The Penn's Creek massacre was an October 16, 1755, raid by the Lenape (Delaware) on a settlement along Penn's Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania. It was the first of a series of deadly raids on Pennsylvania settlements by Native Americans allied with the French in the French and Indian War.
Of the 26 settlers they found living on Penn's Creek, the Lenape killed 14 and took 11 captive (one man was wounded but managed to escape). Five of the captives are known to have eventually returned to colonial society, and their experiences have been popularized in several young adult novels and a film.
The Lenape had been angered by years of European settlers encroaching on their land. They had lost their traditional lands between the Lehigh and Delaware rivers to the provincial government of Pennsylvania in a fraudulent deal known as the Walking Purchase, and many of them had subsequently moved into the Susquehanna River valley by permission of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). One year before the Penn's Creek massacre, the Haudenosaunee had sold much of the Susquehanna Valley to the governments of Pennsylvania and Connecticut without consulting the Lenape, who once again found themselves being displaced by arriving settlers.
As a direct result of the Penn's Creek massacre and subsequent raids, Pennsylvania assemblyman Benjamin Franklin persuaded the governor and assembly of the province to abandon its roots in Quaker pacifism and establish an armed military force and a chain of forts to protect the settlements. Franklin himself helped to organize and train the first Pennsylvania regiments. The Lenape and other displaced Native Americans continued their attacks on settlers and battles with the provincial forces for three years, until the Treaty of Easton was signed between the tribes and the British in 1758.
Background
Albany and Walking Purchases
One year before the massacre, delegates from seven colonies met with 150 leaders from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy at the 1754 Albany Congress. The purpose of the gathering was to solidify the alliance between the British and the Haudenosaunee in the face of a growing French challenge to British control of the colonies. During the Albany Congress, the Haudenosaunee sold much of the Susquehanna Valley to a delegation from the provincial government of Pennsylvania, which sought the land for the purpose of opening it up to European settlement, in a deal that became known as the Albany Purchase. Two of the men in this Pennsylvania delegation were Benjamin Franklin and John Penn, the grandson of the province's founder, William Penn. The Haudenosaunee reserved some parts of the Susquehanna Valley, including the sub-valley called the Wyoming Valley, from the sale for the use of themselves and their allies, but only days after they signed the agreement, a delegation from Connecticut plied the Haudenosaunee leaders with rum and induced them to sign over the Wyoming Valley while they were intoxicated.
Although the provincial governments recognized the Haudenosaunee as the sole owners of the land, the Lenape had been living in the Wyoming Valley and other parts of the Susquehanna Valley since having been forced off their own traditional lands in the Lehigh Valley of eastern Pennsylvania 17 years earlier by the 1737 Walking Purchase. In that event, John Penn's uncles (Thomas Penn and John "The American" Penn) had produced a copy of what was likely an unsigned draft of a deed which had been drawn up 50 years earlier, when their father William Penn had been considering buying land from the Lenape; it stated that the Lenape had sold William Penn as much land in their valley as could be walked by a man in a day-and-a-half. Although the Lenape protested the validity of the document, they were told by the provincial government that it was legally binding. Believing they had no choice, four Lenape chiefs signed an agreement to abide by the terms of the deed after their more powerful allies the Haudenosaunee, whose protection the Lenape were under by an agreement between the two tribes wherein the Haudenosaunee were the "men" and the Lenape the "women" in their relationship, refused to intervene on their behalf. The Penn brothers then hired the three fastest runners in the colony to take the "walk" and had paths secretly cleared and marked ahead of them. Two of the three runners gave up well before the allotted time ran out, but one, Edward Marshall, managed to cover about 65 miles in 18 hours, resulting in all of the Lenape's land being taken from them.
In a 1743 communication to the governor of Pennsylvania, the Haudenosaunee overseer, Oneida chief Shikellamy, had complained about white settlers encroaching into the Susquehanna Valley. In that message, Shikellamy stated that the Haudenosaunee had granted the land surrounding a Susquehanna tributary, the Juniata River, "to our cousins the Delawares (Lenape) and our brethren the Shawanese (Shawnee) for a hunting-ground, and we ourselves hunt there sometimes." Nevertheless, the Haudenosaunee did not consult the Lenape or the Shawnee before selling the land eleven years later to Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
Thus the Lenape found their current home sold for European settlement. This resulted in a rift between the Lenape and the Haudenosaunee and caused Lenape resentment toward the German and Swiss settlers who immediately began moving into the Valley.
French and Indian War
One year after the Albany Purchase, the French and Indian War between Great Britain and France began, with each side seeking control of the North American colonies. Although the Haudenosaunee refused to take sides for the first four years of the conflict and instructed all of the tribes under their protection to do the same, the Lenape and the Shawnee broke ranks and joined northern tribes the Huron, Ottawa and Ojibwe in forging an alliance with the French.
On July 9, 1755, the French and their Native American allies decisively defeated a combined force of colonial and British soldiers led by General Edward Braddock at the Battle of the Monongahela in Braddock's Field, Pennsylvania, 10 miles (16 km) east of Pittsburgh. Three months later, a French and Native American army of about 1,500 men prepared to march east in order to secure the Susquehanna River as a supply line. They sent ahead of them several advance parties of Lenape. It was one of these Lenape advance parties which came upon the settlement at Penn's Creek, located on the main branch of the Susquehanna River, in the early morning hours of October 16, 1755.
The massacre
Before dawn on October 16, a group of eight Lenape warriors attacked the settlement of Penn's Creek. The warriors' names were Kech Kinnyperlin, Joseph Compass and young Joseph Compass, young Thomas Hickman, Kalasquay, Souchy, Machynego and Katoochquay.
After firing several shots, the Lenape first attacked the Swiss farmer Jean Jacques Le Roy before setting his house on fire. His body was later found partially burned with two tomahawks still buried in his forehead. A spring that emerges from the ground near the site where his body was discovered is today known as Le Roy's Spring, and the tiny stream that flows from it into Penn's Creek is known as Sweitzer's (Swisser's) Run.
Le Roy's son, also named Jean Jacques and called John Jacob, fought with his father's killers but was overpowered and taken captive, along with his 12-year-old sister Marie and another young girl, Mary Ann Villars, who was living in the house. When a neighbor of Le Roy's by the name of Bastian rode up on horseback, he was shot and scalped.
Two of the Lenape then traveled to the Leininger household, approximately a half-mile away. There, they demanded rum, but none was in the house so they were given tobacco instead. After they smoked a pipe, they stated "We are Allegheny Indians, and your enemies. You must all die!". They shot Sebastian Leininger and tomahawked his son, 20-year-old John Conrad, before taking his daughters, 12-year-old Barbara and 9-year-old Regina, captive. His wife, Regina Wucherer, was away at a mill and was thus spared.
Several of the Lenape took the prisoners (as well as horses and provisions they had plundered) from the Le Roy and Leininger households into the forest where they were joined by the rest of the Lenape warriors, who brought with them six scalps and stated that they had had a good hunt that day. Later, some of the Lenape went back into the settlement and resumed killing, returning in the evening with nine more scalps and five more prisoners. Hanna Breilinger's husband, Jacob, had been killed and she and her two children taken captive. A settler named Peter Lick was also taken along with his two sons, John and William.
Of the fourteen settlers murdered at Penn's Creek, thirteen were men and elderly women, and one was a two-week-old infant. One unidentified man was wounded but escaped and made his way to a nearby settlement to report what had happened.
Aftermath
John Harris expedition
As news of the massacre spread, panic gripped the settlements. Trading post owner John Harris Jr. wrote to the governor and offered to lead an expedition upriver to try to pacify the Native Americans and find out the mindset of those at Shamokin (present-day Sunbury), since the Indians there were known to be friendly to settlers. He gathered a group of 40 or 50 men and set out on October 22.
At Shamokin, they found a gathering of Lenape painted all in black who had come from the Ohio and Allegheny River Valleys. Andrew Montour, an Indian of mixed Oneida, Algonquin and French ancestry, was among those painted in black but was known to Harris and often acted as an interpreter. He advised Harris to return home immediately by way of the east side of the Susquehanna.
Harris turned his group back but disregarded Montour's warning to stay on the east side of the river. As the group headed back along the west side of the Susquehanna on October 25, they were ambushed by twenty or thirty Lenape in what is now the northern end of the borough of Selinsgrove. Harris later reported that he and his men killed four of the attackers while losing three of their own number, and that "four or five" more of his group drowned in the river while attempting to escape. A doctor who was riding behind Harris on the same horse was shot in the back and killed. Harris's horse was then shot out from under him and he had to swim across the river to safety.
On either that same day or the next, the Lenape crossed the Susquehanna and attacked settlements at Hunter's Mill. Upon learning of the ambush and subsequent attacks, the Seneca chief Belt of Wampum gathered thirty of his own men and set out in pursuit of the perpetrators, although it's not known if they met with any success.Sipe 1929, p. 210
Further attacks
Penn's Creek was the first of a series of attacks on Pennsylvania settlements by the Lenape and other tribes allied with the French. Two weeks after the massacre, Lenape and Shawnee together were led by the Lenape war chief Shingas (also known as The Delaware King and called Shingas the Terrible by colonists) in nearly wiping out the Scotch-Irish settlements in what is now Fulton and Franklin counties on the Maryland border, in what became known as the Great Cove massacre. They killed or took captive 47 settlers in the Big Cove settlement alone in a brutal incursion that lasted several days and saw children murdered in front of their parents and wives forced to watch their husbands tortured; one woman over ninety years old was later found impaled on a stake with both breasts cut off. Next, the Lenape attacked settlers along Swatara Creek in what is now Lebanon County and Tulpehocken Creek in Berks County.
In late November, a dozen Lenape led by the chief Captain Jacobs invaded Gnadenhuetten (now Lehighton), a farming community for Christian Indians run by Moravian settlers. Eleven settlers were either murdered or taken captive. From December 10 to 11, a half-dozen Lenape killed or kidnapped members of five farming families along the Pohopoco Creek in what is now Towamensing Township.
They continued on to the area that is today Stroudsburg and on December 11, 1755, besieged the plantation of the Brodhead family. The five Brodhead brothers (Charles, Daniel, Garett, John and Luke) and their youngest sister, 12-year-old Ann, barricaded themselves inside along with some local settlers who had sought refuge at their home and fought an hours-long gun battle that ultimately held off the attackers. It was the first of several attacks in the coming years on the Brodhead home, and the family was widely commended for their bravery in battling the threat.
There were only about 200 warriors among the Susquehanna Lenape, but their numbers were soon bolstered by approximately 700 Ohio Lenape who came east to join them in their raids. By March 1756, five months after beginning their killing spree at Penn's Creek, they had killed some 200 settlers and taken an equal number captive. Settlers across eastern Pennsylvania abandoned their homesteads and fled to more-populated areas to the south and east, in hopes of finding safety in numbers.