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The first humans to settle in the Lehigh Valley were paleo-Indians, but the best known were Lenni Lenape (meaning “real” or “original people) of the Delaware Nation. Roughly 5,000 Lenape lived here in the early 17th century, occupying a territory that stretched from the Delaware Bay to the Blue (Kittatiny) Mountain, and from the Atlantic Coast to the Delaware-Susquehanna watershed.
The Lenape way of life centered on the Delaware Valley, where they hunted deer, grew grains and vegetables, and caught seafood along the coast. The Lehigh Valley was of great importance because it was one of their main east-west pathways, plus it intersected with major north-south aboriginal trails in the Delaware Valley. Despite its prominence as a crossroads, the “Great Valley”, as they referred to the area, was the site of few permanent villages, although they often camped at the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware rivers at what’s now Easton.
The first Europeans in the Lehigh Valley were Scots-Irish who followed Saucon and Indian creeks and established settlements in today’s Northampton County. The first was known as the Craig settlement, named after the most prominent pioneer family. In 1730 a second, smaller cluster of wilderness farms became known as the Hunter Settlement, named for early pioneer leader Alexander Hunter.
Large numbers of Germans came into the Lehigh Valley in the 1730s, most of them Protestant farmers and members of the Lutheran and Reformed faith. Among them were the Schwenkfelders (from Saxony) and Mennonites, known for their skills as craftsmen and millers, and for establishing well-respected schools. Most of the Germans became known as Pennsylvania Dutch, or Pennsylvania Germans. They grew maize, squash and wheat in the fertile soils, and took great care of their livestock. They also took pride in the impressive barns they built, a style the English soon adapted.
White settlers and the Lenape generally got along fine. The Indians had an especially warm relationship with Pennsylvania founding father William Penn. That all changed when his sons instigated the infamous 1737 Walking Purchase, which swindled the Lenape out of hundreds of square miles of prime hunting territory. Relations became strained and the Lenape were eventually driven west and northward, where they and the Iroquois became pawns between the French, English and colonists in the French and Indian Wars of the 1740s. Treaties in Easton in 1756 and 1758 drove the remaining Indians from the region, despite Moravian missionaries’ best efforts to save them.
With the Indians gone from their traditional lands, German settlements in the Valley swelled. Among the most important arrivals were the Moravians. They were a communal sect that developed highly organized towns in which each resident had a prescribed role, everyone contributed to the settlement’s well being, and all were taken care of in time of need.
To live in a Moravian settlement you had to be a full member of the Church. However, they believed all men to be equal, so their cemeteries held Germans, Irish, Indians and those of African descent. From these beginnings grew a unique and broad cultural environment in which music, art and education flourished, as did religious tolerance. Their massive communal dwellings, churches and industrial structures remain today as landmarks in Bethlehem and Nazareth.
The success of the American Revolution inspired many oppressed Europeans to view the U.S. as a place of freedom and opportunity. This factor, coupled with the iron and coal industries’ insatiable demand for laborers, triggered an influx of immigrant workers in the early 1800s. At least 50 different nations and ethnic groups have been identified among the immigrants of the 1800s, and their descendants still live in the Lehigh Valley.
Completion of the Lehigh Canal further accelerated development of the Valley. Suddenly transportation was easier. Entrepreneurs used it in combination with abundant raw materials, capital, labor and land to carry out unprecedented industrialization and urbanization. Many European immigrants arriving at New York’s Ellis Island traveled straight to the Lehigh Valley, and by the late 1800s had turned Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton into the large, thriving cities you see today as you stroll along the D&L Trail.
