Part IV of the Frontier Partisans Podcast on Pontiac’s War is up. You can access it here, or on Spotify or on most other podcasting platforms.
This episode focuses on the brutal raiding warfare that prevailed on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1763-64, as (mostly) Lenape (Delaware) raiders infiltrated east past the besieged Fort Pitt and attacked farms and schoolhouses. The brutality of such raids created terror and a widespread refugee crisis — and also sparked a bloodthirsty taste for indiscriminate revenge, among the British high command as well as from frontier settlers.
A memorial to a schoolmaster and 11 children slaughtered by Delaware Indians in a July 1764 raid in Pennsylvania.
A mob known as The Paxton boys lynched 14 Christian Conestoga Indians in December 1763.
Pennsylvania saw the Enoch Brown Schoolhouse Massacre and the lynching of the Conestoga Indians, incidents that set a template for a mentality that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” that would persist throughout American frontier history.
The events of Pontiac’s War are a reminder that Frontier Partisan warfare is always brutal and brutalizing.
Matthew says
Great podcast. I listened to it yesterday. Cycles of violence seem too common in human history.