CHAPTEE XXIV. 



1763. 

 THE PAXTON MEN. 



Along the thinly settled borders, two thousand 

 persons had been killed, or carried off, and nearly 

 an equal number of families driven from their 

 homes. ^ The frontier people of Pennsylvania, 

 goaded to desperation by long-continued suffering, 

 were divided between rage against the Indians, and 

 resentment against the Quakers, who had yielded 

 them cold sympathy and inefficient aid. The hor- 

 ror and fear, grief and fury, with which these men 

 looked upon the mangled remains of friends and 

 relatives, set language at defiance. They were of 

 a rude and hardy stamp, hunters, scouts, rangers, 

 Indian traders, and backwoods farmers, who had 

 grown up with arms in their hands, and been 



1 Extract from a MS. Letter — George Croghan to the Board of Trade : 

 " They can with great ease enter our colonies, and cut off our frontier 

 settlements, and thereby lay waste a large tract of country, which indeed 

 they have effected in the space of four months, in Virginia, Maryland, 

 Pennsylvania, and the Jerseys, on whose frontiers they have killed and 

 captivated not less than two thousand of his Majesty's subjects, and drove 

 some thousands to beggary and the greatest distress, besides burning to 

 the ground nine forts or blockhouses in the country, and killing a number 

 of his Majesty's troops and traders." 



