First he went to the Schuylkill, Then he went to the Susquehanna. And then their people went to the Ohio. Every time the whites came right after him, took their land. And only when the Indians finally realized there was no way out of this, they were going to have nothing is when they attacked. And that's when the Mennonites tell the story. When the attacks start. So, John Ruth, you've spent quite a number of years researching Anabaptist history, and you just published another book.
Well you've published quite a few books over the years. There's a new one, relatively new, that came out called This Very Ground. And it tells a side of the Mennonite story that I have never heard before. And I think is maybe, you know, part of our story that's not not as good. And something that we haven't heard about that much. And I really want to get into that today. So I'm guessing it'll be a bit of a surprise to some people. So first off, thank you for coming on the podcast this evening.
And why don't we start with just an overview of what what is the book about and what did you find in your research? Well, I began, asking the question of why I lived where I lived. In a beautiful spot along a creek named, a branch of the Perkiomen Creek in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 29 miles north of Philadelphia. And I realized that, when I was little, I like to play at being Indian.
I had a bow and arrow, and I heard about the Indians, and I found that some of my friends went through phases where they enjoyed imagining themselves as Indians to. But it hit me wrong. I was with a conservative Mennonite bishop in Lancaster County when I was writing their history. Oh, 20 years ago, maybe, and he pointed to a field of corn where the corn stalks were so close together and thick that you could only harvest in low gear with good equipment. He pointed toward that field.
And I don't know why he said this, but he said to me, look at that. He said, God got no glory when just the Indians were here. And, So God could wait all those thousands of years until we got here. And I remembered at harvest services a day, we would always quote that verse, from the Psalms that the Lord has given us... I just forget the, the the word lap, of, of, luxuriant, herbage and fields and, then I thought, well, who were those people? Because on the farm next to ours.
They picked up hundreds of beautifully shaped points. Somebody had to get very good. And I had a neighbor who found 600 of those points in one field. like arrowheads. You're saying. Oh we call them arrowheads, so. And they were, there were, the tools that you could hoe and, the more I thought about that was.., And Columbus’, 500th anniversary of Columbus's landing in the Azores came. I thought, you know, we as Mennonites lived on this land. We ought to say something. At 500 years.
You shouldn't let that go past without saying anything. So, I thought, well, I wound up in Oklahoma, where our Indians got to eventually, and I just walk out on the street and ask somebody, could you give me some, take me to somebody that, this is about, I don't know, 2000 or something like the year 2000. What would I have been? 70 years old already, and. And they led me, led me to, a couple, a Lenape, couple.
The Lenapes were the, indigenous people who lived in Pennsylvania, new Jersey, Delaware. They're called Delawares, but that's an European name because they had a group there. The Delawares are the same as the Lenapes. Well, well, anyway, we brought this couple up for October 12th, 1992, which is the 500th anniversary. And, we, took them to several churches and had them talk about themselves. And, I took them to a place where they were still finding Jasper points.
And, then we went to a big celebration in the National Cathedral in Washington, where the sound of powerful drums, they celebrate Columbus Day. And, the more I talked, well, what had happened to then a group of Lenapes took a walk on the so called, walking purchase. I don't know if you ever heard that term of 1737, when the last of our Lenape Indians gave gave up their land. So, 1737 you said. 1737 and they were markers along the path of that walking purchase.
And when we when we got to one of the group I was with of Indians or interested people became angry and began shaking their rattles and spitting and yelling. And I said to myself, what's that feeling coming from? What's that about? It's not over in their minds, the loss of their land. And, then I kept thinking and thinking and thinking.
And it drove me then finally to go into Philadelphia, to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and pull out actual documents and just sit there and read them now. I'm a late comer to this. Honestly, I'm not a historian. And there for 50 years had been a growing accumulation of scholarly work on indigenous people.
We are in a peak of, profuse publication of scholarship on the indigenous people and what they actually said and where they actually live, and what process was proceeded through by which they were de legalized from the land that they had lived on. It's very from much fermenting now. There's all kinds of societies, all kinds of people are interested in this. I'm a late comer and a non-expert. All I ask was the land that I live on. What was it’s story? Why am I living here?
Fishing, swimming, skating, boating, trapping, farming, eating. Born. My mom ate the eggs and the dandelion and the chicken. And I was born. Formed in her womb. And, I have this. Why don't I go to think about earlier stages? Why am I so preoccupied with my decade that I. That is a blank in my mind. I felt starved. So, anyway, I found that I was just a late comer and a just an amateur where professionals had been working, even at a university level for years.
And so I drew on their scholarship, in addition to going down to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and reading through the legal records, there. And what I wanted to know was, what was it like for those people to leave? When did they leave? Where did they go? And, what was their experience? Now there in what we call Indian, Oklahoma was Indian Territory. That's where you went when you couldn't go any further. When you were you couldn't stay in Ohio. You couldn't stay in Illinois.
You couldn't stay in Missouri, Kansas. You had to go Indian Territory. And there you were. Well, I made contact with them because there was a Mennonite, a minister who was also a, a Navajo, not Navajo. I forget Cheyenne, Lawrence Hart. And he had a big to do in the year 2006. In which he, invited people to listen to their story, where our General Custer, who came from Mennonite background, where I live. Wait, General Custer, came from Mennonite background.
Yes, his ancestry was Mennonite, and he himself could speak Pennsylvania Dutch. Wait, I've never heard that. No. Can we divert a little bit and hear a bit of that? Like what? How close was he connected to the Mennonites? Well, he wasn't connected anymore, you know, like, you can have Mennonite ancestry five generations ago and have no memory of it yourself. It was probably closer than that for him, wasn’t it? About four, I'd say.
Yeah, but anyway, he he led the attack there that killed Black Kettle. Who was the predecessor of Lawrence Hart. And anyway, as I put these, factoids together, I began to have feelings about it. And so it fueled my curiosity. Can we know anything? And I found it. Sure you can. Scholars had been right, but my story wasn't told. So here's what I found. So here's what I found. That when the people that settled my acreage.
The Clemens's living from the Palatinate, who came over in the years 1709, and on that boat was a letter, a small letter by William Penn, who was an old disappointed man, but who had known Mennonites over the years. Really? Yes he had. I didn't know that either. No, we don't we don't get that story. He had known Mennonites since 17. And in fact, he probably had Mennonite relatives in, in and in southern Germany. But with that, that aside, he had visited Mennonites and worship with them in 17,
in 1677, in the Palatinate. Yes. He knew Mennonites in Germantown. He knew Mennonites in Heidelberg, he knew Mennonites in Amsterdam, the sophisticated Dutch, the in hob nail boots on the farms of the homes in the Palatinate. Who? The Swiss refugees. They came. He knew him.
And in this letter, which was not in the three volume sophisticated, collection of his correspondence, I found it otherwise, and I found the original in the archives in Philadelphia his letter he wrote, He wrote to his, his secretary in Philadelphia “Herewith come the Palatines, diverse Mennonists” that diverse. He already knew we were different kinds Oh, yeah.
You see, from 1663, when the first Mennonites came to Germantown, to 1708, they could not have communion because they came from five different places over there. They weren’t united. So the first adjective that William Penn used to tell his American, his secretary about Mennonite was diverse, but the rest was complimentary. He said they are a sober people and who will neither fight nor swear. Treat them with tenderness and love so that they will send over a good character.
He wanted more of us, undocumented. All he knew was we were Mennonites and I. When when I hear them talking about immigrants today, how terrible they are, they're all rapists and stuff like that, and a fear of them. My people couldn't even talk English either. And they had lost their properties at home. That's why they had to travel up to the Palatinate. Well, anyway, when I saw that William Penn on that boat was the couple that settled the ground that I grew out of. They got 690 acres.
I grew out of that. And that that still that formed me. That DNA is still there. And only by curiously pushing and pushing to get to that story. Well, I got there and, I read afterward, read the work of sophisticated historians, and I was shocked at how little I knew that they already knew, but I didn't know my own story. Yeah. So anyway, the that's what pushed me. Now, When I had to do that, I said, I got to learn where Gerhart Clemens came from.
And I have to know, I found out that his father in law, Hans Stoffer, was born in Switzerland in the same year that William Penn was born in London. And so I've got a narrative, a twin narrative. Let's follow Penn, and let's follow Gerhart Clement. But let's put an Indian right beside him. What were they experiencing when my people were rejoicing in the new acreage and in the woods, and the peace and the freedom? What were the Indians doing right then? And make two chronologies. That's my story.
Two chronologies side by side. As the Indians lose more and more, the Mennonites sink their roots more and more. And then, thank God. “Where nothing dwelt but beasts of prey. Men as wild as they. God plants his people there and builds them towns and cities there.” That's what Isaac Watts wrote. Really? I've never heard that before either. no, I wrote my thesis on hymnody, and that's how I got that.
But and so what I did was I went back to 1644 when Hans Stoffer, whose daughter came to and came to, bought the land where I live, Hans Stoffer was born and where when William Penn was born. And I take their stories side by side, side by side, no matter how difficult or abstruse it gets. I say, what happened that year or that year or that decade and, I follow that. And when I get to the end of it. I have a different view of, in other words, so God doesn't care for the Jebusites, huh?
Doesn't care for the people that Israel has chases off of Zion. And now we sit there and sing Sunday after Sunday we’re marching to Zion and, that our songs about... and they're still mourning the loss of their land in Oklahoma. And I had to rethink I don't care, I don't care if it's radical or conservative what it is, I don't care. Just know the story and relate to people.
So when I had to move like, last month into a retirement home off of that land, the last person to be with me as we walked down to the creek and sat there for and talked was a Lenape Indian from Brattleboro, from from Bartlesville. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, in, in in this in, in taking that naive narrative instead of. A history of ideas or whatever, a macro culture and taking my parochial, little local narrative and following it, just like an Amishman would, and following it.
And what will it tell me? That's my book. What will. And what it tells me is that when William Penn came the first time to Pennsylvania, he came in 1682. He got the land in 1681. And you know why he got it? Because the king owed his family a debt. And you know what that debt was for a great military victory between England and Holland. The Battle of Lowestoft. But anyhow. Interesting.
So that money it and William Penn when the Quakers were so persecuted in England, William Penn's dad was an admiral who was buddy with Charles the second and Charles the second’s Brother, James of York, who then became the King.
They were buddies and they were social buddies and but, William Penn's dad, as his name was also William Penn, the first, after the Battle of Lowestoft, they spent a lot of money to fire a lot of cannons and defeat the king owed a lot of money, and William Penn's dad paid it for him. So the King owed William Penn a lot of money, never paid it. And William Penn got a bright idea as a Quaker, he said, our people so persecuted? There's the land over there, new Jersey.
There's land west of the Delaware. Maybe the King would give me that instead of paying off the debt. He tried it with the King. He said, yeah, he gave him the biggest bunch of land anybody ever got free in 1681. And on it, it says this on the document. With special reference to the Battle of Lowestoft. That's why I'm giving you this land. Because your dad had a battle and then. And in the English Channel in the North Sea and won it for me is basically what he's saying.
So William Penn got Pennsylvania, because the king owed his dad a military debt and then but William Penn knows Mennonites because he's traveled to Europe and he's worshiped with them sophisticated Dutch, countrified, palatines. And he knows the Swiss. And then he finally comes over here himself. He gets the land in 1681, he comes in 1682. And we have the date of 1683, when an Indian remembers sitting down in the woods with William Penn.
And what what they did and what they said and made friendship that they thought would be forever, which lasted 70 years. And then it burst into flames. And I talk about that, that narrative all the way through there.
And I again and again, quote what the Indians said at key points as they were, in the year 1709 when William Penn wrote that letter, and my ancestors, Clemmons arrived that year, the boy that had heard William Penn talk love for Indians in 1683, in the woods at Perkasie, has left and is out at the next at the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna. So you're saying that person had already been pushed out. He left. He left because there were so many people coming in now. He wasn't driven.
He wasn't driven out at that point. Economically yes, now that that young boy who was just a boy listening to William but never forgot that he died in the 1740s and he became the chief of our Indians, the Lanapes. They didn't use the word chief, I forget, sachem. I don't know what word they used. But here's the thing. First he went to the Schuylkill, Then he went to the Susquehanna. And then their people went to the Ohio. Every time the whites came right after him, took their land.
And only when the Indians finally realized there was no way out of this, they were going to have nothing is when they attacked. And that's when the Mennonites tell the story. When the attack starts. Well okay. So my head is spinning a little bit because I've just never heard any, any of this. Right. Why were the Mennonites going along with this. Was it. We're just not really going to pay attention to what's happening or they they were genuinely ignorant of these things. Do we know at all?
And then, like you said, we start hearing the stories much later when the Indians start attacking, for example. I mean that those are the only stories I've heard at least. Can you speak into that at all? Well, look, the Lanapes after the Swedes and the Dutch came, and the British took over in 1664. Were so wracked by, Smallpox. It killed probably 80% up to 75 or 80% of them. So they were only a remnant. And they were, really, in terms of your vision of reality, insignificant. And they gave up.
They were so there was no relationship there. There are exceptions. But its general picture is the remnant of the Lenapes were not even of the only problem you had with them was to sign papers to give up more and more land. And they always did. And they were given gifts. They were given guns, and they were given needles and, tools and gunpowder and rum, and they would always sign. Sure, sure, sure. And their idea in, in their brain. And then a heart was never that.
They, when they started talking with the whites, it was always on the basis of we're going to live together, not like up in New England or Virginia where there was blood. William Penn, they said, you’re different. We're going to live together. And they both believed it. And when the Indians would come back from time to time to Philadelphia to in order to negotiate. And I'll mention a couple of reasons why they did. They would always talk about love. Love.
We have more talk from the Indians about love than anything about men, than anything. The mennonites left on record. But they did. But like in the book of, Samuel and Kings and Chronicles, when David wanted the Jebusite hill of Zion, he said, I’ll have it, thank you very much. And he drove them away. And they are no longer part of the story. And the Lenapes were not part of our story. So God didn't care about them. He had to give us this land, and that was where God was interested.
And thank you, God, every time at Harvest Home. And, about how when we came here, and one Indian said, well, one a Mennonite minister said, and I saw this or dreamed I saw it, but I think I saw it on YouTube. He was showing some German tourists, some land in Lancaster County blooming with there's nothing like Lancaster County, hardly anywhere, he said. I don't know if you can talk Pennsylvania Dutch or no, no. Well, he said in Pennsylvania Dutch to these Indian tourists.
He said, now when we came here, there was nothing here. There were Indians living there. The creek was named Conestoga and Pekaway Chickies and Allegheny. The names came from before. But he said there was nothing here. It doesn't even figure in their imagination. Well, this bugged me like it bugged Conrad Grebel to start thinking who is paying for his scholarship at the University of Paris. Whose land did I am I enjoying so much?
And and, on my wife put the initials of our ownership of our land all around her proctor in our living room. And now it started with WP 1684 when he bought it from the Indians, William Penn, and then all the all the her’s, Landis's and Martins and all the names of the Ruths and so forth, but nothing about what were before for who knows how many thousands of years it was not even if I didn't have to think about that. And I think, well, the Indians never forgot.
Their still sad, and that's a whole other story, but, it's important for me to, to to, to report that when the Indians left, I say Indians and they, they use the word to when they first moved from the Perkiomen, where I lived, and the Delaware, which is the the eastern border, they moved to the next big river, which was, the Schuylkill. along the Schuylkill and along that general area.
They had to, they had about three pockets left, the Lehigh that came down from the north, the Schuylkill, the Brandywine, and the topahoften, now those are all Indian names. So there were pockets of Indians left there. The Quakers finessed the Indians out of Brandywine. Businessmen, speculators, other Palatines that were not Anabaptists came down and they weren't happy in the Hudson River and took over topahoften, And the Indians protested.
So they moved out to the Susquehanna, and they lived there. And then the white people came along and bought that land, and they found that they couldn't stay there either. And then they went to the Ohio, and they found they couldn't stand their stand there either. And I read what the secretaries wrote. I mean, this is not original with me.
University scholars had been at this papers long before I ever even dreamed of them, but I went and read them myself from my personal interest level and here was Sesunan, this boy that sat and I heard William Penn talk and never forgot. And he came back, for instance, from the from the, Schuylkill and said, we have a question in 1715, first time he came as chief, he said, how come some years we got good prices for our furs? Beaver were almost gone by then, but some next year we come in.
It's no, we don't understand that. It doesn't seem fair to us. They said you have to think like they're think in Europe. Styles change and when there's a fad on for Beaver, that's when you get good prices or when there isn't you, don't you got to think like that. Well, you couldn't get that through a Lanapes head. So what they did was here, here are some biscuits and some rum and some gunpowder. We love you to. Oh, thank you very much. So he went on a spree with the rum and went home again.
That's 1715. And the next time they come back, they have questions about land. They said, you never paid for this certain land. Oh, yes we did. And so what William Penn, secretary, went to the archives and he pulled out a whole bunch of deeds, with these Indian signatures on these scratchings. And he showed them to him. Well, you know, they recognize him. So he said, you don't own any land anymore. Oh, they thought they could come and dig holes and kill deer and and live there with them.
Well, that was a dream. So they just kept moving and moving and moving. And so what William Penn secretary did in 1718 was he drew up he, he legal procedure drew up a quitclaim that was a legal document in which the Indian signed their names. We own nothing here. And he gave them more to eat and a more. And they finally signed that to. And, that didn't settle things because that was in the white people's minds, legal, they made promises in their heads and they never forgot them.
And to them, that was more this riding on a feather on a paper, by the way, they called William Penn feather, pen. They, they called their name for him was feather in their language. So they have to the white people said, now you got to learn to think like we think. And I put in my book a document in which Penn’s Secretary sits down with Sesunan, and for it must have been an hour or so spelled out the rationale. He says, now you have to think like this.
Well, the Indians never did get to their head. What's fair is fair. No matter if you write it with a feather, with a goose quill on leather or anything that's not as real as the promise that we made that we will always be friends and have love with each other. So I go in my book and I find those words of love, and I write them in that book so that whoever bothers to read that book will at least see that and not have just these vague ideas in their head of the Indians disappearing.
They disappeared with regret wherever they moved, and they still have that regret. So I'm guessing a lot of people hearing this haven't, haven't heard this story, don't know this at all and aren't familiar with what the Mennonites like our ancestors. The process of where this came, comes from. We were no worse than others. The Mennonites were no worse and sometimes better. Right? But but we paid no attention to that drama. It sounds more like an issue of perhaps ignorance or who knows, but.
Well, sure, when it's savages who just shoot squirrels and, and, and are drunk a lot and are poor and barely living yet, you know, is that what God wants? God builds a beautiful country here and gave it to us? That's our dream. That's our rhetoric. There there is, you know, the whole idea of manifest Destiny and some of that, you know, like. That’s related. This related where it's like, oh, see this wonderful thing we were given while not quite maybe realizing.
But today yet if you talk to a lot of evangelical Mennonites, if you raise this kind of concern, this visceral, after all, they say who you've been listening to? that's wokeism. It's communism. I was going to say that I can about guess to within a high degree of accuracy, the comments and feedback we'll get when we publish this. Right now, that means we're we're still going to publish it, but people are going to say, oh, that's just you been drinking the liberal Kool-Aid or something crazy.
You know, they're going to say that, I know that, and I can't, go, I can't do anything about that except to lay on record. And I know that people who are curious enough will think, Well, so so I'd like to to drill in on that a bit. So as we hear this story get this is this is new for me, right? I haven't heard this story. What should our response be? I'm not there yet. I'm still drinking in the story.
And I think their response will take shape in the people's consciousness as they think about it. And it will be a gradual process. like a shape, almost like a shaping process. As, as we dwell with the story it will find form. It will find form. I cannot administer or strategize that form. There are all kinds of groups getting together and seminars about it and strategizing. And it's not that I'm against them at all, except that that's not where I am emotionally.
I had to first understand the story and get some feeling about it. And out of that, you know, when I was 92, I lived well. I lived my life along a Creek. I decided I want to find out where that creek started. It was high time and it sure was at perkasie where Sesunan heard, because I lived on the Perkiomen Creek branch of it. And when I got to the source of that creek, I looked for a narrowing rivulet.
I was looking for a narrative, specificity that I could follow, and I wanted to see where it bubbled out of the ground. You know, just like I wanted to go to see Conrad Grebel’s letter. You know, I wanted to go to the source. And when I got there, I found that it was not a matter of bubbling out of the specifics. It was seeping up and gathering. And that, I think, is how things gather in the human consciousness.
It seeps up and then it takes form, and then someone gives it a name and and a language, and then it becomes a concept in our minds and takes, it becomes an algorithm, which then becomes a post, it becomes a thing somewhere, takes form. And, this is happening in our country. And by the way, the people that are making the most noise about helping the Indians can be very annoying to me. They're very self-righteous. You can be a fundamentalist on the left as well as on the right.
And to me, it's in my generation. I'm hearing this story. I'm getting the feeling. And maybe when I talk like this, people ask me the same questions to say, what are we going to do? I don't know, but I know one thing. I have struck up a relationship and a conversation with, with them, and that I'm just a teeny part of that conversation. Other people are doing it all over, and something will happen. We'll we'll cross thresholds of feeling.
And in the meantime, we'll argue each other out of nowhere. So I'm wondering how say a podcast like this can help inspire our audience to be more aware of our story, our history. And when I say that, I mean not just the parts that we like. You know. Right. Could you speak to that? Like, what would you like to see there? Well look, I did what I could by putting it down on paper and letting you hear Sesunan's words, not just the, the victorious, conquerors interpretation of history.
And I ask myself, what would Jesus, what? What is Jesus in me? Must respect the Samaritan. And in the Old Testament really. David says, I want Zion. I'm sorry. They say you can’t have Zion because, that's where they keep the laim and the blind up there. And David is quoted by the Righteous Writer, I hate the lame and the blind. I'm going to get rid of them, and I will. And then and more seriously. And there you have to be an adult.
The writer of the Chronicles or kings, I forget, which says quotes God referring to Zion, and says, my name shall be there. And now we are all marching to Zion. Beautiful, beautiful Zion. And the Jebusites are nothing but roadkill, they’re out of the way. And I'm not there. I don't think Jesus was there because when Jesus came to the temple at Zion, he kicked out the establishment business people. And who came in the lame in the blind? Oh wow. That's the logic of the King.
The upside down kingdom I guess you could say you know Kingdom logic And so my adventure into this was not as an expert or a historian or anything is simply, So when I told the story about a year or two ago, a man came up to me afterward. I'm sure most people were bemused by my talk, but one man came up and said, you know, this is the first time I felt this viscerally, he said. So as we wrap this story up, what is something you would like to leave with the next generation?
Maybe a word of advice or. Yeah. Anything really that you would like to leave them to perhaps help guard against the errors of the past? To be honest, and this is not false humility. I don't feel much wisdom on this. I just feel curiosity and a willingness to. To, to, hear out, my story, the story that I had to search for as an amateur. Let me tell you a closing story that I tell.
And at the end of my book, it was told to me by a man named Marvin Kraker, who is from a Russian Mennonite background who was with the, Indians. I forget the which Indians are in Oklahoma also. And he told me this story. He said, they used to tell this story that in the Cherokee land rush, somebody shot off a gun, and then you could race and plant your stake, and you could be a stake. What they call that anyway, that could be your homestead. Mennonites lined up with the land rush.
And they took off at the crack of a gun. And one Mennonite, there was a story that came down of one Mennonite family. The man drove the horses and the the wife sat in a wagon with the stake. She was going to plant it when he picked out a place and he raced in their free land, you know, Cherokee land, Indian land raced in there. Free land finally found the spot and turned around to his wife... she had bounced out of the wagon somewhere back, he had to go back and find her.
And where she landed, she put the stake in. That was the Mennonite homestead. You could tell that story as a Mennonite quilting and everybody would be entertained. How God, how God leads tell that story to a indigenous person. Is it funny? How about looking at from. That's all I did in the book. I try to look at it from both sides. That's all I could do. That's all I've done. I wish I did a better job. Whoo. Yeah. I just want to thank you for the effort you put in to telling this story.
And that can be the challenge of history, I guess, is there are sometimes there's. Not necessarily popular. Right. There's stories sometimes that that we don't like, you know, and. Oh, I don't really want to hear that or I don't want to have to think about that. And... That’s how our church got started. People were saying, things don't make sense here. We go to Conrad said, use the word check with the word go. Go with it and form a church out of that. Think, think those things.
Yeah. Anyway, Thanks for listening to this episode with John Ruth. If you found this interesting, you might want to watch this episode we did with John Roth, who explains some of the beginnings of early anabaptism. And you can find that link down in the description below. All our content is over on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org, and you can also sign up to our monthly email newsletter there as well. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.