340

history of the

[book iii.

their friends and relatives by the savages, have been impelled, by feelings of revenge, to deeds of blood at which humanity weeps. Such was the phrensied revenge of the " Paxton Boys." These desperadoes, prompted by a fanatical delusion, that the massacre of Wyoming was a judgment from God for " sparing the Canaanites in the land," organized themselves into a bandit corps, and, disregarding law or any civil authority of the state, proceeded to commit the most revolting barbarities upon the peaceable and innocent Conestago Indians, as a retaliation for the acts perpetrated by the hostile tribes. Dr. Doddridge says, " They rivaled the most ferocious of the Indians themselves in deeds of cruelty which have dishonored the history of our country ; shedding innocent blood without the slightest provocation, in deeds of the most atrocious barbarity."*    

The Conestago Indians were the remains of the Conestago tribe, the early friends of William Penn, whose descendants, for more than a century, had lived in peace and friendship with the whites. This remnant of a tribe, about forty in number, were the first victims of this infuriate and demoniacal band. They were murdered in cold blood, in the midst of a civil government too weak to protect the weakest.

The same vengeance would have been wreaked equally upon the peaceable and inoffensive Christian Indians of the villages of Wequetank and Nain, had not the state authorities at length succeeded in protecting them.f

[A.D. 1764.] Such had been the disasters to the British Ivaaaa jut ium    jiioiija-T isb'iod. jwit'a&io'-rini    ,'>! bfiuBilHo*) sui>s*hr-l

* Doddridge's Notes on Virginia, p. 220.

t Although this subject is properly beyond the limits of our prescribed history, yet, as it is connected with the Indian hostilities of 1763, we will take this further notice of this bandit corps. This band, laboring under a delusion which had been encouraged by certain fanatics, that it was their duty to exterminate the Indians, as Joshua did the Canaanites of old, organized into a military band, and set all law at defiance. On the Mth day of December, 1763, fifty-seven of these men, in military array, entered the Conestago village about daybreak, and immediately, with the most cruel barbarity, murdered every sonl that was found in the village, amounting in all to fourteen, including women and children. The remainder of them happened to be absent about the w-hite settlements, and were taken in charge by the civil authorities, who placed them in the jail of Lancaster for protection. But this precaution was unavailing; the Pax-ton Boys broke open the jail, and murdered the whole, to the additional number of nearly twenty. In vain did the poor, defenseless creatures, upon their knees, protest their innocence and implore mercy. Nor did the death of these victims satisfy tbeso fiends in human shape; they mangled the dead bodies with scalping-knives and tomahawks in the most savage and brutal manner. Even the children were scalped, and their feet and hands chopped off with tomahawks. The authorities of Pennsylvania removed the Indians of Wequetank and Nain, under a strong guard, to Phil-