Paxton Boys massacre Conestoga Indians in Lancaster
- When
- 1763–1764
- Where
- Conestoga Town; Lancaster workhouse (jail); Lancaster County
- Episodes
- 3
In December 1763, a vigilante band of Scots-Irish Presbyterian settlers known as the Paxton Boys murdered the twenty Conestoga (Susquehannock) people then living at Conestoga Town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in two attacks: a dawn raid on December 14 that killed six, and a December 27 assault on the Lancaster workhouse that killed the fourteen survivors. No one was ever punished.
Episodes
- Impunity and contemporary response
No arrests occurred because of local sympathy, and despite a reward, no Paxton Boy was ever punished; Franklin's Narrative denounced the massacre.
- Dawn raid on Conestoga Town
About fifty Paxton Boys attacked Conestoga Town at daybreak on December 14, 1763, killing and scalping six Conestoga and burning the buildings.
- Lancaster workhouse massacre
On December 27, 1763, led by Smith and Stewart, the Paxton Boys broke into the Lancaster workhouse and killed, scalped, and dismembered the fourteen surviving Conestoga.
Background and detail
Background. The Conestoga were the remnant of the Susquehannock, an Iroquoian people of the lower Susquehanna River watershed. A late-1680s settlement of Susquehannock and Seneca on the Conestoga River in present-day Manor Township, Lancaster County, became known as the Conestoga. By 1763 only seven men, five women, and eight children remained at Conestoga Town.
Perpetrators and Justification. The Paxton Boys, also called the Paxtang Boys or Paxton Rangers, were vigilantes drawn from Scots-Irish Presbyterians living northwest of Lancaster and across the Susquehanna in Cumberland County. Formed in 1763 during Pontiac's War to defend frontier settlements from Lenape and Shawnee attacks, they claimed the Conestoga were colluding with those attackers and, citing their Presbyterian faith, declared the Indians "Canaanites" who needed to be destroyed.
Aftermath. Many Lancaster County residents sympathized with the killers, so no arrests followed the massacre. Benjamin Franklin's "Narrative of the Late Massacres" condemned the killings, contrasting the Conestoga's fate with what he called the "Christian white savages" of Peckstang and Donegall. Although a reward was issued, none of the Paxton Boys was ever held accountable for the Conestoga Massacre.
People involved
- Paxton Boys · Perpetrators; vigilante mob of Scots-Irish Presbyterian settlers from Lancaster and Cumberland counties
- Conestoga (Susquehannock) · Victims; remnant Susquehannock community at Conestoga Town, twenty people killed in December 1763
- Benjamin Franklin · Contemporary critic; author of "A Narrative of the Late Massacres" condemning the killings
- Smith (surname only) · Identity unresolved; named in the supplied passage only by surname as a leader of the December 27, 1763 workhouse attack
Sources
- Paxton Boys Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-29
- Susquehannock Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-14
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.