Introduction
Part I: False Dawn
1. Newcomers
2. Settlers and Squatters
3. Expansion
4. Fraud
5. A Hunger for Land
Part II: Theatre of Bloodshed and Rapine
6. Braddock's Defeat
7. Pennsylvania Goes to War
8. Negotiations
9. Westward Journeys
10. Conquest
Part III: Zealots
11. Indian Uprisings
12. Rangers
13. Conestoga Indiantown
14. Lancaster Workhouse
15. Panic in Philadelphia
Part IV: A War of Words
16. The Declaration and Remonstrance
17. A Proper Spirit of Jealousy and Revenge
18. Christian White Savages
19. Under the Tyrant's Foot
Part V: Unraveling
20. Killers
21. Mercenaries
22. Revolutionaries
Appendix: Identifying the Conestoga Indians and the Paxton Boys
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Kevin Kenny is Professor of History at Boston College where he specializes in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Atlantic migration. He is author of Making Sense of the Molly Maguires and The American Irish: A History, and editor of Ireland and the British Empire.
"Worthy of serious scrutiny and reflection."--Journal of Social
History
"Riveting."--Irish Historical Studies
"In the winter of 1763-64, colonists from the Susquehanna-side
settlements of Pennsylvania committed acts of extraordinary
violence against Indians living near Lancaster. This spasm of
cruelty, the Paxton riots, sets in motion Kevin Kenny's Peaceable
Kingdom Lost -- a patient, clearly written narrative, organized by
the unraveling during wartime of a half-century of intercultural
peace, that lingers especially on the murky figures of the rioters
and on
the Wyoming Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, a landscape contested
between Natives, Pennsylvanians, and Connecticut Yankees, where
intercultural animosities became intercolonial and, at last,
revolutionary."--Peter Silver, author of Our Savage Neighbors: How
Indian War Transformed Early America
"A compelling study of the Paxton Boys' massacre of Conestoga
Indians and of the volatile world that produced it. Grounding his
story in the context of the French and Indian War and the
escalating ethnic, social, and political tensions of
eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, Kevin Kenny shows how William
Penn's utopian dream of a peaceable kingdom degenerated into a
nightmare of racial violence."--Colin G. Calloway, author of The
Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the
Transformation of America
"The massacre of the small Native American community of Conestoga
by the 'Paxton Boys' has long symbolized how William Penn's vision
of peaceful relations with Native peoples went horrifically wrong.
Readers seeking an introduction to these tragic developments will
find no surer guide than Kevin Kenny."--Daniel K. Richter, McNeil
Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania
"Kenny reveals how self-interest overrode the public good, with
hell to pay for all concerned. In that regard, it rings true today
as cause and consequence of Pennsylvania's persistent problem--how
to cultivate the necessary 'common weal' to create a
commonwealth....This book should remind us how much creating 'facts
on the ground' can defeat ideals and turn practices into
policies."--Randall M. Miller, Philadelphia Inquirer
"Kenny's account of the Paxton Boys incident and its aftermath adds
an interesting dimension to the scholarly literature on the
relationship between European settlers and INdians and the policies
that governed or directed it....By restoring a sense of contingency
to the chaotic affairs of the winter of 1763 and spring of 1764,
Kenny asks us to remember that human decisions shape history, and
those that involve putting aside the law for short-term political
gain
can have disastrous consequences."---Law
"Kevin Kenny has laid out a smooth and engaging narrative alongside
an impressively researched analysis of the secondary historical
debates surrounding the Paxton Boys. Peaceable Kingdom Lost is also
the most detailed treatment of the subject to emerge in a
generation, and it is an indispensable introduction to one of the
most troubling and transformative episodes in the history of
colonial Pennsylvania."--Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography
"Peaceable Kingdom Lost is an important work that does much to
reinterpret provincial politics and the development of racial
attitudes on the Pennsylvania frontier. Most importantly, it
provides detailed insight into the mentality of frontiersmen in the
mid-eighteenth century."--Journal of American History
"Essential reading not only for Americanists but also for those
interested in the Irish diaspora."--Reviews in History
"Peaceable Kingdom Lost is distinguished by Kevin Kenny's narrative
skill. This well-researched book is ideal for use in history
courses as a readable and engaging narrative that very ably
synthesizes much of the recent scholarship on Indian-European
relations in colonial and revolutionary Pennsylvania."--David L.
Preston, Pennsylvania History
"Kenny's fluid prose makes his a very entertaining account...Kenny
masterfully weaves the perspectives of Pennsylvania's westerners,
colonial leaders, and native peoples to craft a compellingly tragic
narrative."--Kevin T. Barksdale, American Historical Review
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