influence all Paxton actions throughout its existence. The Susquehannock tribe which inhabited Conestoga Indiantown had lived on the land which William Penn ceded to their ancestors in the 1690s. Once the crossroads of diplomacy and trade, it was now in permanent decline. Many Conestoga were Christian, and they had lived peacefully with their European neighbors for decades. They lived by bartering handicrafts, hunting, and from subsistence food given to them by the Pennsylvania government. The Indians could not hunt for fear of being mistaken for an enemy by colonial forces. Will Sock, the prominent member of the tribe, became a target by the Paxton boys as they made unsubstantiated claims that the Conestoga secretly provided aid and intelligence to rebellious tribes. These claims came from a man named Mathew Smith, who, along with five companions, decided to investigate the Conestoga village. "Smith believed he could see dozens of strangers armed Indians in the little village and the six returned for help." John Elder sent a short message to the party to dissuade the coming violence, but it had little effect. The massacre At daybreak on December 14, 1763, a vigilante group of fifty-seven Scots-Irish frontiersmen attacked homes in Conestoga Town (near present-day Millersville), murdered six, and burned their cabins. Fourteen of the Conestogas had been unable to reach home, having been away selling personal wares the previous evening, and spent the night with neighbors. After hearing of the murders, they fled to Lancaster town where the new governor, John Penn, offered them refuge in the local prisons. The colonial government in the wake of the massacre held an inquest and determined that the killings were murder. The new governor, John Penn (William Penn’s grandson), offered a reward for the capture of the Paxton Boys. Penn placed the remaining fourteen-sixteen Conestoga in protective custody in Lancaster. Believing that one of the protected Indians was a murderer, the Paxton Boys rode to Lancaster, believing their job was only half done. John Elder himself appeared before the angry mob to try and restrain them, but to little effect. On December 27, 1763, under the leadership of Matthew Smith and Lazarus Stewart, a mob of Paxton Boys broke into the Lancaster prison. They killed, scalped, and dismembered six adults and eight children. The government of Pennsylvania offered a new reward after this second attack, this time 200 pounds (US$53,363 in 2022) for the capture