council expressed similar sentiments in 1727 as it reflected upon the Wright murder, noting “that this government had been formerly happy above most of our neighbours, in preserving a good understanding and an uninterrupted friendship with all our Indians.” Gordon shared a common vision for the colony, noting in his inaugural address that his goals were: “to discountenance parties, divisions, and factions in government, to maintain right and justice, to promote vertue, to suppress vice, immorality and prophaness, to assist and protect the magistrates in discharge of their duty herein, to encourage legal trade, and to use the Indians well.” The Wright murder threatened the Pennsylvania model of harmony through justice.35
During its investigation, the council found that the government’s recent performance had failed to live up to the promise of its laws. The situation leading to Wright’s murder illustrated all the ways they had failed. The council observed that “it was scarce possible to find a man in the whole government more unfit” for trading than Burt, and yet Burt had received a license to trade on recommendation from the Chester County Court. Burt’s license, the council went on, “clearly shews the necessity of having that trade, and qualifications of the persons admitted to it more narrowly inspected, than is at present provided.” They also pointed out that laws had long barred the use of alcohol during trading, and yet it flowed freely that night in the woods. The very promise of security that the colonial state was supposed to offer to its members seemed at stake. “Unless some more effectual provision is made,” they concluded, then “the publick tranquility,” the hallmark of early Pennsylvania life, “will ever be in danger.”36
Gordon agreed with his council that the government needed to change its ways and become more proactive in regulating trade and managing its alliances with Indian groups. Gordon ordered the chief justice of the colony to issue warrants for Burt’s arrest. He also agreed that he needed to craft a treaty with Indians to repair any damage inflicted by these events and renew bonds of friendship. The only problem was that the calendar and custom of the Indians made such a treaty unlikely in the short term. Most of the Indian diplomats “were abroad on hunting” until the spring. The council thus resolved to begin planning for a major treaty after the spring thaw. In the meantime, they hoped that the precarious peace would hold.37
CHAPTER 3
The First Frontier Crisis
The spring thaw did not come quickly enough. Soon after Thomas Wright’s murder, rumors of Indian war began circulating. Animosity between Indians and colonists turned deadly in the spring of 1728 when a confluence of events made war appear imminent. As officials tried to avoid the colony’s first conflict, they had to either confront the issue of expansion that the founders of the government had ignored—or face the potentially deadly consequences.
The most dangerous threat to stability during the crisis was the belief held by some colonists that Pennsylvania had “frontiers,” a new development on the geopolitical landscape of the colony. These “frontier inhabitants,” as they called themselves, petitioned their government for the support they believed they deserved. At the height of this uncertainty, groups of colonists who feared an imminent invasion formed unofficial militias to provide protection and launch raids on Indian groups. The ad hoc mobilizations eventually resulted in several clashes between Indians and colonists and caused the death of several Indians. The government, primarily through proprietary offices, adapted and averted war by using the levers of the state that the Frame of 1701 left to the proprietor to reestablish order on these “frontiers.”
After the crisis passed, proprietary officials realized that they needed a stronger presence in regions of new colonial settlement. They thus devised a means to solve the problems they encountered in 1728: new counties. Through this legal entity, they could maintain order while also providing a renewed sense of security to colonists living far from the colonial capital. Justices of the peace, sheriffs, and courts could be used to implement state policy and prevent such crises from happening again. The frontier crisis of 1728 thus exposed the problems of the Frame of 1701, and proprietary officials solved the problem through an ad hoc means of colony building that would guide expansion until the American Revolution.
Figure 5. Sites of Pennsylvania’s first frontier crisis, 1728. In May 1728, a group of colonists calling themselves “frontier inhabitants” because they feared an Indian invasion clashed with a group of Native American warriors near modern-day Pottstown. The violence created a crisis that obliged the governor to travel there to assert his authority over the organizers. He then traveled to Conestoga to reassure Native Americans and colonists in the region that the colony remained committed to peace. The government also took a step to address the problems western areas posed to stability: they created a new county, Lancaster, which could help the government maintain order in new settlements near the Susquehanna.
“The Frontier Inhabitants of Pennsylvania”
The frontier crisis began on April 18, 1728, when James LeTort, a Frenchman who renounced his national allegiance to become one of Pennsylvania’s most prominent traders, arrived in Philadelphia carrying dire news. According to LeTort’s sources, Pennsylvania was about to suffer an invasion on a scale unknown in British North America. His story was convoluted. It involved the French-allied Miamis residing near Lake Erie combining with the Delawares and Five Nations living in Pennsylvania and New York to launch a joint invasion of Pennsylvania and New York. If he was right, Pennsylvania was about to develop frontiers for the first time in its history.1
LeTort’s information was so explosive that he soon found himself testifying before the Provincial Council. The council responded coolly to Le-Tort’s concern. They too had sources of information, and none indicated trouble. But LeTort’s report did remind the council that a treaty between the government and allied Indians was long overdue. “In the mean time,” the council advised the governor, “the present circumstances of our affairs with the Indians rendered it necessary, that these people should be taken notice of and visited by the Governor.” The governor agreed and promised that he would “undertake the journey, whenever he can be informed … that the Indians were returned from hunting, for he understood there was scarce any Indians at present at or about Conestogoe.” Lest anyone accuse him of delaying, he made clear to the council that “nothing should be wanting on his part to establish and confirm the good understanding that had hitherto subsisted between this government and these people.”2
Meanwhile, on May 3, a couple of weeks after LeTort’s visit, John Wright, the same justice of the peace who handled the Thomas Wright murder the previous fall, sent the governor more troubling news. War between the Conestogas and Shawnees, two Native American groups allied with the colony, was imminent. A few days before, two Shawnees had murdered a Conestoga man and woman. The enraged Conestogas demanded the Shawnees turn over the accused. The Shawnees acceded, but the prisoners managed to escape. The Conestogas responded by organizing a party of young men “painted for warr, all armed.” Wright ended his report with a plea: “The Governor’s pressence pritty speedily is absolutely necessary at Constogo to settle affares amongst the Indians.”3
Soon colonists living near these warring Indians banded together, fearing that the Indians were preparing an assault on their homes. These colonists also reconsidered their position within the polity and saw something new appear on their landscape: a “frontier.” In a desperate plea sent to the governor on April 29, a petition bearing the signature of over eighty men whose English and German last names reflected the growing diversity of the colony declared that they were “the frontier inhabitants of Pennsylvania.” “Alarmed by a nois of the Indians,” they wrote, “women in childbed” were fleeing their homes, and “several families have left their
