Lazarus Stewart - Pontiac's War and Massacre

Pontiac's War and Massacre

During the summer of 1763, Indian raids fell heavily upon the western settlements of Pennsylvania. "Carlisle was become the barrier not a single Individual beyond it." In the crisis, the response of the State government was singularly dilatory. There had long been friction between the Presbyterian settlers of the frontier and the Quaker-dominated government, and the damage done by the Indians rankled. Colonel Rev. John Elder raised two companies of militia, known as the Paxton Boys, in Paxton Township, captained by Stewart and Asher Clayton.

Several enclaves of Indians existed to the east of the frontier, among the Moravians near Bethlehem and elsewhere. The nearest of these were the Susquehannock tribe at Conestoga Town. To the north, such anger was directed by the settlers against the Moravian Indians, for their suspected part in abetting Indian raids, that the Moravians were sent to be kept in protective custody in Philadelphia. In Lancaster County, feelings were very much aroused against the Susquehannocks, the more so after the Moravians were protected by the Commonwealth — whose authority the frontiersmen doubtless felt should be exerted for their protection against Indians and not vice versa. Col. Elder wrote to the government in September 1763, urging for the Susquehannocks to be removed to Philadelphia as well, but the proposal was declined.

In December 1763, Matthew Smith, one of the Paxton Boys, took a small scouting party to Conestoga Town to investigate reports of a hostile Indian being sheltered there. The party returned with tales of dozens of strange Indians occupying the town, and began to assemble a more substantial force. Col. Elder heard of the expedition, and sent a written message dissuading it, to no effect. On the morning of December 14, 1763, just before dawn, fifty armed and mounted Paxton Boys descended upon Conestoga Town, killed the six Indians they found there, and burned the town. While the Susquehannocks were probably in communication with hostile Indians on the frontier, the results of the Rangers' attack are hardly consonant with their supposed justification of harboring numerous hostile Indians.

Fourteen of the Susquehannocks had been elsewhere when the massacre occurred, and were removed to the workhouse in Lancaster for protection. Lazarus Stewart and Smith, asserting that one of those fourteen was known as a murderer, assembled the Paxton Boys again. Ignoring Col. Elder, who now remonstrated with them in person, they descended upon Lancaster on December 27, 1763 and broke into the workhouse. Matthew Smith later claimed that the intent of the raid had been to carry off the single murderous Indian, but the Paxton Boys, in short order, butchered the fourteen unfortunate Susquehannocks. These incidents became known as the Conestoga Massacre.

The shocked government ordered the arrest of those who took part in the massacre, but to no avail. Even those who had opposed the massacres, such as Col. Elder (who was removed from his command and replaced by Maj. Asher Clayton), did not volunteer the names of the ringleaders to the government. The Paxton Boys capped their efforts with a march to Philadelphia (whence the remaining Indians in the state had been removed) in January 1764. While they obtained few concrete concessions, neither Stewart nor any of the other participants in the massacre were prosecuted for their deeds.