Conestoga Indian Town - PLAQUE
Manor Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The Conestoga Indians In origin largely the survivors Of the defeated ancient Susquehannas or Minquas Of Iroquoian stock Located their village Variously on these lands In the Penn Proprietary Manor of Conestoga Chiefly west of this point. They were visited here in 1701 by WILLIAM PENN who made treaties with them. The tribe was exterminated by the Paxton Boys in 1763.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
The people remembered here were survivors of the once-powerful Susquehannock (Minquas) nation, an Iroquoian people whose towns had commanded the lower Susquehanna before war and disease shattered them. Regrouped as the Conestoga, they lived on land within William Penn's proprietary manor and treated with Penn himself in 1701 under his policy of peaceful dealing. That fragile peace ended in 1763, when a vigilante mob from Paxton murdered the last of them.
Why it matters
The Conestoga's fate is one of early America's starkest lessons in the limits of colonial goodwill, showing how quickly frontier violence could overwhelm even a treaty made in good faith.
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Related people
- · William Penn
Related events
- · Paxton Boys massacre
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Great Minqua Path
Manor Township, PA · est. 1951
This was the great artery of the mid-17th-century fur trade, the chief trail by which the Minqua—also known as the Susquehannock—carried beaver pelts eastward to the European settlements along the Delaware. The trade was so lucrative that the Swedes, Dutch, and English fought one another to control it. The path traced a route of immense commercial and political importance in the early contest for the region.
Washington Boro Archaeological Sites
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Along a bend of the lower Susquehanna River lies one of the densest clusters of archaeological sites in Pennsylvania, holding traces of human presence stretching back some 11,000 years — from fleeting hunting camps to sprawling palisaded villages. Its most powerful inhabitants were the Susquehannocks, an Iroquoian-speaking people who dominated the regional fur trade with European colonists through much of the 1600s. By 1675, warfare with rival nations and devastating epidemics had shattered their power. Generations of excavation here have reshaped how scholars understand Native lifeways in the mid-Atlantic.
Martin Chartier - PLAQUE
Manor Township, PA · est. 1925
Martin Chartier was a French adventurer from Canada who had served at La Salle's Fort St. Louis in the Illinois country before leading a band of Shawnee eastward, first to Maryland and then, by 1697, to the Susquehanna at Pequea Creek. Settling on a tract granted him by William Penn, he became one of early Pennsylvania's most important Indian traders and interpreters, and an agent in Penn's treaties with the Susquehanna nations. His son Peter, born of his Shawnee wife, carried on the trade after him.
Captain Thomas Cresap (1703-1790) - PLAQUE
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When Thomas Cresap settled here in 1730, the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland was undrawn and hotly contested, and he claimed these lands for Lord Baltimore against the heirs of William Penn. His stubborn defense made him a flashpoint of "Cresap's War," the frontier feud over the disputed boundary. In 1736 Pennsylvania forces burned him out of his fortified log house and hauled him off a prisoner to Philadelphia.