straight south from New York and began attacking other tribes of Virginia."Lambreville to Bruyas Nov. 4,1696" N.Y. Hist. Col. Vol. III, p. 484 In the end, the French pushed the Iroquois back to the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, where they were finally convinced to sign a peace treaty in 1701. They sold off much of their remaining, extended lands to the English, but kept a large section along the Susquahanna River for themselves, they allowed refugees of other tribes to settle in towns, such as Shamokin, Lenape, Tutelo, Saponi, Piscataway, and Nanticoke.N.Y. Hist. Col. Vol. V, p. 633"Life of Brainerd" p. 167 In the 1750s, the refugee tribes were relocated to New York, where they were roughly reorganized along cultural lines into three new Tutelo, Delaware and Nanticoke daughter nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.N.Y. Hist. Col. Vol. VI, p. 811
European colonization European colonization
Long-term European exploration of the Americas commenced after the 1492 expedition of Christopher Columbus, and the 1497 expedition of John Cabot is credited with discovering continental North America for Europeans. European exploration of North America continued in the 16th century, and the area now known as Pennsylvania was mapped by the French and labeled L'arcadia, or "wooded coast", during Giovanni da Verrazzano's voyage in 1524."16th Century Pennsylvania Maps", mapsofpa.com. Even before large-scale European settlement, the Native American tribes in Pennsylvania engaged in trade with Europeans, and the fur trade was a major motivation for the European colonization of North America. The fur trade also sparked wars among Native American tribes, including the Beaver Wars, which saw the Iroquois Confederacy rise in power. In the 17th century, the Dutch, Swedish, and British all competed for southeastern Pennsylvania, while the French expanded into parts of western Pennsylvania.
In 1638, the Kingdom of Sweden, then one of the great powers in Europe, established the colony of New Sweden in the area of the present-day Mid-Atlantic states. The colony was established by Peter Minuit, the former governor of New Netherland, who established the fur trading colony over the objections of the Dutch. New Sweden was centered on the Delaware River with a capital at Fort Christina (near Wilmington, Delaware), and extended into very southeasternmost modern-day Pennsylvania. In 1643, New Sweden Governor Johan Björnsson Printz established Fort Nya Gothenburg, the first European settlement in Pennsylvania, on Tinicum Island. Printz also built his own home, The Printzhof, on the island.
In 1609, the Dutch Republic, in the midst of the Dutch Golden Age, commissioned Henry Hudson to explore North America. Shortly thereafter, the Dutch established the colony of New Netherland to profit from the North American fur trade. In 1655, during the Second Northern War, the Dutch under Peter Stuyvesant captured New Sweden. Although Sweden never again controlled land in the area, several Swedish and Finnish colonists remained, and with their influence came America's first log cabins.
The Kingdom of England had established the Colony of Virginia in 1607 and the adjacent Maryland Palatinate in 1632. England also claimed the Delaware River watershed based on the explorations of John Cabot, John Smith, and Francis Drake. The English named the Delaware River for Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, the Governor of the Virginia colony from 1610 until 1618. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667), the English took control of the Dutch (and former Swedish) holdings in North America. At the end of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the 1674 Treaty of Westminster permanently confirmed England's control of the region.
Following the voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano and Jacques Cartier, the French established a permanent colony in New France in the 17th century to exploit the North American fur trade. During the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, the French expanded New France across present day Eastern Canada into the Great Lakes region, and colonized the areas around the Mississippi River as well. New France expanded into western Pennsylvania by the 18th century, as the French built Fort Duquesne to defend the Ohio River valley. With the end of the Swedish and Dutch colonies, the French were the last rivals to the British for control of the region that would become Pennsylvania. France was often allied with Spain, the only other remaining European power with holdings in continental North America. Beginning in 1688 with King William's War (part of the Nine Years' War), France and England engaged in a series of wars for dominance over Northern America. The wars continued until the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, when France lost New France.
Province of Pennsylvania
On March 4, 1681, Charles II of England granted the Province of Pennsylvania to William Penn to settle a debt of £16,000 (around £2,100,000 in 2008, adjusting for retail inflation) that the king owed to Penn's father. Pennsylvania was one of the two major Restoration colonies. Penn founded a proprietary colony that provided a place of religious freedom for Quakers. Charles named the colony Pennsylvania ("Penn's woods" in Latin), after the elder Penn, which the younger Penn found embarrassing, as he feared people would think he had named the colony after himself. Penn landed in North America in October 1682, and founded the colonial capital, Philadelphia, that same year.