Their name means “people of the muddy river.” The Susquehannock were first described by John Smith, who explored the upper reaches of Chesapeake Bay in 1608.

[3] The Europeans who colonized the Mid-Atlantic coast of North America typically adopted the names that were used by the coastal Algonquian-speaking peoples for interior tribes.

[8] The Susquehannock assimilated the Shenks Ferry people in the lower Susquehanna River valley, and established a palisaded village in present-day Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

[7] Several smaller Susquehannock sites have been found in the upper Potomac River valley in what is now Maryland and West Virginia that date roughly from 1590 to 1610.

[11] Archaeological evidence also exists for a palisaded settlement 30 miles upstream of Washington Boro in what is now Cumberland County that was occupied from about 1610 to 1620.

[12] The first recorded European contact with the Susquehannock was in 1608 when English explorer John Smith met with a group of about 60 "gyant-like" warriors and "weroances" at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, two days journey downriver from their settlement at Washington Boro.

Smith wrote of the Susquehannock, "They can make neere 600 able and mighty men, and are pallisadoed [palisaded] in their Townes to defend them from the Massawomekes, their mortal enemies."

Furs, primarily beaver, were traded for cloth, glass beads, brass kettles, hawk bells, axes, hoes, and knives.

Isaack de Rasière, the Secretary of New Netherland noted that the Lenape living on the Delaware River were unable to supply furs because of Susquehannock raids.

[16] The Susquehannock relinquished their claim to territory on either side of Chesapeake Bay, and reestablished their earlier trading relationship with the English.

Jennings argued that the Haudenosaunee could not have mounted an attack in 1674 since a munitions shortage in New France meant that the French were unable to supply them with muskets, lead and powder.

[16] Although Governor Charles Calvert of Maryland wanted the Susquehannock to settle on the Potomac River above the Great Falls, the tribe instead chose to occupy a site on Piscataway Creek where they erected a palisaded fort.

In September 1675, a thousand-man expedition against the Susquehannock was mounted by militia from Virginia and Maryland led by John Washington and Thomas Truman.

Nathaniel Bacon, unhappy with Governor Sir William Berkeley's response to the raids, organized a volunteer militia to hunt down the Susquehannock.

While 26 families chose to remain with the Lenape, the remainder merged with the Cayuga, Oneida and Onondaga, and were joined by some of the Susquehannock from the village on the Susquehanna River.

In 1700, William Penn, founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, visited the Conestoga and obtained from them a deed for their lands in the Susquehanna River watershed.

The population declined due to out-migration, and the remaining Conestoga became increasing impoverished and dependent on the Pennsylvania government, who occasionally provided clothing and provisions.

[25] In 1845, six Conestoga descendants living among the Oneida in New York commissioned Peter Doxtater to obtain restitution for land that had originally belonged to their ancestors in Lancaster County.

Doxtater, whose maternal grandmother had lived at Conestoga Town before the massacre, later turned over all legal negotiations to Christian Shenk, an attorney in Lancaster County.

[28] An 1869 property deed shows that Doxtater bequeathed 200 acres in Lancaster County to Huldah Hall, who had been a missionary teacher among the Oneida.

[29] The resolution was introduced by Representative Holland Duell of New York would have recognized the remaining "Conestoga Indians" and would have returned their land on the Manor Township tract.

[30] In 1941, a bill was introduced by Ray E. Taylor and William E. Habbyshaw of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to provide a reservation for the Susquehannock in Dauphin County.

The bill made arrangements for tribal members to lease land for a nominal fee and establish a central community in their historic homelands.

[31] While this appropriation bill for $20,000 was passed unopposed in the state legislature, it was vetoed by Governor Arthur James, who was advised by the Pennsylvania Historical Commission that the last of the Susquehannocks had died in the 1763 massacre.

Although John Smith named six villages on his 1612 map, archaeological evidence indicates that at any one time the Susquehannock had just one or two large settlements in the lower Susquehanna River valley.

Maize, beans and squash were staple foods, with maize-based meals, usually in the form of soup, making up nearly half of their caloric intake.

Deer was the most common animal protein but elk, black bear, fish, freshwater mussels, wild turkey and waterfowl were also eaten.

[38] While Susquehannock women cultivated crops and managed the household, the men engaged in extended periods of travel for hunting, trading, and raids against neighbouring tribes.

Bodies were flexed and usually accompanied by a variety of grave goods such as bead or shell necklaces, pendants, tobacco pipes, combs, knives, clay pots, brass kettles, and occasionally gun parts.

A graphic novel, documentary, and teaching material, under the title Ghost River, a project of the Library Company of Philadelphia and supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, addresses the Paxton massacres of 1763 and provides "interpreters and new bodies of evidence to highlight the Indigenous victims and their kin.