Atwater Kent, standing by radio, and seven other people listening to the radio
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Atwater Kent
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Tishcohan and Lapowinsa were chiefs of the Lenape Tribe. They were signers of the Walking Purchase Treaty of 1735/37 in which William Penn's sons, John and Thomas, acquired a vast track of land in Pennsylvania. The Penns claimed that they had a deed dating to the 1680s in which the Lenape Tribe had promised to sell a tract of land beginning between the junction of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers (near Wrightstown, Pennsylvania) "as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half." Chiefs Lapowinsa, Tishcohan and other leaders of the Lenape tribe believed that the treaty was genuine and also assumed that about 40 miles was the most a man could walk through the wilderness in a day and a half. James Logan hired the three fastest runners in Pennsylvania (Edward Marshall, Solomon Jennings and James Yeates) to run out the purchase on a pre-surveyed trail. The three runners covered almost 70 miles and the Penns acquired 1,200,000 acres of land, an area roughly equivalent to the state of Rhode Island. The Lenape tried unsuccessfully for almost 20 years to have the agreement overturned; they were forced to vacate the land and move to the Shamokin and Wyoming valleys.

Portraits before 1840
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection
Atwater Kent Museum