The Surveyor and the Silversmith: Land Speculation on the Frontier of Western Pennsylvania

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Neither the Leni Lenape nor the Iroquois called the land their own; for thousands of years, it had been inhabited by a mysterious people for whom they had no name. And, yet, white men like Daniel Leet, William Crawford and George Washington surveyed dense forests with measuring chains, tomahawks at the ready, to claim hundreds of thousands of acres simply because they could, because it was all God's bounty, because, like silver or gold, it would provide wealth far greater than any civilization had known before. It was an ideal few would realize. But then, one day, two families laid roots in the wilds of western Pennsylvania...