Gordon remained above the fray. He looked into the causes of the skirmish by conducting a series of interviews to separate fact from fiction. His investigation revealed that the attack was not as violent nor as large as first reported. The supposedly large group of Indians marauding about the settlements turned out to number only eleven. The colonists, uncertain of what the Indians were up to, created a militia to approach these strangers. As the colonial delegation neared the Indians, someone opened fire. The colonists told Gordon the Indians shot first; he had his suspicions. In any case, both sides fired. The Indians fled. The “Spanish Indian” reportedly killed in action likely survived unscathed. Gordon found that the colonist who was supposedly killed instead “appeared only to be slightly wounded in the belly.” Privately, Gordon admitted that “he could not help thinking that our people had given some provocation.”8
Gordon’s hunch was right. In time, it would become apparent that the invading Indians were Shawnees, a group allied with the colony. Conflict always seemed to follow the Shawnees. At the moment, they were at odds with both the Conestogas and another group called the Flatheads who were from the Ohio River Valley. Prepared to do battle with one or the other, the Shawnees were indeed dressed for war when they encountered the ad hoc Pennsylvania militia. But their intended targets were other Natives, not the European newcomers.9
Such nuance was lost amid the fear of self-described “frontier inhabitants,” however. As new arrivals to the new world who were fueled by rumors and stories about Indians who lived beyond in “the woods,” they tended to think of all Native Americans as the same—as “Ingians,” as the Colebrookdale petition put it. They viewed the warlike maneuvers of the Shawnees in the darkest possible light and grew certain that this initial foray portended future invasions.10
Gordon found himself in a quandary. The frontier settlers were no idle threat to his government. By taking on war-making powers, they challenged his fundamental powers as captain-general and undermined the authority of government. Gordon had to assert governmental control by quelling such independent military actions. Failure to do so would mean the colony lacked a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, the fundamental claim to legitimacy upon which all governments rest. Conversely, he also had to quell the fears of these “frontier inhabitants” who looked to him for aid. Gordon’s quandary was made all the more difficult because he oversaw a colony that had virtually no military history or culture. Gordon recognized the easy combustibility of the situation and used his authority to “quiet the country.” He told settlers to cool their anti-Indian sentiment by warning them that “any rash act might be attended with fatal consequences.” The governor’s very presence likely calmed concerns too, but the promise of powder and lead in the event of an attack probably had the greatest effect.11
By the evening of May 11, Gordon felt satisfied that he had successfully defused the situation. But as he began to pack to return to Philadelphia, another express arrived, this one from Samuel Nutt, a local justice of the peace, that forced Gordon to cancel his journey.12
“Arms and Ammunition …in Order to Defend Our Fronteers”
As the governor was making his rounds in Mahanatawny, Walter Winter, a Welsh farmer living in the small village of Cucussea in Chester County, was making his own rounds. Along the way, he ran into a German settler who was abuzz with news. He told Winter that Indians had just killed “sundry Dutchmen.” Winter, fearful for his and his family’s safety, raced through his neighborhood spreading the news and calling for people to collect at his house “to defend themselves against the Indians.” As he “was making fast the windows, in case any attempt should be made upon them,” the son of his neighbor John Roberts approached with more desperate news. An Indian “with a bow and a great number of arrows” was stationed outside his father’s house, poised to attack. The boy asked Winter for help. Winter grabbed his gun, loaded it with a bullet and swan shot, and enlisted his brother John and father-in-law, Morgan Herbert.13
As the crew ran over a small bridge that led to Roberts’s house, they “saw an Indian man, some women, and some girls sitting on a wood pile.” They also saw John Roberts standing in his doorway with a rifle cocked on his shoulder. As Walter, who was leading the charge, came within twenty-five yards, the Indian man stood and, Winter later swore, put an arrow “to the string of the bow.” Winter raised his rifle and pulled the trigger, releasing the bullet and swan shot. The shot sprayed the man’s chest, throwing him on his back. Walter then commanded the others to shoot.14
Chaos ensued. Following Walter’s lead, John Winter fired, hitting one of the women. The two young girls bolted, seeking safety in the woods. Walter and John ran to the woodpile. While John, in the words of his brother, “knocked another of the Indian woman’s brains out” with the butt of his gun, Walter grabbed the bow and arrow and pursued the children. He shot at one and, although the record is not clear, appears to have struck and injured her. John pursued the girls too and caught the other one, beat her with his gun, and left her for dead in the woods. As Walter returned to Roberts’s house with his captive in tow, he saw the Indian man “staggering” into a nearby swamp. The other Indian woman, who had apparently survived the initial assault, now had an axe wound in her head, a deathblow dealt by John Roberts.15
The next day the Winter brothers, Morgan Herbert, and “sundry others” ventured to the Indians’ cabin nearby, a sign that these settlers were familiar with, perhaps even knew, their victims. There they found the girl John had left in the woods. She was alone in her family’s home, frightened, and “much hurt about the head and face.” They sent her to Walter Winter’s house to join her sister. The crew then returned to the scene of the carnage. After burying the two dead women in a shallow grave, they brought their two young prisoners to George Boone, a mill owner and the local justice of the peace. They expected he would applaud their actions. They even hoped that the justice of the peace would reward them for their war prizes. Shocked at what he heard and saw, Boone took custody of the girls for their protection. He apparently let the Winters go, however, likely because he did not have the proper warrants to arrest them. He did rush out dispatches to the other justices of the peace to warn them that there could be retaliatory attacks. One of these justices, Samuel Nutt, sent an express to Patrick Gordon that alerted him to the murders and asked him to delay his return to Philadelphia.16
Fear turned into outright panic as word of the murder spread throughout the communities. Most expected “the Indians will fall down upon us very suddenly,” causing all but twenty men to flee the area around Boone’s district. Boone stayed, however, and with the twenty remaining turned his mill into a fort. Stocked with a thousand bushels of wheat and flour, they “resolved to defend ourselves to the last extremity.” Boone, writing to Gordon the day after the murders, promised that they would “not quit our habitation if we can have any succor from you.” He asked the governor to send “arms and ammunition … in order to defend our fronteers” and, perhaps more important, “send some messengers to the Indians” in a last-ditch effort to prevent the expected invasion. Boone believed the situation desperate. Failure to defend these “fronteers,” these zones now vulnerable to a feared invasion, Boone added, would leave the colony “desolate and destroyed.”17
Boone’s reference to this territory becoming a “fronteer” revealed once again the significance of the word to colonists. Boone and others who lived on perceived “fronteers” began to imagine their place in the polity in a new way and, as a result, began to expect their