The Enoch Brown Massacre

"During the Pontiac war on the 26th day of July, 1764, a worthy Christian schoolmaster, Enoch Brown, and ten scholars, viz.: Ruth Hart, Ruth Hale, Even Taylor, George Dunstan and five others whose names are unknown, were ruthlessly slaughtered by the Indians in a little log school-hose located in Antrim township, three miles north of Greencatle, Pa.

Francis Parkman, the historian, says it was an "outrage unmatched in fiendish atrocity through all the annals of the war.” Four savages presented themselves at the door as the teacher, with Bible in hand, was inducting the opening serves of the school. He was shot down while begging for the lives of the children, all of whom were also knocked in the head and scalped by the bloodthirsty fiends.  The master and scholars were buried in a common grave near the side of the school-house, by the horror-stricken settlers."

This account of the massacre was written by the  Reverend Cyrus Cort in an article titled, “The Horrors of Border Life".  He writes for a Sunday school audience in The Guardian, a Christian magazine, from a safe distance of about 120 years.

   

Reverend Cort fails to mention that there was one survivor: "One student, Archie McCullough was scalped but the Indians did not realize he had not been killed. He hid in the fireplace inside the schoolhouse for some time before making his way to the nearest spring. There he washed his head before a nearby neighbor to the school found him. Archie lived to be quite old; however, he was mentally scarred from that day on. According to Archie’s story, “two old Indians and a young Indian rushed up to the door soon after the opening of the morning session. The master, surmising their object, prayed them only to take his life and spare the children, but all were brutally knocked in the head with an Indian maul and scalped.” Farmers who had been concerned with the silence surrounding the schoolhouse discovered the bodies of Enoch Brown and his ten students a few hours after the attack; but days would pass before the people of Antrim Township lay the bodies to rest.”

Source: The Pennsylvania Center for the Book - Enoch Brown School Massacre

The Pennsylvania Center for the Book - Enoch Brown School Massacre

The Reverend Cort also fails to mention that the year before that in:

"…1763, a white gang, the Paxton Boys, murdered six Indians; and then a few days later, killed fourteen members of a peace-loving Indian settlement that for more than seventy years had lived at Conestoga near Lancaster."

"The white man and Indian story isn't one sided. The grim irony was intensified by the fact that, just a few weeks before the Enoch Brown incident, Governor John Penn formally announced the promise of bounties to be paid to the white man for Indian scalps."

Source: A Disquisition Portraying The History Relative To The Enoch Brown Incident, 

Address presented by Glen L. Cump, Secretary, Enoch Brown Park Association

http://greencastlemuseum.org/enoch-brown.html

 Enoch Brown

Historians of the 1800s portray the Indians as fiendish savages, preying on good Christians who fought to bring civilization to a terrifying and disordered wilderness. Historians today tend to see the Indians as noble Native peoples, living in perfect harmony with nature, simply defending their lands.  

History forgets and remembers.  Events are almost always infinitely more complex than any single account or viewer describes. Historians future just might see this human struggle between Europeans and Native Americans with no more bias than a scientist observing colonies of bacteria trying to colonize the same petri dish.