12 Facts About Sassoonan

Sassoonan was known for his negotiations with the provincial government of Pennsylvania in several land purchases.

Sassoonan was a respected leader until political intrigue and migration of the Lenape into the Ohio Country diminished his influence.

Sassoonan was a son of Tamanend, known as "Tammany," a well-respected Lenape sachem known as a lover of peace and friendship.

At the conference, Sassoonan said that he could not have believed that the German colonists had already occupied the land, if he had not gone there and seen the settlements with his own eyes.

Sassoonan has no more to Sell, and when these Goods are gone.

Sassoonan responded to these suggestions by recommending that alcohol be made more difficult to obtain but not altogether forbidden:.

On his visit to Philadelphia in 1731, Sassoonan was accompanied by his nephew Pisquetomen.

Sassoonan wanted to maintain good relations with the colonial government in order to ensure respect for indigenous land rights, but the colonists viewed him as "now become very weak, and the other Old people with him, as well as himself, poor and necessitous," with less influence among his people and thus unlikely to pose a threat to colonial expansion.

Sassoonan was seeking trade goods to redistribute among his people as a means of maintaining influence among them, as "A younger set of men were coming into power among the Lenape," and more of them were migrating with their families westward into the Ohio Country where hunting was good and there were no English settlements.

The Pennsylvania authorities wanted to keep the Lenape from moving into the Ohio Valley, where they would be more likely to become French allies, therefore Sassoonan was presented with frequent gifts.

Sassoonan decided to hire a "conjuror," a Lenape medicine man who could discover the identities of the murderers by magic.

One of Sassoonan's daughters married Opessa Straight Tail in 1711 after Opessa resigned his chieftainship and took refuge in Shamokin.