Lapowinsa, sakima whose face survives.

Lapowinsa inherited a relationship built on promises. He lived long enough to see those promises broken.

For years, the Lenape and the family of William Penn had maintained a fragile peace built through councils, agreements, gifts, and personal relationships. But by the 1730s, Penn was gone, his sons in charge, Pennsylvania was expanding, and the demand for Lenape land was growing rapidly. Lapowinsa became one of the leaders forced to confront what that expansion meant for his people.

A respected Lenape sakima, Lapowinsa appears in the historical record during one of the most consequential moments in Lenape history. His name survives in several spellings, including Lappawinsoe and Lapowinzo, but remarkably, so does his face.


The Walking Purchase

In 1737, Pennsylvania's proprietors claimed that an old agreement entitled them to an enormous tract of Lenape land. The boundary, they argued, was to extend as far as a man could travel in a day and a half.

Lapowinsa and other Lenape leaders became involved in negotiations over the claim. Their marks eventually appeared on an agreement recognizing the proposed "walk."

But what followed was not the kind of walk the Lenape expected.

Pennsylvania officials prepared the route in advance, cleared portions of the trail, and selected strong runners to cover as much ground as possible. On September 19, 1737, three men set out. Edward Marshall, the only man to finish, traveled roughly 65 miles in a day and a half.

Colonial surveyors then drew the boundary in a way that expanded the claim even farther.

The result was the loss of hundreds of thousands of acres of Lenape homeland.

Betrayal

For the Lenape, the Walking Purchase became a symbol of betrayal.

The problem was not simply that the walkers had moved too quickly. The deeper betrayal was that a relationship built through diplomacy and continuing obligations had been turned into a legal mechanism for taking land.

William Penn had spent decades cultivating peaceful relations with Lenape communities. After his death, his sons pursued Pennsylvania's expansion far more aggressively. Documents, boundaries, and earlier agreements were increasingly interpreted in ways that favored colonial ownership.

Lapowinsa and other Lenape leaders protested what had happened, but Pennsylvania officials refused to surrender the territory.

The consequences were enormous. Lenape families were pushed from lands they had lived upon, hunted, traveled, and known for generations. The Walking Purchase helped destroy the trust that had once existed between the Lenape and Pennsylvania.


An Impossible Position

Lapowinsa's story should not be reduced to the claim that he "sold" Lenape land.

He was a leader trying to protect his people in a world changing rapidly around them. Colonial populations were growing. Settlements were expanding. Written deeds carried meanings and consequences that Lenape negotiators could not always control once those documents entered colonial courts and governments.

Lapowinsa could negotiate, object, and appeal to earlier agreements. What he could not do was stop the enormous colonial system now pressing into Lenapehoking.

Within a generation, much of the Lenape population of eastern Pennsylvania would be displaced westward.


The Man in the Portrait A Face From the Past

Around 1735, Swedish-born artist Gustavus Hesselius painted Lapowinsa from life. The result is one of the most extraordinary surviving portraits of an eighteenth-century Lenape person.

Lapowinsa looks directly toward us. His face and neck are tattooed, a pouch hangs across his chest, and there is nothing imagined or romanticized about the man we see. This was not an artist attempting to reconstruct what a Lenape leader might have looked like generations later.

That history makes Lapowinsa's portrait especially haunting.

We are not looking at an anonymous figure from the distant past. We are looking into the face of a man who was there.

He sat for his portrait around 1735. Two years later, his name would become inseparable from the Walking Purchase and from one of the defining betrayals in Lenape history.

Nearly three centuries later, the documents survive. The disputed boundaries survive on maps.

And so does Lapowinsa.

Discover More

• Smithsonian American Art Museum — Lap-pa-win-soe
  The Smithsonian preserves the striking 1837 hand-colored image of Lapowinsa, based on the earlier portrait, along with museum documentation identifying him and the work.
  Explore the Smithsonian's Lapowinsa collection page

• National Humanities Center — Lapowinsa & Tishcohan
  See Lapowinsa and fellow Lenape leader Tishcohan together in their remarkable 1735 portraits, with historical background connecting both men directly to the Walking Purchase.
  View Lapowinsa & Tishcohan at the National Humanities Center

• Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian — Lap-pa-win-sue
  The NMAI collection identifies Lapowinsa as Lenape and preserves another archival version of the nineteenth-century lithograph of the chief.
  Explore Lapowinsa at the National Museum of the American Indian

• The Walking Purchase Hoax of 1737 — Ray Thompson
  This book focuses on the controversial Walking Purchase and repeatedly follows Lapowinsa's role alongside Tishcohan, Nutimas, the Penn family, James Logan, and the other central figures.
  Explore The Walking Purchase Hoax of 1737

• Wikimedia Commons — Lapowinsa Historical Images
  A useful collection of high-resolution historical images of Lapowinsa, including multiple versions of the original Gustavus Hesselius portrait and the later Lap-pa-win-soe lithograph.
  Explore the Lapowinsa image collection

• Lappawinsoe — Biographical Overview
  A concise overview devoted specifically to Lapowinsa, covering his name, leadership, surviving portrait, tattoos, and involvement in the Walking Purchase.
  Read the Lapowinsa biography

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