Having heard of Stump’s actions, Captain William Patterson, whom Linda A. Ries identifies as a former French and Indian War officer and Tyrone Township resident, anticipated retaliation from the Native American population. Patterson moved to the Juniata River valley in 1749 or 1750 with his father, a frontier trader. When he learned of the massacre on Middle Creek, he assumed the role of bounty hunter, despite the fact that he lacked official approval to do so. His experiences in the French and Indian War (in which he had traveled westward on Forbes’ campaign to capture Fort Duquesne) and during Pontiac’s Rebellion (in which he successfully defended his blockhouse against Native American attacks) likely made him believe that he could take matters into his own hands. To improve his chance of success, Patterson assembled and paid a force of nineteen men and traveled north from Tyrone Township on the 21st to apprehend the Germans. The band located and arrested Stump and Ironcutter at George Gabriel’s residence. They were then delivered to Sheriff John Holmes of the Carlisle jail on January 23.
Although Patterson’s mission proved successful, it was also extremely dangerous because Stump’s friends resisted his capture. This scuffle between the two opposed groups of vigilantes showed people’s willingness to take the law into their own hands on the Pennsylvania frontier. It also foreshadowed the heightened tension that was yet to come between those who condoned and those who condemned Stump’s actions.
When the prisoners were held in jail, Colonel John Armstrong wrote to Governor Penn to provide the latest news. Although they hadn’t been interrogated formally, Stump and Ironcutter apparently admitted their guilt and told a similar story of their life-or-death reaction to the Native Americans’ aggression. Armstrong doubted their version of the events, and he told Penn as much. Armstrong sent word that “Sundry Famililes are fled off from the Susquehanna near to Stump’s, yet I think the Indians will consult before they attempt Hostilities.”
In a postscript written a few days later, Armstrong explained that the prisoners had not yet been moved to Philadelphia for fear that Cumberland County residents would attempt to free them en route. (Ice on the Susquehanna River also complicated a journey eastward.) Locals had expressed to county magistrates their belief that Stump and Ironcutter were being sent to Philadelphia not just for questioning, but also for their trials. This jurisdictional matter held great significance, for the residents of Cumberland County knew that the verdict handed down by any given jury would be determined in large part by the location of the trial. A jury in Carlisle could hardly be expected to return a guilty verdict in a case like this. The magistrates concurred; in a letter to Penn on January 27, they noted that Stump was heard to call for a trial in Cumberland County, where his “Relatives and Friends” would sit in judgment.
