After the crisis passed, proprietary officials realized that they needed a stronger presence in regions of new colonial settlement. They thus devised a means to solve the problems they encountered in 1728: new counties. Through this legal entity, they could maintain order while also providing a renewed sense of security to colonists living far from the colonial capital. Justices of the peace, sheriffs, and courts could be used to implement state policy and prevent such crises from happening again. The frontier crisis of 1728 thus exposed the problems of the Frame of 1701, and proprietary officials solved the problem through an ad hoc means of colony building that would guide expansion until the American Revolution.
Figure 5. Sites of Pennsylvania’s first frontier crisis, 1728. In May 1728, a group of colonists calling themselves “frontier inhabitants” because they feared an Indian invasion clashed with a group of Native American warriors near modern-day Pottstown. The violence created a crisis that obliged the governor to travel there to assert his authority over the organizers. He then traveled to Conestoga to reassure Native Americans and colonists in the region that the colony remained committed to peace. The government also took a step to address the problems western areas posed to stability: they created a new county, Lancaster, which could help the government maintain order in new settlements near the Susquehanna.
“The Frontier Inhabitants of Pennsylvania”
The frontier crisis began on April 18, 1728, when James LeTort, a Frenchman who renounced his national allegiance to become one of Pennsylvania’s most prominent traders, arrived in Philadelphia carrying dire news. According to LeTort’s sources, Pennsylvania was about to suffer an invasion on a scale unknown in British North America. His story was convoluted. It involved the French-allied Miamis residing near Lake Erie combining with the Delawares and Five Nations living in Pennsylvania and New York to launch a joint invasion of Pennsylvania and New York. If he was right, Pennsylvania was about to develop frontiers for the first time in its history.1
LeTort’s information was so explosive that he soon found himself testifying before the Provincial Council. The council responded coolly to Le-Tort’s concern. They too had sources of information, and none indicated trouble. But LeTort’s report did remind the council that a treaty between the government and allied Indians was long overdue. “In the mean time,” the council advised the governor, “the present circumstances of our affairs with the Indians rendered it necessary, that these people should be taken notice of and visited by the Governor.” The governor agreed and promised that he would “undertake the journey, whenever he can be informed … that the Indians were returned from hunting, for he understood there was scarce any Indians at present at or about Conestogoe.” Lest anyone accuse him of delaying, he made clear to the council that “nothing should be wanting on his part to establish and confirm the good understanding that had hitherto subsisted between this government and these people.”2
Meanwhile, on May 3, a couple of weeks after LeTort’s visit, John Wright, the same justice of the peace who handled the Thomas Wright murder the previous fall, sent the governor more troubling news. War between the Conestogas and Shawnees, two Native American groups allied with the colony, was imminent. A few days before, two Shawnees had murdered a Conestoga man and woman. The enraged Conestogas demanded the Shawnees turn over the accused. The Shawnees acceded, but the prisoners managed to escape. The Conestogas responded by organizing a party of young men “painted for warr, all armed.” Wright ended his report with a plea: “The Governor’s pressence pritty speedily is absolutely necessary at Constogo to settle affares amongst the Indians.”3
Soon colonists living near these warring Indians banded together, fearing that the Indians were preparing an assault on their homes. These colonists also reconsidered their position within the polity and saw something new appear on their landscape: a “frontier.” In a desperate plea sent to the governor on April 29, a petition bearing the signature of over eighty men whose English and German last names reflected the growing diversity of the colony declared that they were “the frontier inhabitants of Pennsylvania.” “Alarmed by a nois of the Indians,” they wrote, “women in childbed” were fleeing their homes, and “several families have left their plantations with what effects they could possibly carry.” The few remaining men who chose to stay asked Gordon to act so that they “may be freed from these alarms, for yet we are informed that the Indians are consulting measures against us.” As the “frontier inhabitants” stated, they felt crushing “fears” and imminent “danger.” They believed their homes now formed a frontier because Indians were planning an invasion, and, as “frontier inhabitants,” they expected their government to put them at ease—to “be freed from these alarms.” As their words indicated, this crisis struck at the fundamental obligation a government owed to its loyal subjects.4
The appearance of a frontier in Pennsylvania threatened to bring the colony’s experiment with peace to an end. In official records up to 1728, Pennsylvanian officials most often spoke of “frontiers” to describe other British colonies, such as New York, that faced potential invasions from France or Native Americans. The only document comparable to the 1728 petition was an earlier 1701 petition from the Lower Counties (today Delaware) to the proprietor when settlers there feared a seaborne invasion by the French during Queen Anne’s War. The 1701 petitioners drew upon the language of frontier prevalent in the Atlantic world by describing their position as the “weak and naked … frontiers … and dayly threatened with an approaching war.” Their fears proved unfounded, and no other petitions from frontier inhabitants were tendered until twenty-seven years later. In 1728, the petition submitted to the governor showed that the conception of a frontier as a zone of invasion remained, as did the language of vulnerability and desperation. But in marked contrast to the 1701 petitioners, the 1728 petitioners feared an Indian invasion from the west at a time when neither the colony nor the empire was at war.5
As the 1728 petition made clear and as the future would later bear out, frontiers caused colonists who lived in such regions to feel a series of emotions: fear, a desire for the government’s protection, and an expectation that leading individuals—often a general, governor, or prominent community member—would serve as their guardian. But acting like a “frontier government,” as Penn had dubbed New York in 1701, posed a problem for Gordon and other officials in 1728. The petition Gordon received that spring meant that the government had to do something, but it was unclear what. Governments had a duty to defend frontier areas because security was a government’s responsibility to its members. In Pennsylvania, this obligation fell to the proprietorship. To ignore the plea of these colonists might weaken proprietary authority in the minds of the “frontier inhabitants” who looked to him for the support he promised. Worse, the government’s failure to act might force these colonists to take matters into their own hands. Gordon’s task was to calm the fears without escalating tensions and possibly leading the colony into a war of its own making.
Taken together, Gordon and his council realized that the letter from Wright and the petition from the frontier inhabitants meant something serious was afoot in the western areas of the province. They reacted to the growing uncertainty by speeding up the schedule for a long overdue treaty with the Indian groups on the Susquehanna. The council remained confident that the governor could use the meeting to reconcile the Conestogas and Shawnees.
Events, however, interceded and forced Gordon to act sooner than planned. On the morning of May 10, just a few days after receiving Wright’s missive and the petition, Gordon received an emergency express from Mahanatawny, a small town in western Philadelphia County that housed one of the colony’s early iron works. The contents of the message changed everything. “A party of foreign Indians were fallen in amongst our Inhabitants in these parts,” it said. A group of about twenty colonists had responded by forming a militia to defend the settlement. A skirmish ensued. One Pennsylvanian was dead; the colonists may have killed the Indian captain, “a Spanish Indian” they called him; the colonists expected more violence soon; they needed the governor.6
Gordon raced to the site to investigate and prevent further hostilities.