Penn's Creek massacre

On October 16, 1755, Lenape (Delaware) warriors struck a settlement along Penn's Creek, a stream feeding into the Susquehanna River in the heart of Pennsylvania. This assault opened a string of lethal strikes against Pennsylvania communities carried out by Native peoples aligned with the French during the French and Indian War.

Among the twenty-six settlers found in the area, fourteen lost their lives and eleven were seized as captives, while one man, though injured, managed to break free. History records that five of those taken prisoner eventually made their way back to colonial life, and their ordeals later inspired several novels aimed at young readers as well as a motion picture.

Behind the violence lay years of mounting Lenape frustration over settlers pushing into their territory. Their ancestral holdings in the Lehigh Valley had already been stripped away through a deceptive arrangement with Pennsylvania's provincial authorities, the so-called Walking Purchase, prompting many to resettle in the Susquehanna Valley with the Iroquois' consent. Then, just a year before the events at Penn's Creek, the Iroquois struck a deal transferring much of that same valley to Pennsylvania and Connecticut without ever consulting the Lenape, leaving them once more facing removal as newcomers moved in.

In the wake of this massacre and the violence that followed, Benjamin Franklin, then serving in the Pennsylvania assembly, pushed the province's leadership to break from its Quaker pacifist foundations, urging instead the creation of an armed force and a network of defensive forts to shield settlers. Franklin took an active role in building and training these initial Pennsylvania regiments himself. Conflict between provincial troops and the displaced Lenape, along with other Native groups, dragged on for three more years, finally concluding when the Treaty of Easton was signed in 1758 between the tribes and the British.

Background

A full year prior to the massacre, representatives of seven colonies gathered alongside 150 leaders of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy for what became known as the 1754 Albany Congress. This meeting aimed to strengthen ties between Britain and the Iroquois as French ambitions increasingly threatened British authority over the colonies. During these proceedings, the Iroquois agreed to part with large portions of the Susquehanna Valley, selling the land to representatives of Pennsylvania's provincial government who wanted it opened up for European colonization, an arrangement later called the Albany Purchase. Benjamin Franklin numbered among the Pennsylvania negotiators, as did John Penn, grandson of the colony's founder William Penn. The Iroquois had held back

The massacre

In the darkness before sunrise on October 16, eight Lenape raiders descended upon the settlement at Penn's Creek. Among the attackers were Kech Kinnyperlin, Joseph Compass along with a younger man of the same name, a youth called Thomas Hickman, Kalasquay, Souchy, Machynego, and Katoochquay.

The band opened fire and struck first at the home of Jean Jacques Le Roy, a Swiss farmer, before putting his house to the torch. His remains turned up later, scorched and marked by two tomahawks still lodged in his skull. Nearby, a spring bubbling up from the earth still bears the name Le Roy's Spring, and the small stream running from it into Penn's Creek is called Sweitzer's, or Swisser's, Run.

Le Roy's own son, who shared his father's name and went by John Jacob, tried to defend against his father's murderers but was subdued and dragged off as a captive. His twelve-year-old sister Marie went with him, as did Mary Ann Villars, another young girl who had been staying at the house. A neighbor named Bastian happened upon the scene on horseback and was cut down by gunfire and scalped.

A pair of the raiders then made their way roughly half a mile off to the Leininger home. Finding no rum to satisfy their demand, they accepted tobacco in its place. Once they had finished smoking, they declared themselves Allegheny Indians and enemies of the family, warning that all would die. Sebastian Leininger was shot, and his twenty-year-old son John Conrad was killed with a tomahawk. The two Leininger daughters, twelve-year-old Barbara and nine-year-old Regina, were seized and carried off. Their mother, Regina Wucherer, happened to be away at a mill that day and thus escaped the same fate.

The captives taken from the Le Roy and Leininger properties, along with stolen horses and supplies, were led into the woods, where the remaining Lenape rejoined the group carrying six scalps and boasting of a successful day. Some of the warriors later doubled back into the settlement to continue their killing, coming away by nightfall with nine additional scalps and five more prisoners. Among the newly seized were Hanna Breilinger and her two children, taken after her husband J

Aftermath

News of the killings sent waves of fear through the frontier communities. John Harris Jr., who operated a trading post, wrote to the governor proposing that he lead a party upriver to negotiate with the tribes and gauge the temperament of those gathered at Shamokin, now called Sunbury, since the Native people there had a reputation for friendliness toward colonists. He assembled between 40 and 50 men and departed on October 22.

Upon reaching Shamokin, Harris's party encountered a band of Lenape covered head to toe in black paint who had traveled from the Ohio and Allegheny valleys. Among them stood Andrew Montour, a man of Oneida, Algonquin, and French heritage who was personally acquainted with Harris and frequently served as an interpreter. He urged Harris to head home at once, keeping to the eastern bank of the Susquehanna.

Harris did turn his men around, but he ignored Montour's counsel about staying east of the river. Traveling back along the western side on October 25, the group fell into an ambush near what is now the northern edge of Selinsgrove borough, sprung by twenty to thirty Lenape fighters. Harris would later claim that his men killed four attackers while suffering three deaths of their own, with another four or five drowning in the Susquehanna as they tried to flee. A physician riding on the same horse behind Harris took a fatal shot in the back. Harris himself lost his mount to gunfire and had to swim the river to escape.

Either that day or the following one, the Lenape crossed over and struck the settlements at Hunter's Mill. When Seneca chief Belt of Wampum learned of both the ambush and these follow-up attacks, he rounded up thirty warriors and went after those responsible, though whether he ever caught them remains unknown.

This clash at Penn's Creek marked only the beginning of a broader campaign against Pennsylvania's settlements waged by the Lenape and other tribes aligned with the French. A fortnight later, Lenape and Shawnee fighters under the command of Lenape war chief Shingas, whom colonists called The Delaware King or Shingas the Terrible, devastated Scotch-Irish communities near the Maryland border in present-day Fulton and Franklin counties during what came to be known as the Great Cove massacre. In the Big Cove settlement alone, 47 people were killed or captured over several brutal days marked by atrocities: children slain before their parents' eyes, husbands tortured while their wives were made to watch, and one elderly woman past ninety found later impaled on a stake, both breasts removed. The Lenape then moved on to strike settlers along Swatara Creek, now in Lebanon County, and Tulpehocken Creek in Berks County.

By late November, twelve Lenape under Captain Jacobs had struck Gnadenhuetten, present-day Lehighton, a Moravian-run farming settlement for Christian Indians, leaving eleven residents dead or captured. Between December 10 and 11, six Lenape fighters killed or abducted members of five farming households along the Pohopoco Creek in what would become Towamensing Township.

The raiders pushed onward toward what is now Stroudsburg, and on December 11, 1755, laid siege to the Brodhead family's plantation. Five brothers, Charles, Daniel, Garett, John, and Luke, together with their twelve-year-old sister Ann, sealed themselves inside alongside neighbors who had come seeking shelter, and held off their attackers through hours of gunfire. This marked the first of multiple assaults the Brodhead home would face in subsequent years, and the family earned widespread praise for their courage in the fight.

Though the Susquehanna Lenape numbered only about 200 warriors, their ranks swelled when roughly 700 fighters from the Ohio Lenape traveled east to join the campaign. Within five months of the initial violence at Penn's Creek, by March 1756, around 200 settlers had died and a similar number had been taken prisoner. Fleeing eastern Pennsylvania in large numbers, colonists sought refuge in denser populated regions to the south and east, hoping that safety could be found through strength of numbers.

Founded on Quaker principles, Pennsylvania had long been shaped by that faith's commitment to pacifism, and its Assembly had consistently declined to establish any standing military force. As settlements fell one after another, Governor Robert Hunter Morris clashed with the Assembly over whether proprietary lands should be tax