for yet we are informed that the Indians are consulting measures against us.” As the “frontier inhabitants” stated, they felt crushing “fears” and imminent “danger.” They believed their homes now formed a frontier because Indians were planning an invasion, and, as “frontier inhabitants,” they expected their government to put them at ease—to “be freed from these alarms.” As their words indicated, this crisis struck at the fundamental obligation a government owed to its loyal subjects.4
The appearance of a frontier in Pennsylvania threatened to bring the colony’s experiment with peace to an end. In official records up to 1728, Pennsylvanian officials most often spoke of “frontiers” to describe other British colonies, such as New York, that faced potential invasions from France or Native Americans. The only document comparable to the 1728 petition was an earlier 1701 petition from the Lower Counties (today Delaware) to the proprietor when settlers there feared a seaborne invasion by the French during Queen Anne’s War. The 1701 petitioners drew upon the language of frontier prevalent in the Atlantic world by describing their position as the “weak and naked … frontiers … and dayly threatened with an approaching war.” Their fears proved unfounded, and no other petitions from frontier inhabitants were tendered until twenty-seven years later. In 1728, the petition submitted to the governor showed that the conception of a frontier as a zone of invasion remained, as did the language of vulnerability and desperation. But in marked contrast to the 1701 petitioners, the 1728 petitioners feared an Indian invasion from the west at a time when neither the colony nor the empire was at war.5
As the 1728 petition made clear and as the future would later bear out, frontiers caused colonists who lived in such regions to feel a series of emotions: fear, a desire for the government’s protection, and an expectation that leading individuals—often a general, governor, or prominent community member—would serve as their guardian. But acting like a “frontier government,” as Penn had dubbed New York in 1701, posed a problem for Gordon and other officials in 1728. The petition Gordon received that spring meant that the government had to do something, but it was unclear what. Governments had a duty to defend frontier areas because security was a government’s responsibility to its members. In Pennsylvania, this obligation fell to the proprietorship. To ignore the plea of these colonists might weaken proprietary authority in the minds of the “frontier inhabitants” who looked to him for the support he promised. Worse, the government’s failure to act might force these colonists to take matters into their own hands. Gordon’s task was to calm the fears without escalating tensions and possibly leading the colony into a war of its own making.
Taken together, Gordon and his council realized that the letter from Wright and the petition from the frontier inhabitants meant something serious was afoot in the western areas of the province. They reacted to the growing uncertainty by speeding up the schedule for a long overdue treaty with the Indian groups on the Susquehanna. The council remained confident that the governor could use the meeting to reconcile the Conestogas and Shawnees.
Events, however, interceded and forced Gordon to act sooner than planned. On the morning of May 10, just a few days after receiving Wright’s missive and the petition, Gordon received an emergency express from Mahanatawny, a small town in western Philadelphia County that housed one of the colony’s early iron works. The contents of the message changed everything. “A party of foreign Indians were fallen in amongst our Inhabitants in these parts,” it said. A group of about twenty colonists had responded by forming a militia to defend the settlement. A skirmish ensued. One Pennsylvanian was dead; the colonists may have killed the Indian captain, “a Spanish Indian” they called him; the colonists expected more violence soon; they needed the governor.6
Gordon raced to the site to investigate and prevent further hostilities. When he arrived later that afternoon, he knew that he had entered a frontier zone. “The country,” he reported, “[was] in very great disorder.” A new group of petitioners greeted him, this one from Colebrookdale. “We have suffered and is like to suffer by the ingians,” the seventy-eight signers told Gordon. Evoking the language of the previous petition, they said they were “your poor afflicted people” with “poor wives and children” who daily felt the threat of invasion. Gordon talked to many others who were “under great apprehensions” that “numbers of Indians [were] coming to attack them.” He discovered a group of German settlers who had turned a mill in New Hanover into a makeshift fort, while others congregated at homes “in order to defend themselves.” Some were, Gordon later recounted, “so incensed, that they seemed determined to kill any Indian they could find.” This was a war zone in which people expected an attack any moment, and they looked to their governor to protect them from it.7
Gordon remained above the fray. He looked into the causes of the skirmish by conducting a series of interviews to separate fact from fiction. His investigation revealed that the attack was not as violent nor as large as first reported. The supposedly large group of Indians marauding about the settlements turned out to number only eleven. The colonists, uncertain of what the Indians were up to, created a militia to approach these strangers. As the colonial delegation neared the Indians, someone opened fire. The colonists told Gordon the Indians shot first; he had his suspicions. In any case, both sides fired. The Indians fled. The “Spanish Indian” reportedly killed in action likely survived unscathed. Gordon found that the colonist who was supposedly killed instead “appeared only to be slightly wounded in the belly.” Privately, Gordon admitted that “he could not help thinking that our people had given some provocation.”8
Gordon’s hunch was right. In time, it would become apparent that the invading Indians were Shawnees, a group allied with the colony. Conflict always seemed to follow the Shawnees. At the moment, they were at odds with both the Conestogas and another group called the Flatheads who were from the Ohio River Valley. Prepared to do battle with one or the other, the Shawnees were indeed dressed for war when they encountered the ad hoc Pennsylvania militia. But their intended targets were other Natives, not the European newcomers.9
Such nuance was lost amid the fear of self-described “frontier inhabitants,” however. As new arrivals to the new world who were fueled by rumors and stories about Indians who lived beyond in “the woods,” they tended to think of all Native Americans as the same—as “Ingians,” as the Colebrookdale petition put it. They viewed the warlike maneuvers of the Shawnees in the darkest possible light and grew certain that this initial foray portended future invasions.10
Gordon found himself in a quandary. The frontier settlers were no idle threat to his government. By taking on war-making powers, they challenged his fundamental powers as captain-general and undermined the authority of government. Gordon had to assert governmental control by quelling such independent military actions. Failure to do so would mean the colony lacked a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, the fundamental claim to legitimacy upon which all governments rest. Conversely, he also had to quell the fears of these “frontier inhabitants” who looked to him for aid. Gordon’s quandary was made all the more difficult because he oversaw a colony that had virtually no military history or culture. Gordon recognized the easy combustibility of the situation and used his authority to “quiet the country.” He told settlers to cool their anti-Indian sentiment by warning them that “any rash act might be attended with fatal consequences.” The governor’s very presence likely calmed concerns too, but the promise of powder and lead in the event of an attack probably had the greatest effect.11
By the evening of May 11, Gordon felt satisfied that he had successfully defused the situation. But as he began to pack to return to Philadelphia, another express arrived, this one from Samuel Nutt, a local justice of the peace, that forced Gordon to cancel his journey.12
“Arms and Ammunition …in Order to Defend Our Fronteers”
As the governor was making his rounds in Mahanatawny, Walter Winter, a Welsh farmer living in the small village of Cucussea in Chester County, was making his own rounds. Along the way, he ran into a German settler who was
