Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/53

 occasion of every new governor, to John Penn, esq. who then held that office; welcoming him on his arrival from Britain, and praying a continuance of that favour and protection they had hitherto experienced; when at the dawn of day of the 14th December 1763, the Indian village was attacked by about sixty men well mounted and armed. Only three men, two women and a boy were found at home, the rest being out among the whites vending their little wares. Those poor wretches were butchered and scalped in the manner of the savages, by those more savage descendants of the civilized Europeans: Even the hoary locks of the venerable and good old chief Shebaes, who had assisted at the second treaty between the whites and Indians in 1701, and who had always since been the avowed friend of the former, could not excite the mercy, much less the respect of his barbarous assassins:—he was cut to pieces in his bed, and scalped with the rest, and the huts were then committed to the flames. The magistrates of Lancaster collected the remaining Indians, and brought them into that town, condoling with them on the late misfortune, and promising them protection; with which intent they were put into the jail, as the strongest building in the town.

Their merciless blood hounds not satiated with the blood already spilt, and increased to the number of five hundred well armed men, marched into Lancaster. No opposition was made to them, though the first party which arrived did not consist of {30} more than fifty, who without awaiting any of the rest, forced the jail, dragged their victims into the yard, and there immolated them, while clinging to their knees, and supplicating mercy. In this manner they all, men, women, and children, received the hatchet, amid the exultations of their murderers, who after the tragedy, paraded the streets, huzzaing, and using every other mark of self-approbation for the glorious deed they had achieved. How