OF LANCASTER COtTNTY. 189 



set at defiance, and yet the men in private life are virtuous, and respect- 

 able ; not cruel, but mild and merciful. The time will arrive when each 

 palliating circumstance will be calmly weighed. This deed, magnified 

 into the blackest of crimes, shall be considered as one of those youthful 

 ebullitions of wrath caused by momentary excitement, to which human 

 infirmity is subjected." 



A calm survey of all the facts of the case, as far as known, compels us 

 to reach a different conclusion. The twenty or thirty men engaged in 

 the bloody transactions at Conestogo and Lancaster, were lawless men, 

 and their lawless conduct cannot be justified any more than their indis- 

 criminate slaughter of suspected murderers and helpless old men, women 

 and innocent children. The transactions referred to are foul blots on 

 the page of our provincial history. 



It should be stated that the Eev. Mr. Elder, in a letter to Col. Burd, 

 asserts that the Paxton Boj^s did not cut the bodies of the Indians to 

 pieces, adding, "the inference is plain, that the bodies were thus mangleil 

 after death by certain persons to excite a feeling against the Paxton 

 Boys. This fact, Stewart says he can and will establish in a fair trial at 

 Lancaster, York and Carlisle." 



There is no doubt that Stewart imposed upon the amiable Mr. Elder, 

 to w^hose command of Eangers he and the other persons concerned in 

 the Lancaster murders belonged; but it is difiicult to believe Stewart whose 

 record by no means redounds to his credit. He was emphatically a man 

 of violence and lawlessness; he joined the Connecticut men, was a prom- 

 inent actor in the civil wars of Wyoming and slain there, during the 

 Eevolution, in the disastrous battle of July 3, 1778. 



The bodies of the murdered Indians were collected and buried in oiw 

 grave, at the corner of Chestnut and Duke streets, in Lancaster. Peter 

 Maurer told I. Daniel Rupp that he sau- them buried in the same place, 

 where the workmen, engaged in making excavations for the Railroad, 

 dug them up in May 1833.^ 



When the news of the second Indian massacre reached the Governor, 

 he issued another proclamation, as inefficacious in its results as the former, 

 in these words: 

 ''By the Honourable JOHK PEN K^ Esquire, Lieutenant Governor and 



Comraander-in- Chief of the Province of Peimsylvania, and Counties of 



Newcasth, Kent, and Sussex, on Delaware. 



"A PROCLAMATION: 



" Whereas, on the twenty-second day of December last, I issued a Proc- 

 lamation for the apprehending and bringing to Justice a number of Persona 

 who, in violation of the Public Faith, and in defiance of all Law, had 

 1 Rupp's History of Lancaster County, p. 360. 



