Frontier Country. Patrick Spero

know almost nothing about Thomas Wright except that he died on the night of September 11, 1727. His death, however, was the first in a chain of events that pushed Pennsylvania toward the brink of war and revealed the precariousness of the peace that existed in Penn’s woods.¹⁹

      Things started out well for Wright on the evening of his demise. His friend and fellow trader John Burt had invited him to a trading party with some Indians who had goods to sell. The group gathered around a campfire near Burt’s home in a place called Snaketown, a short-lived trading community that never appeared on a map. Although we may not know Snaketown’s exact location, we do know that it sat on the eastern banks of the Susquehanna River about forty miles north of Conestoga. Desolate and small, Snaketown was nonetheless an important part of Pennsylvania because it connected Indian Country to the European markets in the east. Wright knew of the huge demand for such goods, and he figured that if he and Burt acquired the Indians’ wares, then they could resell them for an easy profit.²⁰

      The Indians and the colonists seemed quick friends that night. Burt brought some rum to help lubricate the transfer of goods. After a few drinks, the Indians began to dance around the fire. Wright, feeling playful, stood and joined them, singing and dancing “after their manner.” As often happens, the boozy play turned violent when “some dispute arose” between an Indian and Wright. Perhaps the Indian viewed Wright’s dance as a mocking gesture; perhaps it was. In any case, tempers flared. As the confrontation heated up, Burt egged Wright on, telling him to “knock down the Indian.” Wright grabbed one of the Indians and appeared ready to strike, but he thought better of it. Burt was not satisfied. Instead, he unleashed a volley of unexpected blows on the Indian. Burt and Wright then surveyed the wreckage, saw that they were dangerously outnumbered, and retreated to Burt’s home.²¹

      The Indians, angry at the insult, pursued and crashed through the door. Wright tried to calm down the drunken melee. While he tried to mediate, Burt only grew more enraged. Burt threatened to kill the Indians and sought his gun. Instead of grabbing his weapon, he grabbed the chamber pot and threw, in the words of the colonial records, “dung” on the Indians. Things seemed ready to explode. Wright grew terrified and fled the scene. The Indians followed. The next morning Burt found Wright’s body in his henhouse, his head bashed in.²²

      It fell to John Wright, the local justice of the peace and of no apparent relation to Thomas Wright, to sort through this mess. Wright was an active Quaker who took his public service seriously, sometimes to his personal detriment. Though born into the middle class in England in 1667, his personal finances took a turn for the worse when he was in his forties because he spent more time paying attention to the Friends’ concerns than his own. Seeking a new opportunity, he left for Pennsylvania in 1714, embarking for the colonies at the unusually late age of forty-seven and settling in Chester County. He gained instant respect and served in the Assembly, but when he was sixty years old, his economic fortunes took a turn for the worse for the second time. Once again, he headed west in search of more opportunity, purchasing a large tract of land on the banks of the Susquehanna a few miles south of Snaketown. As more people settled in the area, the governor appointed the well-connected and respected Wright as an early justice of the peace. His new position required him to establish government authority and maintain good order as the colony expanded to areas that lacked both.²³

      When Wright learned of the murder at John Burt’s, he organized a grand jury to investigate. The jury had no question of guilt. Depositions stated that when Thomas Wright fled, “the Indians pursued him.” “It’s very certain the Indians killed Thomas Wright,” the grand jury declared. But the jurors did not think the colonists wholly blameless, adding “that the said Burt is the principal occasion of it.” Jonas Davenport, likely the same man who had beat Henry Hawkins, served on the grand jury, showing just how small and intimate governing these new communities could be. Davenport held little regard for Burt, later saying that had Burt not “provoked and abused” the Indians, then the initial dispute would have been resolved “amicably.”²⁴

      With the grand jury’s inquest complete, John Wright had to take the next unpleasant step in this already sordid affair. Since the fallout from an Indian murdering a settler could lead to more violence, Wright had to notify his superiors in Philadelphia so they could take the appropriate steps to deescalate tensions. Wright sent Jonas Davenport to Philadelphia to bring official news of the murder to the government. On the night of September 26, Davenport reached the Philadelphia home of James Logan, then the secretary of the Provincial Council, and told him of the proceedings in Snaketown. Known as a man with a ferocious intelligence and as a man ferociously loyal to the proprietor’s interests, Logan quickly realized how dangerous the events in the west could be to the colony’s stability.²⁵

      The next day Logan gathered the members of the Provincial Council together in a private room at the Philadelphia County Courthouse to address the issues the murder raised. The council was a central, if often overlooked, body in the governance of the colony. Although it wielded little direct power, the council helped governors make all decisions, small and large. Most of the members of the Provincial Council served for many years and provided governors, whose tenures could be short, with the type of wisdom that came with continuity. There is even evidence that the governor needed a quorum of his council present before making a decision.²⁶

      At the head of the council sat the governor, Patrick Gordon, who had arrived in the colony only a year earlier with his wife and five children. Sixty-two years old, Gordon had a distinguished military career, a cool temperament, and a retiring personality. But having served in Europe and spent most of his adult life in England, the problems of colonial governance struck him as wholly unfamiliar. As he confessed in his inaugural address to the Assembly, he was unschooled in the art of “refined politicks,” which, he added, “often serve to perplex mankind.” A man as experienced as Gordon knew that he had to rely on the advice of his council to chart a safe course in this still strange land. One of his first acts was to reinstate the powerful James Logan, who had been removed from the position because of disagreements with the previous governor.²⁷

      Dealing with the fallout of the Wright murder forced Gordon to become familiar with the many roles the colonial governor had to play. Officially, the proprietor was the governor of the colony, while his appointed deputy who served in the colony was the lieutenant governor, but most people called the lieutenant governor “Governor” because he exercised all the day-to-day powers that such officials held. All matters of law enforcement rested with the proprietor, who conveyed them to his governor in residence. The governor in residence was also the chief diplomat for the colony. In that capacity, he had to maintain good relations with Indian allies and manage the geopolitical interests of the British Empire in the region. Finally, the governor was the captain-general, meaning commander in chief, during times of war. In this case, Gordon hoped that the successful deployment of his two other responsibilities would prevent his use of the latter.

      Gordon and his council recognized that Wright’s murder was an important test of the colony’s authority in the newly settled regions. Indeed, the meeting began with a discussion of the murder’s significance to the colony’s history. “This was,” they observed, “the first accident of the kind they had ever heard of in this province since its first settlement.” They knew that they would have to respond with care. As they noted, the Indians had “received very high provocations,” but in their estimation that still did not justify murder. Moreover, since “a subject had lost his life,” the government was duty bound “to take notice of and move in it.”²⁸

      The council then debated how the government should react. The councilors recognized that if they let a murder against a colonist go unpunished, then colonists might question the proprietor’s authority, since his promise of protection served as the basis for colonists’ loyalty to the colony. At the same time, because the violence was between Indians and colonists, it was necessary that the government’s response did not upset the alliances the colony had with Native groups in the region. After weighing their options, the group concluded that since Wright’s murder happened in an area in which the colony exercised legal authority and because Wright was a “subject,” then the governor needed to publicly condemn the murder and demand the guilty be brought to justice to reassure the