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In the winter of 1763, dozens of Western Pennsylvanians calling themselves the Paxton Boys murdered 21 Native Americans, a politically charged action that nearly embroiled the colony in civil war and altered the colony's election in 1764. This essay examines the Paxton Boys' justifications and also the failed rhetorical strategies developed by Quakers for defending Native Americans. . . As the Paxton Boys demonstrated the interrelationship between colonial violence and rhetoric, they set the precedent for future violence targeting Native Americans in Pennsylvania and beyond.
I saw a number of people running down street towards the gaol, which enticed me and other lads to follow them. At about sixty or eighty yards from the gaol, we met from twenty-five to thirty men, well mounted on horses, and with rifles, tomahawks, and scalping knives, equipped for murder. I ran into the prison yard, and there, O what a horrid sight presented itself to my view!- Near the back door of the prison, lay an old Indian and his squaw (wife), particularly well known and esteemed by the people of the town, on account of his placid and friendly conduct. His name was Will Sock; across him and his squaw lay two children, of about the age of three years, whose heads were split with the tomahawk, and their scalps all taken off. Towards the middle of the gaol yard, along the west side of the wall, lay a stout Indian, whom I particularly noticed to have been shot in the breast, his legs were chopped with the tomahawk, his hands cut off, and finally a rifle ball discharged in his mouth; so that his head was blown to atoms, and the brains were splashed against, and yet hanging to the wall, for three or four feet around. This man's hands and feet had also been chopped off with a tomahawk. In this manner lay the whole of them, men, women and children, spread about the prison yard: shot-scalped-hacked-and cut to pieces.
-William Henry of Lancaster1
On the morning of December 14, 1763, dozens of men "equipped for murder" from the towns of Paxton, Donegal, and Hempfield on the Pennsylvania frontier rode to Conestoga, a small hamlet 60 miles west of Philadelphia, murdered six sleeping Native...