The first Europeans to arrive on the East Coast encountered the indigenous people who had occupied the land for centuries. They lived simple lives, taking from that land only what they needed and no more. Land “ownership” was simply not a concept that any of them would have understood. How can one “own” the land?

At first, these new arrivals were welcomed by the Lenape — simply, “the people” — at first with wonderment. Who could these strangers be? But the operative word was “welcomed.”

They traded for items valued by Europeans such as beaver pelts, which were highly favored in European countries like Holland as the finest materials for hats.

In time, the strangers began to wear out their welcome, claiming territory like Manahata — what is now Manhattan Island — for their own, and enforcing their territorial ownership with violence and bloodshed if necessary. And they brought with them diseases to which the people had no immunity, decimating whole communities.

Along came the devout Quaker William Penn to the shores of what he initially had named “Sylvania,” Latin for “forest land,” but which King Charles II of England had christened “Pennsylvania” — Penn’s Woods — named after William Penn’s father, Sir William Penn. The decorated nobleman had been an admiral of the British navy before his death and the king owed a debt to him. So, much to his son’s great surprise, the king provided Penn ownership of a vast territory in the New World — 45,000 acres in all.

Penn arrived in what would become Philadelphia on Oct. 29, 1682. He was an entirely different character from the Europeans who had come before.

Once again, the concept of land ownership was alien to the indigenous people who lived in that area. But Penn gradually acquired their friendship — and the land — without so much as drawing a sword.

Quakers in England had faced persecution, says West Philadelphia Quaker activist, educator and facilitator Dwight Dunston.

In the New World, they could fashion a type of government shaped, notably, by the concept that there is “that of God” in everyone. And that included the Lenape.

“I think about it being a ‘peace church,’” Dunston explains. “And so, when William Penn comes to what becomes the United States and is on the land and interacting with the folks indigenous to this land, his faith is really shaping how he interacts with those people. His faith This peaceable relationship was of a piece with Penn’s “holy experiment,” including the founding of Philadelphia, a community different in so many ways from what he and other Quakers had experienced in England, from its embrace of religious tolerance to its distinctive grid-like layout.

Penn was able to create this new society with the tolerance and forbearance of the indigenous people and thanks to the Treaty of Shackamaxon in 1682, in which the Lenape and Penn pledged to live in peace.

In time, though, the holy experiment would be sullied by slavery.

Many Philadelphians grew comfortably wealthy on the trade. Penn himself is known to have enslaved about a dozen Africans on his estate at Pennsbury Manor in what is now Bucks County — glaringly at odds with the traditional Quaker belief of God in everyone.

“I think about the phrase, ‘the longest road is between the head and the heart,’” Dunston said. “And I think the things we believe we are holding in our hearts, the values and the actual practice of living them out in reality, there can be such a distance between those two things. So, when there’s this draw of making a profit off enslaved Africans, off the bodies of others through the annihilation and removal of Indigenous people, when there’s the idea of profit — like, I can build wealth, I can get more land — I think that is a very, very enticing reality, even though it goes against what your values might be or the contradiction you might have. It might be really, really enticing to step into this idea of prosperity off the backs of others.”

Was profit the sole motivation, or were Africans seen as inferior? In other words, was the average wealthy Philadelphian racist? One way to think about it, Dunston says, is that wealth and racism evolved together. It’s a clear contradiction of values.

“As individuals, we are really called,” he says. “And as a Quaker, I think about this a lot. What is God calling me to be faithful to? What is God calling me to be in this lifetime? I think the further you get away from that ‘inner light,’ as Quakers call it, the more susceptible [people are] to patterns and behaviors that are literally antithetical to this calling to see God in everyone. Whether you call it a distraction or malice or whatever you call it, to me, it really is a battle or a question for the soul. It’s a question for the individual soul, but also the soul of the nation. Our country rests on the notion of what does it mean to be human together? What does it mean to treat folks equally? Those are things we’re still grappling with.”

Episode 1 will be screened Thursday, Oct. 29, at Germantown Friends School, 31 W. Coulter St. in Germantown. Doors open at 6 p.m.; the film begins at 6:30 p.m., concluding with commentary and a question-and-answer session by a panel of experts.

Learn more, watch episodes and RSVP for screenings here: inpursuit.tv.