Walking Purchase records

The Walking Purchase (August 25, 1737) was a land swindle perpetrated by Pennsylvania authorities on the Lenape or Delaware Nation. The Lenape had been friendly to William Penn when he founded the colony in the previous century. Colonial authorities claimed to have found a lost treaty, dated 1686, ceding a tract of land between the fork of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers that extended as far as a man could walk in one and a half days— about 40 miles. William Penn’s son, Thomas Penn (1702–1775), who was proprietor of Pennsylvania in 1737, hired the three fastest walkers in the colony and offered a large prize to the one who could cover the most land. The winner, running on a carefully cleared path, crossed more than twice the land the Lenape had anticipated, causing them to lose about 1,200 square miles (3,100 square kilometers) of their land. At Thomas Penn’s request, members of the Iroquois Confederacy helped enforce this fraud. In reaction to this and other frauds, the Delaware joined the French during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). In 1758, the northern half of the purchase was relinquished to the Iroquois Confederacy; the Lenape received £400 in compensation for it four years later.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica