The full story of Indian Hannah shows that early settlers in Chester County did not treat the Native American as well as local legends indicate, writes Mark Dixon for Main Line Today.

Hannah lived with her parents and two brothers along Brandywine Creek. When they disappeared in the 1750s, her life changed. She continued as a physician, but had to flee vigilantes in central Pennsylvania and stayed in New Jersey for seven years before going back home.

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Among her own people she would have been revered as a wise old medicine woman. But to the colonists, she was simply “a destitute, sick Indian woman who deserved sympathy and kindness,” wrote Purdue history professor Dawn Marsh.

The colonists produced a document naming her the last of the Lenape and proclaimed her unable to care for herself. By doing so, they could ignore William Penn’s agreement with the Lenape that no land along the Brandywine River could be taken from the tribe unless it was unoccupied.

Consequently, Hannah was buried in a local graveyard instead of in the nearby Lenape burial ground.

Read more about Indian Hannah in Main Line Today here.

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