Paxton, a small frontier town on the east bank of the Susquehanna River, was in an exposed situation during the hostilities of the French and Indian War. Its men had fought bitterly against Indian raids and its population had suffered casualties and atrocities, along with many nearby towns. Like the other settlers of Western Pennsylvania, they resented the domination of provincial politics by the easterners, who were over-represented in the Assembly, and they were enraged by the non-resistant philosophy of the influential Quakers. The legislature’s reluctance to wage war and support frontier defense was regarded by frontiersmen, who were chiefly Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, as evidence of a callous indifference to their interests. The first sufferers from this rage of the men of Paxton were the Indians of Conestoga, a pathetic and harmless remnant of a tribe quite friendly to the whites, who lived chiefly by selling brooms and baskets and by begging. On December 14 the “Paxton Boys” descended upon Conestoga and killed the six Indians—three men, two women and a boy—whom they found there. By proclamation of Governor John Penn, the surviving fourteen Conestoga Indians were placed under the protection of the province, but the Paxton Boys swept into Lancaster, where the Conestogas had been housed in the jail for their protection, and swiftly slaughtered them. Learning that another much larger group of Indians, who had been converted to Christianity by the Moravians, were being sheltered and fed in Philadelphia, the Paxton Boys mustered their forces and marched upon the city with the announced intention of killing the Indians. Many Philadelphians, outraged at the news of the massacres and alarmed at the prospect of hostilities, prepared to meet the rioters with arms. Even Quakers were seen carrying muskets. Benjamin Franklin and other civic leaders were dispatched to meet the Paxton men at Germantown, where the would-be rioters were persuaded to draft a statement of their grievances for the governor and the Assembly and to return home. The issues that came to a head in the Paxton massacres shook the entire province and stirred a voluminous pamphlet debate. In the tragedy of the Conestogas the imperial wars, the struggles between whites and Indians, the sectional politics of the colony, and the preliminaries of the Revolution all converged.
The following account is from an indignant pamphlet by Benjamin Franklin: A Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County.… (1764) in his Writings (Smythe edn., 1905–7), IV, 289 ff. The pamphlet literature has been edited, with a valuable introduction by J. R. Dunbar: The Paxton Papers (1957); for the affair see Brooke Hindle: “The March of the Paxton Boys,” William and Mary Quarterly, III (October 1946), 461–86.
These Indians were the remains of a tribe of the Six Nations, settled at Conestogoe, and thence called Conestogoe Indians. On the first arrival of the English in Pennsylvania, messengers from this tribe came to welcome them, with presents of venison, corn, and skins; and the whole tribe entered into a treaty of friendship with the first Proprietor, William Penn, which was to last “as long as the sun should shine, or the waters run in the rivers.”
This treaty has been since frequently renewed, and the chain brightened, as they express it, from time to time. It has never been violated, on their part or ours, till now.…
On Wednesday, the 14th of December, 1763, fifty-seven men, from some of our frontier townships, who had projected the destruction of this little commonwealth, came, all well mounted, and armed with forelocks, hangers and hatchets, having travelled through the country in the night to Conestogoe Manor. There they surrounded the small village of Indian huts, and just at break of day broke into them all at once. Only three men, two women, and a young boy, were found at home, the rest being out among the neighboring white people, some to sell the baskets, brooms and bowls they manufactured, and others on other occasions. These poor defenceless creatures were immediately fired upon, stabbed, and hatcheted to death! The good Shehaes, among the rest, cut to pieces in his bed. All of them were scalped and otherwise horribly mangled. Then their huts were set on fire, and most of them burnt down. When the troop, pleased with their own conduct and bravery, but enraged that any of the poor Indians had escaped the massacre, rode off, and in small parties, by different roads, went home.
The universal concern of the neighbouring white people on hearing of this event, and the lamentations of the younger Indians, when they returned and saw the desolation, and the butchered half-burnt bodies of their murdered parents and other relations, cannot well be expressed.
The Magistrates of Lancaster sent out to collect the remaining Indians, brought them into the town for their better security against any farther attempt; and it is said condoled with them on the misfortune that had happened, took them by the hand, comforted and promised them protection. They were all put into the workhouse, a strong building, as the place of greatest safety.…
Notwithstanding [the Governor’s] proclamation, those cruel men again assembled themselves, and hearing that the remaining fourteen Indians were in the workhouse at Lancaster, they suddenly appeared in that town, on the 27th of December. Fifty of them, armed as before, dismounting, went directly to the workhouse, and by violence broke open the door, and entered with the utmost fury in their countenances. When the poor wretches saw they had no protection nigh, nor could possibly escape, and being without the least weapon for defence, they divided into their little families, the children clinging to the parents; they fell on their knees, protested their innocence, declared their love to the English, and that, in their whole lives, they had never done them injury; and in this posture they all received the hatchet! Men, women and little children were every one inhumanly murdered!–in cold blood!
The barbarous men who committed the atrocious act, in defiance of government, of all laws human and divine, and to the eternal disgrace of their country and colour, then mounted their horses, huzza’d in triumph, as if they had gained a victory, and rode off–unmolested!
The bodies of the murdered were then brought out and exposed in the street, till a hole could be made in the earth to receive and cover them.
But the wickedness cannot be covered, the guilt will lie on the whole land, till justice is done on the murderers. THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT WILL CRY TO HEAVEN FOR VENGEANCE.
It is said that, Shehaes being before told, that it was to be feared some English might come from the frontier into the country, and murder him and his people; he replied, “It is impossible: there are Indians, indeed, in the woods, who would kill me and mine, if they could get at us, for my friendship to the English; but the English will wrap me in their match-coat, and secure me from all danger.” How unfortunately was he mistaken!…