The scene was as awful as the imagination can picture. Two of the passengers on board, named John Turk and Heber Whitmarsh, raftmen from Chenango, N.Y., were instantly killed; William Camp, a merchant from Owego, was fatally scalded by escaping steam. Dave Rose, of Chenango, N. Y., was fatally injured. Quincy Maynard, the engineer, as stated in the account published in the Danville Watchman, one week after the occurrence, was not expected to recover. Christian Brobst, of Catawissa and Jeremiah Miller, of Juniata, were seriously injured. Messrs. Woodside, Colt and Underwood, of Danville, were more or less injured, as were Messrs. Barton, Hurley, Foster and Colonel Paxton, of Catawissa, and Benjamin Edwards, of Braintrim, Luzerne County.
It was said by somebody on board that at the time of the explosion, a passenger was holding down the lever of the safety valve, but why this should be done after the boat had ceased her efforts to pull through is difficult to conjecture. Thus ended the second attempt to navigate the Susquehanna by steam power.
Shawnee Indians Murder Conestoga Tribesmen
April 28, 1728
Two Shawnee Indians cruelly murdered a man and a woman of the Conestoga tribe, April 28, 1728. John Wright, of Hempfield, wrote from Lancaster, May 2, advising James Logan of this murder, and that the Conestoga have demanded of the Shawnee the surrender of the murderers. He further wrote that some Shawnee had brought the Shawnee murderers as far as Peter Chartier’s house, but there the party engaged in a drinking bout and through the connivance of Chartier the two murderers escaped.
Chartier was an Indian trader among the Shawnee and was himself a half-blood Shawnee. He had traded for a time on the Pequea Creek and at Paxtang. Later he settled at the Shawnee town on the west side of the Susquehanna, at the mouth of the Yellow Breeches Creek, the present site of New Cumberland. He later removed on the Conemaugh, then to the Allegheny, about 1734.
The action upon the part of Chartier incensed the Conestoga so much that they threatened to wipe out the whole section of the Shawnee.
John Wright further states in his letter, “Yesterday there came seventeen or eighteen of the young men, commanded by Tilehausey, all Conestoga Indians, painted for war, all armed. We inquired which way they were going. They would not tell us, but said they or some of them were going to war, and that there were some Canoy to go along with them. But we hearing the above report, are apt to think that they are going against the Shawnee.”
Almost contemporary with this murder, the whites along the Schuylkill had their safety threatened from another quarter. Kakowwatchy, head of the Shawnee at Pechoquealon, claimed to have heard that the Flatheads, or Catawba from Carolina, had entered Pennsylvania to strike the Indians along the Susquehanna. He sent eleven warriors to ascertain the truth of this incursion of the Southern Indians, and as they approached the neighborhood of the Durham Iron Works, at Manatawny, their provisions failing, forced the inhabitants to give them victuals and drink.