Many colonial Americans viewed American society as a synthesis of Native American and European cultures. The Tammany Society, a classic example of the blending of the two cultures, was a broad-based popular movement that reinforced the founders' usage of symbols and ideological concepts indigenous to North America. The celebration of Tammany Day may have been an attempt to adapt May Day and other Old World holidays to the new American environment.

Subsequently, when it inherited the patriotic mantle of the Sons of Liberty in Philadelphia, the Tammany Society espoused a philosophy that America was a unique synthesis of the best and noblest aspects of Europe and America. Building on their own experiences with American Indians, founding fathers like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson used the Tammany Society and its membership to forge a new democratic party after the formation of the U.S. Constitution. Other founding fathers like Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, and Benjamin Rush became influential members of the Society.

To the Tammany Society, American Indians were more than a symbol of freedom. To members of the Revolutionary generation, American Indians represented a wellspring of new ideas that freed Europeans from the antiquated ideas of class and autocratic government that had so long existed in Europe. In the late eighteenth century, Tammany Society members from Georgia to Rhode Island to the Ohio River frequently consulted with American Indian leaders and sought to study American Indian languages and ideas. The Society's members emphasized concepts and values that founders such as Franklin and Jefferson found in Native societies, including a weak executive (except in war), popular participation in government, and charity for the poor. Even James Madison was compelled to seek out the Iroquois and their council when he became disillusioned with the Articles of Confederation in 1784.

Although the early history of the Tammany Society is ambiguous, it appears that King Tammany, a Delaware chief friendly to William Penn, became a popular figure in the folklore of early Pennsylvania. The Tammany Society became an avenue for the expression of a regional American identity by the mideighteenth century. The Society's ability to synthesize American and European values and to forge a new identity made it a potent force in creating a national identity as well. Its use of an amalgam of American Indian symbols and the figure of Christopher Columbus denotes that the American colonists were willing and able to change both American Indian and European values in their quest for a viable American identity before, during, and after the American Revolution.

The Tammany Society believed that Penn's friendship with the Delaware chief, Tammany, was a product of Penn's sincerity in dealing with the Delawares. Perhaps Penn's initial successes with the Delawares and also with the Iroquois were based on the common understanding of the amicable feelings of peace among all human beings that leads to an equitable and just society.

Initially, Penn dealt with the Unami (Turtle Totem) Leni Lenápe (Delaware) tribe when he came to Pennsylvania, and Delaware Chief Tammany played a prominent role in the early treaties negotiated with Penn. Although the real Tammany's mark appeared on only two treaties (June 23, 1683 and June 15, 1692), he was destined to become a legendary figure in U.S. and Pennsylvania history and folklore. Tradition has it that Tammany's name meant "the affable" and that he was one of the Delaware Indians who welcomed William Penn on his arrival in America on October 27, 1682. By July 6, 1694, in a meeting between the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania and a delegation of Indians, Tammany had become a strong supporter of the whites and their policies. From these facts and folklore, a legendary Tammany was constructed in the early eighteenth century that was the white man's friend and counselor.

Chief Tammany's mythic importance among the people of Philadelphia crystallized when a group of Quakers established the Schuylkill Fishing Company in 1732. Claiming that their fishing rights in the Schuylkill River had been given to them by the Delaware chief and friend to William Penn, Tammany, the company adopted him as its patron saint. The saint's day was designated as May 1, the traditional beginning of the fishing season. At this time, Chief Tammany was viewed by many Philadelphians as a nature spirit whose ritual day was celebrated to ensure a bountiful fishing season, but he seems also to have been associated with a resolve to protect the fishing rights (and, by proxy, the political rights) of its members.

Within a decade, the Schuylkill Fishing Company began to fictionalize Tammany by creating mottoes attributed to him. In 1747, the company gave a cannon to the Association Battery of Philadelphia, stamped Kwanio Che Keeteru ["This is my right, and I will defend it"], a phrase attributed to Tammany. The phrase was ripe with implications for the increasingly restless colonists. By the time of the Stamp Act crisis eighteen years later, images of the American Indian, often as Tammany, were being used widely as a symbol of resistance to British authority. The colonists were beginning to forge a new identity, calling themselves "Americans," a word used in place of their former European nationalities. The colonists were surprisingly conscious of the composite European-American identity they were creating.

The influence of the Tammany Society extended to the end of the nineteenth century; its members often brought prominent Iroquois leaders, such as Cornplanter, to Philadelphia to meet with important political figures, including George Washington.