This Very Ground, This Crooked Affair: A Mennonite Homestead on Lenape Land

by John L. Ruth

This Very Ground, This Crooked Affair connects the centuries-old history of the author's Pennsylvania Mennonite homestead with that of the land's indigenous Lenape inhabitants, interweaving documented Pennsylvania history with the national pursuit of a Doctrine of Discovery-and the story of Mennonites who had themselves fled suffering and landlessness with the fates of Native Americans continent-wide. In previous books, such as Maintaining the Right Fellowship: A Narrative Account of Life in the Oldest Mennonite Community in North America (1984) and The Earth is the Lord's: A Narrative History of the Lancaster Conference, Ruth minimally acknowledged the Indigenous people replaced by his ancestors. In contrast, in This Very Ground, This Crooked Affair he has continued to tell about William Penn, other colonists connected with Penn, and Mennonite immigrant settlers-but this time has placed the Lenapes of the Delaware Valley at the center rather than the margins of the story. "As Kathleen Norris observes, 'The fact that one people's frontier s usually another's homeland is mostly overlooked.' But why should the lament of the displaced be any less of the story's music than the grateful praise of the displacers?" -John L. Ruth, in the Preface

Genres: History

386 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Shirley Showalter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This impressive work of careful research in primary and secondary materials, interspersed with imaginative questions ("musings" is a description the author chooses) has informed my mind and touched my own imagination. Like John L. Ruth, I am a direct descendent of Mennonites who came early to Pennsylvania. I learned a heroic version of the story of European settlement in our area with William Penn as the hero. The painting by Benjamin West of Penn's treaty with the Indians was the way I visualized the relationship between the early settlers and the indigineous people. And even more, I loved (and still love) the paintings of the Peaceable Kingdom painted by the Quaker Edward Hicks, with playful beasts in the foreground and Penn and his Lenape friends in the background.

John Ruth's book intentionally disturbs this imagery, not just about Penn and the Quakers in Philadelphia, but also about those settlers in (Ruth's) Perkiomen region and (my) Lancaster region. He does so by introducing the character of Sassoonan, a Lenape leader, whose story traces the lines of hopeful and genuine cultural encounter based on friendship with William Penn to tragic loss of relationship, land, wealth, and health.

In addition to Sassoonan, we follow Penn himself, an equally tragic figure, who begins with genuine desire to give persecuted Christians (especially Quakers, but also Mennonites, Dunkards, and Moravians) in Europe a home in America. The problem is that he arrives with a charter from Charles II and never questions the Doctrine of Discovery which legitimizes that document. How can the King of England claim land larger than the size of Ireland for his country and use the land to pay his debt to Penn and his descendents? The land was already inhabited. So Penn did what he thought was the honorable thing. He made treaties, gave gifts, and promised extravagantly to live with the natives in “openness and love” and as “one flesh and one blood.” The Lenape people also promised: “We will live in love with William Penn and his children, while the sun, moon, and stars endure.”

The story of Hans Stauffer, Ruth's own sancestor, makes up the third strand of the braid. This story is the Mennonite settlers' story, the telling of which has always emphasized their sufferings in Switzerland and the Palatinate, their expertise as farmers, millers, and other craft businesses, and their determination not to go to war. The telling of this story, like the telling of Sassoonan's, is handicapped by so little recorded information. The information available is often purely genealogical or legal documentation rather than the notes of meetings (filtered by James Logan, secretary to the Pennsylvania Governor's Council) or journals or sermons of the more highly educated English speakers around them, both Quakers and Presbyterians.

But Ruth does not let this lack deter him from asking probing questions of his ancestors and of all the actors in this drama. He often brings our attention to place -- this very ground -- on which he writes the book, living on land of his Mennonite ancestors. He does not defend his people from their own blindness to injustice. His conclusion, that "we must do better" was wrung from much effort, both in historical research and in connection to the cureent day descendents of Lenape people now living in Oklahoma.

While Mennonites and Quakers may have more historical reasons to read and ponder this book, it is a great contribution to early American history in general. It deserves a place on the shelf alongside such books as Kevin Kenny's The Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn's Holy Experiment.

[marcus miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Ruth likely knows more about Mennonite settlement in eastern Pennsylvania than anyone. In this book Ruth ties that knowledge together with what he could learn of the Lenni Lenape peoples who lived in what became Pennsylvania prior to William Penn being "given" the land by the British crown. As he finds, his Mennonite ancestors didn't record much of their life in colonial Pennsylvania, including descriptions of any relationships they may have had. Ruth laments his lack of interest in the subject until the late 1980s and early 1990s when at his presentations people began asking about the people who were on the land originally. This is a good reminder that our ancestors stories of settlement can't just begin with a description of the land. The story needs to include the relationship and often, displacement of the peoples living in the spaces our ancestors occupied.

[Lynelle L (find me on storygraph) · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his epilogue, Ruth says “[Ancestral Mennonites] had been accused of an almost abgotisch (idolatrous) attachment to their natal landscape.” While my own natal landscape isn’t Bern or Zurich, it is Perkioma and Franconia and as I live far from there today, I sympathize with that feeling. In reading about my homeland and ancestors, in a way the book feels like it was written for me. It fills in holes of the story I’ve long asked but never took the time to delve into the primary source material. Ruth’s work is well written and much appreciated.

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiring, informative. One of the best books I've ever read.