proclamation, ordering all judges, sheriffs, and “all His Majesty’s liege subjects in the province,” to make every effort to apprehend the authors and perpetrators of this crime, also their abettors and accomplices. But the “Paxton Boys” held magistrates and governor alike in derision. Two weeks later they assembled again, fifty strong, rode to Lancaster, dismounted, broke open the doors of the jail, and killed every Indian there.
“When the poor wretches saw they had no protection nigh, nor could possibly escape, and being without the least weapon of defence, they divided their little families, the children clinging to their parents. They fell on their faces, protested their innocence, declared their love to the English, and that in their whole lives they had never done them injury. And in this posture they all received the hatchet. Men, women, and children were every one inhumanly murdered in cold blood. * * * The barbarous men who committed the atrocious act, in defiance of government, of all laws, human and divine, and to the eternal disgrace of their country and color, then mounted their horses, huzzaed in triumph, as if they had gained a victory, and rode off unmolested. * * * The bodies of the murdered were then brought out and exposed in the street till a hole could be made in the earth to receive and cover them. But the wickedness cannot be covered, and the guilt will lie on the whole land till justice is done on the murderers. The blood of the innocent will cry to Heaven for vengeance.”
These last extracts are from a pamphlet printed in Philadelphia at the time of the massacre; printed anonymously, because “so much had fear seized the minds of the people” that neither the writer nor the printer dared to give “name or place of abode.”
There are also private letters still preserved which give accounts of the affair. A part of one from William Henry, of Lancaster, to a friend in Philadelphia, is given in “Rupp’s His-
