One year before the Penn's Creek massacre, the Iroquois had sold much of the Susquehanna Valley to the governments of Pennsylvania and Connecticut without consulting the Lenape, who once again found themselves being displaced by arriving settlers.

As a direct result of the Penn's Creek massacre and subsequent raids, Pennsylvania assemblyman Benjamin Franklin persuaded the governor and assembly of the province to abandon its roots in Quaker pacifism and establish an armed military force and a chain of forts to protect the settlements.

The Lenape and other displaced Native Americans continued their attacks on settlers and battles with the provincial forces for three years, until the Treaty of Easton was signed between the tribes and the British in 1758.

In that message, Shikellamy stated that the Iroquois had granted the land surrounding a Susquehanna tributary, the Juniata River, "to our cousins the Delawares (Lenape) and our brethren the Shawanese (Shawnee) for a hunting-ground, and we ourselves hunt there sometimes.

[12] One year after the Albany Purchase, the French and Indian War between Great Britain and France began, with each side seeking control of the North American colonies.

[27] Trading post owner John Harris Jr. wrote to the governor and offered to lead an expedition upriver to try to pacify the Native Americans and find out the mindset of those at Shamokin (present-day Sunbury), since the Indians there were known to be friendly to settlers.

As the group headed back along the west side of the Susquehanna on October 25, they were ambushed by twenty or thirty Lenape in what is now the northern end of the borough of Selinsgrove.

Upon learning of the ambush and subsequent attacks, the Seneca chief Belt of Wampum[n 5] gathered thirty of his own men and set out in pursuit of the perpetrators, although it's not known if they met with any success.

They killed or took captive 47 settlers in the Big Cove settlement alone in a brutal incursion that lasted several days and saw children murdered in front of their parents and wives forced to watch their husbands tortured; one woman over ninety years old was later found impaled on a stake with both breasts cut off.

[32] In late November, a dozen Lenape led by the chief Captain Jacobs invaded Gnadenhuetten (now Lehighton), a farming community for Christian Indians run by Moravian settlers.

The five Brodhead brothers (Charles, Daniel, Garett, John and Luke) and their youngest sister, 12-year-old Ann, barricaded themselves inside along with some local settlers who had sought refuge at their home and fought an hours-long gun battle that ultimately held off the attackers.

[31] Pennsylvania had been founded by Quakers, and that religion's core doctrine of pacifism meant that the province's Assembly had always refused to establish a permanent military force.

In desperation, hundreds of Berks County German settlers marched on Philadelphia on November 25, 1755[36] carrying with them the scalped and mutilated bodies of some of their murdered neighbors.

Gauging the panic that was spreading throughout the province, he had strongly urged Governor Morris and his fellow assemblymen that military force was necessary in the face of the Native American threat.

[31] On November 25, the same day the settlers' corpses were left on their doorstep, the Assembly acquiesced to Franklin's proposal for an unpaid volunteer force and passed Pennsylvania's first Militia Act.

Two days later, a defense fund was created by a compromise hammered out by Franklin and fellow Assemblyman Joseph Galloway; it allowed for the taxing of colonists but exempted William Penn's sons and their land in exchange for a contribution from them.

[31] On New Year's Day 1756, twenty new militiamen who were building a fort on the site of the Gnadenhuetten massacre were lured into an ambush and killed by Indians who had come through the Lehigh Gap.

Stunned at this breach, Governor Morris granted Franklin blanket authority to appoint and dismiss military officers and distribute weapons in Northampton County.

"[41][42] There were fears that this would encourage indiscriminate killing of innocent Native Americans by those seeking payment, but as only eight scalp bounties were paid out by Pennsylvania during the entire colonial period, it appears that few were either willing or able to pursue such rewards.

Teedyuscung asserted that he represented ten Native American tribes, including the Iroquois, and on their behalf, he entered into treaty negotiations with Pennsylvania authorities at a series of conferences in Easton that began in 1756.

He was aided and encouraged by Quakers sympathetic to the Indians' plight, but faced resistance from both the Penn family and the Iroquois, who claimed authority over all Native American lands in Pennsylvania and had not in fact appointed Teedyuscung as their representative.

[46] Nonetheless, the talks he had begun resulted in the October 1758 Treaty of Easton, which ended Pennsylvania's war with the Indians and brought about an uneasy peace by restoring some of the disputed territory acquired by the province (including three-quarters of the Susquehanna Valley land bought in the Albany Purchase)[47] to the Native American tribes and by promising that the British would not establish settlements in the Ohio Country region west of the Allegheny Mountains once the French had been defeated.

She was given a Bible and a fire was built, but just as she was about to be thrown into the flames, a young Lenape begged so earnestly for her life that she was spared on condition that she promise not to run away again and that she stop crying.

[65] At the end of this narrative, Barbara and Marie listed the names, place of capture and last known locations of over 50 other captives they had met during their time with the Lenape, in order that their relatives might know they were still alive and have hope of seeing them again.

The two girls were treated very harshly by their mistress, who often beat them and drove them into the woods to find roots and berries to feed themselves whenever her son, who supplied them with food when he was present, was away.

An account of the end of Regina's captivity was told by the Reverend Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, patriarch of the Lutheran church in the United States, in his Hallische Nachrichten.

According to Muhlenberg, her mother arrived in Carlisle on December 31, 1764[51] in hopes of finding Regina there, but after searching the line of captives, she was unable to recognize her daughter among them and was in tears.

[68] Reverend Muhlenberg neglected to give the family name of mother and daughter in his accounting of the story, and as a result, the captive girl was for many years misidentified as another kidnapped settler, Regina Hartmann.

The memorial is located alongside Penn's Creek north of Selinsgrove, near the site where John Harris' group was ambushed,[70] and takes the form of a large piece of granite with two plaques.

The upper plaque commemorates the massacre and the lower plaque on the granite block commemorates Harris' ill-fated expedition,[26] readingOn October 25, 1755, John Harris, founder of Harrisburg, and a party of 40 men who came up the river to investigate the John Penn's Creek massacre were ambushed by a party of Indians near the mouth of this creek at the head of the Isle of Que about one third of a mile south of this spot.