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Easton remembers the Indian treaty ** In the 1750s, the city was the center of talks to end war with tribes.

Morning Call - Allentown, Pa. Author: Tom Coombe Of The Morning Call

Copyright Morning Call Jul 8, 2002

In the days before Playstation and "Star Wars" action figures, children in Colonial America were content with simpler toys.

So were the children listening to Steve Gulick on Sunday at the Bachmann Publick House in Easton, playing with hand-carved wooden puzzles, a miniature ring-toss, and cup and ball games while Gulick spoke on the relationship between the Quakers and American Indians in Pennsylvania.

Gulick's talk was part of "That I Had Kindled a Council Fire," the fourth chapter in a five-part series of lectures and re- enactments remembering the Treaty of Easton of 1758, which helped bring the French and Indian War to a close.

"Most of the important stuff happened here in Easton," said Mark Turdo, curator of the Moravian Historical Society, which sponsored the series. The next event, a re-enactment called "Weeping on the Road to Nazareth," is scheduled for July 20 at the Whitefield House in Nazareth.

Visitors to the Publick House -- many of them also were part of Easton's Heritage Day festivities -- got to learn about the treaty from the perspective of the Indians, the Colonial government and the Quakers.

By the time treaty negotiations began in the late 1750s, the Quakers -- who had ceased to be a force in Pennsylvania government - - were called in to participate in the talks. They brought gifts for the Lenni-Lenape and other Indians "to try to have the European side seem not so shallow."

The presentation also included information on the role of Indian women in the treaty, given by Carrie Fellows, of the Corning- Painted Post Historical Society in Corning, N.Y.

Indian women played a supporting role, she said, making the wampum belts that were used as a form of communication in negotiating the treaty. Although women had some power within their tribes, they had none in the eyes of the European settlers.

"They wanted to deal with a man, so you don't see [women] overtly in the record," Fellows said.

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