LANCASTER COUNTY. 351 



tale, and be prepared to resent to the utmost every 

 wronsr : avenore himself in the destruction of those whom 

 he believes to be aggressors, or mere abettors. Of this, 

 we have a striking case in the "cruelties reciprocally 

 committed " among the whites and Indians upon each 

 other, during the bloody times of the middle of the last 

 century. Hostilities were kept up by the Indians, and 

 barbarities committed, calculated to excite the calmest 

 to revenge the wrongs which the inhabitants of Lan- 

 caster and the adjacent counties, suffered at the hands of 

 hostile Indians, from 1754 to 1765.* Those whose path 

 was marked, wherever they went among the whites, 

 " with cruelty and murder," Vv^ere called hostile Indians, 

 to distinguish them from the peaceable ones, residing at 

 Conestogj, Nain and Wichetung. 



The inhabitants of Lancaster county, (especially those 

 in Paxton and Donegal townships, being most exposed to 

 the merciless Indians) reflecting upon the past, and the 

 present with them ; "that the bloody barbarians had 

 exercised on their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, wives 

 and children, and relatives, the most unnatural and 

 leisurely tortures ; butchered others in their beds, at their 

 meals, or in some unguarded hour. Recalling to their 

 minds, sights of horror, scenes of slaughter; seeing 

 scalps clotted with gore ! mangled limbs ! women ripped 



*" 1763. Two letters were received from Jonas Seely, Esq. 

 from Berks county, dated, 10th and llth September, 1763. 



" We are all in a state of alarm. Indians have destroyed 

 dwellings, and murdered with savage barbarity their helpless 

 Inmates ; even in the neighborhood of Reading. Where these 

 Indians come from, and where going we know not. These 

 are dangerous times. Send us an armed force to aid our Ran- 

 gers of Berks and Lancaster." 



" Those letters were laid before the Assembly, September 

 16, 1763." — Lancaster Intelligencer & Journal. 



