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For centuries before settler William Penn arrived, native peoples lived and cared for Lenapehoking, the land we now call Philadelphia.
Penn greeted the Lenape — whose name translates to “original people” — and their leader Chief Tamanend in friendship, attempting but ultimately failing to form a sustainable equality with the Indigenous people.
The City of Philadelphia commissioned Tamanend in 1994 to honor the Lenape people and their chief, known as “the Affable One.” Indigenous artist Raymond Sandoval answered a newspaper call for proposals, with his design for the Tamanend statue rising to the top of 3,000 applications.
Tamanend stands tall at Front and Market streets, positioned to face toward Philadelphia’s City Hall and Alexander Milne Calder’s William Penn statue, which stands watch over the city.
Read on to learn more about this monument to the Lenape people.
Raymond Sandoval crafted Tamanend from bronze and local Wissahickon schist, rising a commanding 21 feet high from a 16-foot base.
Standing atop a turtle representing Earth, Tamanend stretches out one hand in a gesture of peace, with an eagle perched on his shoulder clutching a wampum belt, a symbol of the treaty between the Indigenous people and Penn.
— Photo by Visit Philadelphia
Penn’s treaty with Tamanend probably didn’t look like the apocryphal scene that’s portrayed in Benjamin West’s 1771 painting, but legend says that Penn met the Lenape and their leader in Shackamaxon (today’s Fishtown neighborhood) and signed a treaty under a great elm (in today’s Penn Treaty Park).
Penn returned to England in 1701, the same year that Tamanend is believed to have died. While Penn strived for peace with and respect for the local Lenape nation, his sons did not follow suit after his death in 1718.
As a work of public art, Tamanend is free to visit at any time of day.
Read more about the statue on the Association for Public Art’s official website by clicking the button below.
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