CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PAXTON MEN.

ALONG the thinly-settled borders, two thousand persons had been killed, or carried off, and nearly an equal number of families driven from their homes.1 The frontier people of Pennsylvania, goaded to desperation by long-continued suffering, were divided between rage against the Indians, and resentment against the Quakers, who had yielded them cold sympathy and inefficient aid. The horror and fear, grief and fury, with which these men looked upon the mangled remains of friends and relatives, set language at defiance. They were of a rude and hardy stamp, hunters, scouts, rangers, Indian traders, and backwoods farmers, who had grown up with arms in their hands, and been trained under all the influences of the warlike frontier. They fiercely complained that they were interposed as a barrier between the rest of the province and a ferocious enemy, and that they were sacrificed to the safety of men who looked with

1 Extract from a MS. Letter George Croghan to the Board of Trade.

"They can with great ease enter our colonies, and cut off our frontier settlements, and thereby lay waste a large tract of country, which indeed they have effected in the space of four months, in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the Jerseys, on

whose frontiers they have killed and captivated not less than two thousand of his majesty's subjects, and drove some thousands to beggary and the greatest distress, besides burning to the ground nine forts or blockhouses in the country, and killing a number of his majesty's troops and traders.”

indifference on their miseries, and lost no opportunity to extenuate and smooth away the cruelties of their destroyers. They declared that the Quakers would go farther to befriend a murdering Delaware than to succor a fellow-countryman - that they loved red blood better than white, and a pagan better than a Presbyterian. The Pennsylvania borderers were, as we have seen, chiefly the descendants of Presbyterian emigrants from the north of Ireland. They had inherited some portion of their forefathers' sectarian zeal, which, while it did nothing to soften the barbarity of their manners, served to inflame their animosity against the Quakers, and added bitterness to their just complaints. It supplied, moreover, a convenient sanction for the indulgence of their hatred and vengeance, for in the general turmoil of their passions, fanaticism too was awakened, and they interpreted the command that Joshua should destroy the heathen into an injunction that they should exterminate the Indians.

2

The prevailing excitement was not confined to the vulgar. Even the clergy and the chief magistrates shared it, and while they lamented the excess of the popular resentment, they maintained that the general

1 Extract from the Declaration of convicted, sentenced and hung withLazarus Stewart.

"Did we not brave the summer's heat and the winter's cold, and the savage tomahawk, while the Inhabitants of Philadelphia, Philadelphia county, Bucks, and Chester, "ate, drank, and were merry'?

"If a white man kill an Indian, it is a murder far exceeding any crime upon record; he must not be tried in the county where he lives, or where the offence was committed, but in Philadelphia, that he may be tried,

out delay. If an Indian kill a white man, it was the act of an ignorant Heathen, perhaps in liquor; alas, poor innocent! he is sent to the friendly Indians that he may be made a Christian."

2 "And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them."-Deuteronomy, vii. 2.

complaints were founded in justice. Viewing all the circumstances, it is not greatly to be wondered at that some of the more violent class were inflamed to the commission of atrocities which bear no very favorable comparison with those of the Indians themselves.

It is not easy for those living in the tranquillity of polished life fully to conceive the depth and force of that unquenchable, indiscriminate hate which Indian outrages can awaken in those who have suffered them. The chronicles of the American borders are filled with the deeds of men, who, having lost all by the merciless tomahawk, have lived for vengeance alone; and such men will never cease to exist so long as a hostile tribe remains within striking distance of an American settlement. Never was this hatred more deep or more general than on the Pennsylvania frontier at this period; and never, perhaps, did so many collateral causes unite to inflame it to madness. It was not long in finding a vent.

Near the Susquehanna, and at no great distance from the town of Lancaster, was a spot known as the Manor of Conestoga, where a small band of Indians, chiefly of Iroquois blood, had been seated since the first settlement of the province. William Penn had visited and made a treaty with them, which had been confirmed by several succeeding governors, so that the band had always remained on terms of friendship with the English. Yet, like other Indian communities in the neighborhood of the whites, they had dwindled in numbers and prosperity, until they were reduced to twenty persons, who inhabited a

1 So promising a theme has not escaped the notice of novelists, and it

has been adopted by Dr. Bird in his spirited story of Nick of the Woods

cluster of squalid cabins, and lived by beggary and the sale of brooms, baskets, and wooden ladles, made by the women. The men spent a small part of their time in hunting, and lounged away the rest in idleness. In the immediate neighborhood, they were commonly regarded as harmless vagabonds; but elsewhere, a more unfavorable opinion was entertained, and they were looked upon as secretly abetting the enemy, acting as spies, giving shelter to scalping-parties, and even aiding them in their depredations. That these suspicions were not wholly unfounded is shown by a conclusive mass of evidence, though it is probable that the treachery was confined to one or two individuals.1 The exasperated frontiersmen were not in a mood to discriminate, and the innocent were destined to share the fate of the guilty.

On the east bank of the Susquehanna, some distance above Conestoga, stood the little town of Paxton, a place which, since the French war, had occupied a position of extreme exposure. In the year 1755, the Indians had burned it to the ground, killing many of the inhabitants, and reducing the rest to poverty. It had since been rebuilt, but its tenants were the relatives of those who had perished, and the bitterness of the recollection was enhanced by the sense of their own more recent sufferings. Mention has before been made of John Elder, the Presbyterian minister of this place, a man whose worth, good sense, and superior education gave him the character of counsellor and director throughout the neighborhood, and caused him to be known and esteemed even in Philadelphia. His position was a peculiar one. From the rough

1 See Appendix, E.

2 For an account of the Conestoga Indians, see Penn. Hist. Coll. 390.

pulpit of his little church, he had often preached to an assembly of armed men, while scouts and sentinels were stationed without, to give warning of the enemy's approach.' The men of Paxton, under the auspices of their pastor, formed themselves into a body of rangers, who became noted for their zeal and efficiency in defending the borders. One of their principal leaders was Matthew Smith, a man who had influence and popularity among his associates, and was not without pretensions to education, while he shared a full proportion of the general hatred against Indians, and suspicion against the band of Conestoga.

Towards the middle of December, a scout came to the house of Smith, and reported that an Indian, known to have committed depredations in the neighborhood, had been traced to Conestoga. Smith's resolution was taken at once. He called five of his companions, and, having armed and mounted, they set out for the Indian settlement. They reached it early in the night, and Smith, leaving his horse in charge of the others, crawled forward, rifle in hand, to reconnoitre, when he saw, or fancied he saw, a number of armed warriors in the cabins. Upon this discovery he withdrew, and rejoined his associates. Believing themselves too weak for an attack, the party returned to Paxton. Their blood was up, and they determined to extirpate the Conestogas. Mes

1 On one occasion, a body of Indians approached Paxton on Sunday, and sent forward one of their number, whom the English supposed to be a friend, to reconnoitre. The spy reported that every man in the church, including the preacher, had a rifle at his side; upon which the

enemy withdrew, and satisfied themselves with burning a few houses in the neighborhood. The papers of Mr. Elder were submitted to the writer's examination by his son, an aged and esteemed citizen of Harrisburg.