Before European settlement, the area that now includes Lower Macungie Township was inhabited by the Lenni-Lenape, whom English settlers called the Delawares. The name Macungie comes from a Native American word meaning place of the bear, appears in many phonetic spellings in early records, and was used in the name of the leading chief of the Minsi tribe of the Delaware Indians. In 1684, William Penn purchased land along Perkiomen Creek from Minsi Delaware Chief Sachem Maughaughsin, also called Macungie, gaining the right to make the land available to settlers and homesteaders. After the treaty was signed, many Indians left the area and moved north over the Blue Mountains, but others continued to live and hunt in the Lehigh Valley, and pioneer families preserved stories of peaceful seasonal villages near the Ancient Oak area and along Mill Race Road after settlers had established early farmsteads. Jasper chips found in several locations indicate workshops where tools were made from jasper quarried from pits along South Mountain to the Macungie-Vera Cruz area, probably dating to the pre-contact period because jasper quarrying seems to have ended about 1680. Relations worsened during the French and Indian War, despite the war not being fought in the Lehigh Valley, and in the mid-1750s a line of forts was built north of the Blue Mountain ridge while some settlers in the northern Lehigh Valley also built small forts or fortified block houses for protection. Peace between settlers and Indians in the Lehigh Valley did not begin until 1764, a year after the treaty ending the French and Indian War, and although raiding parties burned houses and killed settlers north and east of the area, no belligerent actions have been recorded in Macungie itself.