One of Philadelphia’s salient features is the grid pattern of our streets as originally laid out by William Penn and Thomas Holme. There are, though, some major thoroughfares that deviate from the norm. Ridge Avenue, Germantown Avenue, and Passyunk Avenue interrupt the orderly Philly lattice. Each of these roads share something in common: they were originally Indian trails that had been established long before William Penn or any other Europeans had come to this land. Although Philadelphia’s population today is only .36 percent Native American, our land was once home to a flourishing and expansive Indian community.
In January 2020, the Museum of Indian Culture in Allentown opened a Historic Preservation Office to help members of the Delaware Nation connect to their ancestral homeland. To celebrate this event, a map of the Delaware Valley prior to European settlement was driven from Pennsylvania to the Delaware Nation, now based in Oklahoma. Photos of the map intrigued me, so I set out to learn more about its origins and purpose.
The Coaquannock Map
The Works Progress Administration published the little-known Coaquannock map in 1934. | Image courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
The full title of the map recently gifted to the Delaware Nation is Philadelphia Region when known as Coaquannock “Grove of Tall Pines” AND AS FIRST SEEN BY THE WHITE MEN. WITH INDIAN VILLAGES, ABORIGINAL NAMES OF LOCALITIES, STREAMS AND ISLANDS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has three original copies of the map, and I recently visited their reading room to take a closer look.
An inscription below the map indicates that it was published in 1934 and had been prepared using funds from the Works Progress Administration (WPA),…
