Attempted Slaughter of Indians at Wichetunk, Monroe County, October 12, 1763

The expedition of Colonel Henry Bouquet, during the Pontiac Conspiracy, to Fort Pitt, in a great measure served to check the depredations of the Indians for a short time and the frontiers of Pennsylvania were quiet, and under the protection and assistance of 700 Provincial recruits the settlers gathered their harvests.

Had the Provincial Assembly acted promptly in the matter an effective defense could have been provided. The Government was deaf to all entreaties, and General Jeffreys Amherst, commander of the British forces in America, did not hesitate to vent his feelings in emphatic expression:

“The conduct of the Pennsylvania Assembly is altogether so infatuated and stupidly obstinate that I want words to express my indignation thereat. They tamely look on while their brethren are butchered by the savages.”

The Assembly finally authorized the raising of 800 troops and voted £24,000 to keep that force until December 1, but declared it was both unjust and impracticable for the province to defend a frontier of nearly 300 miles, which covered a greater extent than that of New Jersey and Maryland, without assistance from other provinces.

In September and October outrages were committed as far east as the neighborhoods of Reading and Bethlehem, and it was believed that 711not only Fort Pitt but even Fort Augusta was destined for attack.

The road to Fort Pitt was interrupted. A supply of provisions, under a convoy of sixty men, was forwarded from Fort Bedford to Fort Pitt, but on gaining the foot of the Allegheny Mountains was compelled to return. The officers learned that the passages were occupied by the savages.

Some fragments of the Delaware and Six Nations remained at their settlements in the interior, refusing to join their brethren in arms, professing affection for the Colonists and avowing a determination to continue neutral. But the neutrality of a part, at least, of these Indians was very doubtful.

The situation of the frontiers became truly deplorable, and the Quakers, who were in control, suffered the censure of the people. Captain Lazerus Stewart, of Paxtang, expressed the views of those on the frontiers, when he said: “The Quakers are more solicitous for the welfare of the blood-thirsty Indians than for the lives of the frontiersmen.”

Colonel John Armstrong led 300 men of Cumberland County to Great Island, on the West Branch of the Susquehanna, the present site of the borough of Lock Haven, where certain of the marauders had their headquarters. On their arrival they found the place evacuated, horses, cattle and other spoils gathered in their forays being left behind.

With the main body of his men, Armstrong proceeded to another Indian village near Jersey Shore, where he found the late occupants had left in haste while eating a meal. So the expedition resulted in destroying their houses and corn fields.

Major Asher Clayton led a party from Harris’ Ferry to remove the Connecticut settlers from Wyoming and destroy their provisions, which were likely to be seized by the red men. When the party arrived at Wyoming, it found that the savages had been there before them and had burned the town and killed more than twenty persons in horrible torture.

A number of those Indians who had been converted by the Moravian missionaries around Bethlehem were murdered, as they were found asleep in a barn, by a party of Rangers, and the surprise and slaughter in turn of the latter increased the suspicion of the frontiersmen, who were neither Moravians nor Quakers, against the entire body of Christian red men, who professed a desire to live at peace and friendship with the English.

The Provincial Commissioners, indeed, reported their belief that those at Nain and Wichetunk (in what is now Polk Township, Monroe County) were secretly supplied by the Moravian brethren with arms and ammunition, which, in free intercourse with the hostile savages, were traded off to the latter.

About October 12 a number of armed men marched toward Wichetunk, but, waiting to surprise it by night, were frustrated by a violent storm just before nightfall, which wet their powder.

712The missionary, the Rev. Bernard Adam Grube, then led the Indians to Nazareth, but the Governor suggested that to watch their behavior it would be better to disarm them and bring them to the interior parts of the province. The Assembly, actuated more by a desire to save them, agreed to the proposal.

Governor John Penn received the refugees from Nain and Wichetunk, but their arrival in the Northern Liberties of Philadelphia excited the lower classes nearly to a riot, and the soldiers refused to allow them any part of the barracks as a sheltering place, so that different arrangements were necessary.

For five hours these Indians were in great peril, but escorted by Quakers, they were finally taken to Province Island.

The conduct of the Assembly, in which there were twenty-one Quakers, failed to satisfy not only the royal and proprietary officers but also the Presbyterians, who were ready to take up arms, and particularly the Scotch-Irish on the frontier, who saw large sums of money lavished in the presents to Indians, while they themselves lay destitute from the ravages of an Indian war.

As every now and then some of their kinsmen or neighbors fell by the tomahawk, they became exasperated, coupling their vengeance against the guilty savages with jealousy of the Assembly’s partiality, and also suspicion against those Indians who were treated as friends.

A cry like the Covenanters came from their descendants in Pennsylvania; loud exhortations were heard on the frontier to carry out against the heathen red men the decrees of heaven against the Canaanites.