MDDM Paxton's Men & Franklin

[Doug Millison]

[...] On December 14, 1763, fifty-seven vigilantes from Paxton and Donegal,
two frontier towns, rode into Conestoga Manor, an Indian settlement, and
killed six of twenty Indians living there. Two weeks later, more than 200
"Paxton Men" (as they were now called) invaded Lancaster, where the
remaining fourteen Conestoga Indians had been placed in a workhouse for
their own protection. Smashing in the workhouse door as the outnumbered
local militia looked on, the Paxton Men killed the rest of the Conestoga
band, leaving the bodies in a heap within sight of the places where the
Anglo-Iroquois alliance had been cemented less than two decades before.

      The day before that massacre, Governor William Penn had relayed to
the Pennsylvania assembly reports that the Paxton Men's next target would
be Philadelphia itself, where they planned to slaughter 140 Indians at
Province Island. The governor, citing "attacks on government," asked
General Gage to delegate British troops to his Colonial command. Penn also
wrote hastily to William Johnson, begging him to break the news of the
massacres to the Grand Council at Onondaga "by the properest method."

      Franklin responded to the massacres with the most enraged piece of
penmanship ever to come off his press -- A Narrative of the Late Massacres
in Lancaster County of a Number of Indians, Friends of this Province, by
Persons Unknown. The essay, published in late January 1764, displayed a
degree of entirely humorless anger that Franklin rarely used in his
writings:

But the Wickedness cannot be Covered, the Guilt will lie on the Whole Land,
till Justice is done on the Murderers. THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT WILL CRY
TO HEAVEN FOR VENGEANCE!

Franklin began his essay by noting that the Conestogas, a dying remnant of
the Iroquois confederacy, had been surrounded by frontier settlements, and
had dwindled to twenty people, "viz. 7 Men, 5 Women and 8 Children, Boys
and Girls, living in Friendship with their White Neighbors, who love them
for their peaceable inoffensive Behavior."

      Listing most of the victims by name, Franklin wrote that many had
adopted the names of "such English persons as they particularly esteem." He
provided capsule biographies to show just how inoffensive the Indians had
been: "Betty, a harmless old woman and her son, Peter, a likely young Lad."

      As Franklin reconstructed the story, the Paxton Men had gathered in
the night, surrounding the village at Conestoga Manor, then riding into it
at daybreak, "firing upon, stabbing and hatcheting to death" the three men,
two women, and one young boy they found. The other fourteen Indians were
visiting white neighbors at the time, some to sell brooms and baskets they
had made, others to socialize. After killing the six Indians, the
vigilantes "scalped and otherwise horribly mangled," them, then burned the
village to the ground before riding off in several directions to foil
detection.

      Two weeks later, when the scene was repeated at the Lancaster
workhouse, the Indians, according to Franklin's account, "fell to their
Knees, protesting their Love of the English . . . and in this Posture they
all received the Hatchet. Men, Women, little Children -- were every one
inhumanely murdered -- in cold Blood!" While some Indians might be "rum
debauched and trader corrupted," wrote Franklin, the victims of this
massacre were innocent of any crime against the English.

      At considerable length, Franklin went on to reflect on the qualities
of savagery and civility, using the massacres to illustrate his point: that
no race had a monopoly on virtue. To Franklin, the Paxton Men had behaved
like "Christian White Savages." He cried out to a just God to punish those
who carried the Bible in one hand and the hatchet in the other: "O ye
unhappy Perpetrators of this Horrid Wickedness!"

      On February 4, a few days after Franklin's broadside hit the streets,
the assembly heard more reports that several hundred vigilantes were
assembling at Lancaster to march on Philadelphia, and Province Island, to
slaughter the Indians encamped there. Governor Penn, recalling Franklin's
talent at raising a volunteer militia, hurried to the sage's three-story
brick house on Market Street at midnight. Breathlessly climbing the stairs,
a retinue of aides in tow, he humbly asked Franklin's help in organizing an
armed force to meet the assault from the frontier. To Franklin, the moment
was delicious, for eight years before Penn had been instrumental in getting
British authorities to order the abolition of Franklin's volunteer militia.

      During two days of frenzied activity, Franklin's house became the
military headquarters of the province. An impromptu militia of Quakers was
raised and armed, and Franklin traveled westward to the frontier with a
delegation to face down the frontier insurgents. As Franklin later
explained in a letter to Lord Kames, the Scottish philosopher:

I wrote a pamphlet entitled A Narrative &c (which I think I sent you) to
strengthen the hands of our weak Government, by rendering the proceedings
of the rioters unpopular and odious. This had a good effect, and afterwards
when a great Body of them with Arms march'd towards the Capital in defiance
of the Government, with an avowed resolution to put to death 140 Indian
converts under its protection, I form'd an Association at the Governor's
request. . . . Near 1,000 of the Citizens accordingly took arms; Governor
Penn made my house for some time his Head Quarters, and did everything by
my Advice.

      While his timely mobilization may have saved the 140 Indians' lives,
the sage's actions drained his political capital among whites, especially
on the frontier.

      Such actions "made myself many enemies among the populace," Franklin
wrote. What Franklin called "the whole weight of the proprietary interest"
joined against him to "get me out of the Assembly, which was accordingly
effected in the last election. . . ." Franklin was sent off to England
during early November 1764, "being accompanied to the Ship, 16 miles, by a
Cavalcade of three Hundred of my friends, who filled our sails with their
good Wishes." A month later, Franklin began work as Pennsylvania's agent to
the Crown.

      The rest of the decade was a time of instability on the frontier.
Franklin was in frequent correspondence with his son, William Franklin, and
with William Johnson, who kept the elder Franklin posted on problems they
encountered with squatters. Johnson wrote to Franklin July 10, 1766: "I
daily dread a Rupture with the Indians occasioned by the Licentious Conduct
of the frontier Inhabitants who continue to Rob and Murder them." William
wrote to his father three days later: "There have been lately several
Murders of Indians in the different Provinces. Those committed in this
Province will be duly enquired into, and the Murderers executed, as soon as
found guilty. They are all apprehended and secured in Gaol."

      For the rest of his life, shuttling between America, England, and
France on various diplomatic assignments, Franklin continued to develop his
philosophy with abundant references to the Indian societies he had observed
so closely during his days as envoy to the Six Nations. Franklin's
combination of indigenous American thought and European heritage earned him
the title among his contemporaries as America's first philosopher. In
Europe, he was sometimes called "the philosopher as savage." [...]
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/FFchp5.html


F O R G O T T E N
F O U N D E R S
By Bruce E. Johansen
Benjamin Franklin, the Iroquois
and the Rationale for the
American Revolution
1 9 8 2
G a m b i t   I N C O R P O R A T E D, Publishers
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/FF.html#TOC