St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1888-07-28
MASSACRE OF INDIANS.


a Disgraceful Bit of History Connected
With the Settlement of Pennsylvania.
The Paxton church is about three
miles east of Harrisburg, and is an edi.
fee of small, rough blocks of lime
stone, joined by the lime which that
stone can make when burned, and over
the doors and windows are limestone
arches holding out wonderfully well.
The church is perhaps sixty feet long
by thirty-fve or forty feet wide, and
only one story high, with a slate root
recently added, and with two chimneys
down at the bottom of the slope on
each side of the roof, showing that it
must have been warmed on the inside
by iron fire-places or old-fashioned
stoves with their long pipes. The South
Mountain. which has come down to be
a mere rolling succession of hills,
draws very near this church, end there
fore the North Irish of Scotch extrac-
ton who people the neighborhood set
tied thereabout, for there were peo-
pie of the hills. They had learned in
Ireland rough, individual, retaliating
habits, and when they found themselves
in Pennsylvania they soon began to
hate both the quakers of English stock
and the new Dutch. Some
years before the American
revolution they resolved to kill the
Christian Indians on the east side of the
Susquehanna river, chiefly because they
were Indians, and some other Indians,
acting under the stimulus of the civil
lied States of Europe, like France, had
come into that region and killed some
white people. Taking the view now
generally accepted by violent folks that
all negroes are black, and therefore of
the same moral composition, and that
all Indians are of the same family, and
that one deserves to die for another,
these men of the Paxton meeting who
prayed to God and asked for mercy re-
solved to 60 and kill all the Indians at
the mouth of the Conestoga creek,
which runs into the Susquehanna below
Lancaster. They went there and killed
all the Indians they could children,
women and men. The Pennsylvania
authorities had shibboleth regarding
Indians and withdrew the remnant of
these Indians to Lancaster Jail. There
upon the Paxton youths resolved to 60
down to Lancaster and kill the Indians
in the jail. This shows us how long it
takes to reduce the various components
of a nation to civilized behavior.
The preacher at Paxton church came
out with his horse and tried in vain to
make the young people stay at home.
They, asked him to lead them to the
massacre and told him to get out of
the road any way or they might shoot
him. So they went down to Lancaster
and sent in some spies to get into the
Jail and find what Indians were there.
The next morning, Sunday, while the
people were going to church at Lancas-
ter. these lads broke into the prison
and there, in cold blood, dispatched all
these poor Indians, who were calling
upon the name of Jesus. They were
tomahawked, shot or dubbed to death,
without any questioning or scruple.
When the province arose in indigna-
ton, Philadelphia being its capital,
Paxton men resolved to march upon
that city; which they understood to be
iahabited chiefly by Quakers, who did
/, OF fight, and they thought they would
I Ike the town and bring new era into
the world. They did actually march
to the very environs of the city, which
is about one hundred miles distant from
Harrisburg. There, between persuas-
ion and show of opposition, they were
stopped and a great danger averted. |
All this happened about 1857, twenty
years before the battle of Brandywine,
which happened on the soil of Pennsyl-
vania. - Cincinnati Enquirer.