Massacre of the Conestogas

A gripping account of how a vigilante mob of Pennsylvania frontiersmen butchered a Native American tribe—and got away with it.   On two chilly December days in 1763, bands of armed men raged through camps of peaceful Conestoga Indians. They killed twenty Susquehannock women, children and men, effectively wiping out the tribe. These murderous rampages by Lancaster County's Paxton Boys were the tragic culmination of a gruesomely violent conflict between European settlers and native tribes.   The Paxton Boys then journeyed to Philadelphia, not to evade the law but to confront it. They openly threatened to commit more of the same violence if their demands were not met. In Massacre at the Conestogas, Lancaster journalist Jack Brubaker gives a blow-by-blow account of the massacres, examines their aftermath, and investigates how the Paxton Boys got away with murder.