The English reciprocated ruthlessly. One British general suggested that blankets inoculated with smallpox be presented to them “to extirpate this execrable race.” As contagious as any disease was the racial hatred that spread along the frontiers. In Lancaster County, certain Scotch-Irish settlers of Paxton and Donegal townships met together and vowed vengeance on the “redskins.” “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” they said. If the warring Indians vanished into the forests after each assault, why then there were plenty of others—such as those living under the protection of the good Moravians.
In December, the Paxton Boys, as they called themselves, attacked a tiny hamlet of peaceful Conestoga Indians. Six were killed outright. Fourteen others, old people, women and children, who had been out selling baskets, brooms and bowls to their white neighbors, were taken captive and lodged at the Lancaster workhouse. Two days after Christmas, the rioters broke into the workhouse, killing all of them with hatchets. Streams of other peaceful Indians poured into Philadelphia for protection.
William Penn’s grandson, John Penn, was now Pennsylvania’s governor. He ordered the arrest of the murderers but did nothing to enforce his order. Made bold by this seeming lack of concern, the Paxton Boys, their ranks swollen by a lawless mob, voted to go to Philadelphia and force the Assembly to turn over the Indian refugees to their untender mercies.
Franklin’s war activities had shown he condemned atrocities against the frontiersmen, but he was outraged that Indians who had kept faith with the white men should have been betrayed. By mid-January he had both written and printed a pamphlet, “Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County.”
The first part retold the story of Indian relations in Pennsylvania. How members of the Six Nations had first settled in Conestoga, how its messengers had welcomed the English with presents of venison, corn and skins, how the tribe had entered into a treaty of friendship with William Penn, to last “as long as the sun should shine or the waters run in the rivers.”
It was an “enormous wickedness,” he continued, to assassinate these Conestoga Indians for the sins of the “rum-debauched, trader-corrupted vagabonds and thieves on the Susquehanna and Ohio.” It was as illogical as if the Dutch should seek revenge on the English for injuries done by the French, merely because both English and French were white.
To what good, he asked, had Old Shehaes, so ancient he had been present at Penn’s Treaty in 1701, been cut to pieces in his bed? What was to be gained by shooting or killing with a hatchet little boys and girls—and a one-year-old baby? “This is done by no civilized nation in Europe. Do we come to America to learn and practise the manners of barbarians?” The Conestoga Indians would have been safe among the ancient heathen, the Turks, the Saracens, the Moors, the Spanish, the Negroes—anywhere in the world “except in the neighborhood of the Christian white savages.”
Christian white savages! That was a phrase to make people wince. Those who shared the prejudices of the Paxton Boys were highly indignant. But the Quakers agreed with him, and the pamphlet convinced a surprising number of others that it was their duty to defend their city and protect the Indians who had sought refuge with them.
Panic spread as the Paxton rioters, armed and in an ugly mood, approached Philadelphia. In the emergency Governor John Penn turned to Franklin to reorganize his militia. Almost overnight a thousand citizens rallied to arms, among them Junto members and firemen. On February 8, word came that the mob was at the city limits. The governor, with his councilors, rushed to Franklin at midnight, seeking advice. His house became their temporary headquarters.
The ford over the Schuylkill River was guarded. The Paxton group bypassed it, turned north, crossed the river at another ford, and came noisily into Germantown some ten miles from Philadelphia.