“to Shoot ye Rioters as soon as ever”: Edward Shippen and the Paxton Boys during Pontiac’s War 1763-1764

^{Header Image: Edward Shippen to Joseph Shippen, 26 September 1763, Edward Shippen letters and papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.}

In September 1763, Edward Shippen wrote to his son Joseph extolling the virtues of the “Paxton & Shippensburg brave Boys, who lately defeated” the Native Americans in Muncy, Pennsylvania who had allied with Pontiac in a pan-Indian war against European encroachers (1). However, merely four months later, Shippen’s opinion on these “brave Boys” had drastically changed as he explained to his son how he urged “Peoples of all Denominations…to Shoot ye Rioters as soon as ever they made their appearances.” (2) How had Shippen’s opinion changed so drastically and so quickly?

During my time as a David Center for the American Revolution Short Term Fellow at the American Philosophical Society, I focused on understanding the French and Indian War and Pontiac’s War as the contexts from which violent extralegal groups such as the Paxton Boys emerged in the 1760s. Often composed of veterans from various campaigns during this period of imperial warfare, members of the Paxton Boys and other extralegal groups, like the Black Boys and the Augusta Boys, leveraged their service to claim authority, legitimacy, and justice. However, Shippen’s reaction to the actions of the Paxton Boys over the course of four short months demonstrates that these concepts were hotly contested throughout the mid-18th century.  

The Paxton Boys are most famous, or perhaps infamous, for their massacre of the Conestoga Indians in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in December of 1763 and their subsequent march on Philadelphia in January and February of 1764. The Native Americans that the Paxton Boys mercilessly killed had converted to Christianity with the spiritual direction of Moravian missionaries and lived under the protection of the Pennsylvania colonial government. Colonial leaders like Shippen had a vested interest in protecting peaceful native groups as both Pennsylvania and the British Empire struggled to maintain peaceful Indigenous diplomatic relationships. On the other hand, the Paxton Boys saw no distinction between the Native Americans they attacked at Muncy with those protected at the Conestoga Manor in Lancaster. Throughout 1763, Shippen’s letters to his son were full of frantic recommendations to stop the Anglo-Indigenous violence of Pontiac’s War. But as a colonial leader, Shippen’s sense of control over Indian policies throughout the 1760s allowed him to recognize nuance in a way that the Paxton Boys could not. Therefore, from Edward Shippen’s perspective, it was the Paxton Boys who had taken a dramatic turn by ignoring the delicate balance of Indigenous diplomacy.

In addition to these letters in the Edward Shippen Letters and Papers, I explored a variety of documents and collections such as the Thomas Penn Correspondence (Mss.974.8.P36c), Minutes of Indian Treaties and Conferences (Mss. 970.5 P26), and The Papers of Sir Jeffery Amherst (Mss.DLAR.Film.382), all of which contributed greatly to my understanding of how both colonial and imperial leaders, as well as extralegal groups like the Paxton Boys and the Black Boys, used violence to communicate their own visions of justice, legitimacy, and authority along the mid-Atlantic frontier throughout the 1750s and 1760s.