Frontier Rage.

The bitterness of whites in the backcountry of Pennsylvania was substantial after years of bloody guerrilla warfare with various Indian tribes. In late 1763 settler rage led to vindictive bloodletting against the Indians and open confrontation with a colonial government they felt had failed to protect them. A band of frontier ruffians, self-styled the Paxton Boys (after one of the towns on the Susquehanna River from which they came), lashed out against the so-called civilized Indians in the praying or mission towns of southeastern Pennsylvania.

Conestoga Manor.

On 15 December 1763 this small band of fifty-seven men descended on the village called Conestoga Manor, a government-protected settlement where some twenty Conestoga Indians lived peacefully, cultivating the soil and practicing Christianity under the direction of Moravian missionaries. The settlement was hundreds of miles from territory threatened by warlike tribes and was surrounded by white-settled...