REPRESENTATIONS OF GENOCIDE: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SCHOLARLY AND PUBLIC INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CONESTOGA MASSACRE

Abstract

In December 1763, a volunteer frontier militia group in Paxton, Pennsylvania rode into Conestoga Indiantown and massacred six Conestoga as they slept. The remaining fourteen were taken to the Lancaster workhouse attached to the county jail. It was then that the Paxton Boys returned, to slaughter the remaining Conestoga. This massacre has been frequently referred to in scholarly writing as ethnic cleansing, reducing the meaning of the massacre, how it is remembered, and how it is publicly disseminated through museums and historic markers. This thesis argues that the Conestoga Massacre should be interpreted in the context of genocide in order to change the perpetuated justified violence narrative that populates American Indian history, and brings to the forefront the genocidal tendencies that characterized the violent precursors to the Revolution committed against Native peoples, inseparable from the foundations of the building of America. This thesis will utilize scholarly and public interpretations as its primary source base in the examination and analysis of the memory of the massacre, give historiographical context, and will conclude with the introduction of a new interpretation and suggestions for the future of the massacre’s public display.