In 1767, the most pressing point of contention between Native American groups and the Colony of Pennsylvania was the ability of the latter to keep Euro-Americans from settling on lands that had not been purchased from Natives. John Penn and William Johnson maintained a steady line of communication over the issue, as Johnson heard from many leaders of the Six Nations and Western groups about the problem. Simply put, Natives did not believe that the Royal or Colonial authorities were committed to maintaining a true border, but were instead allowing encroachment as a way to push ever westward. The historian Daniel Barr, in his 2014 book A Colony Sprung from Hell, notes that British authorities could not enforce the proclaimed line of 1763. That agreement “was not intended to forbid westward colonial expansion entirely,” Barr writes, “but to make the process much more arduous by subjecting it to regulation by the Crown.” (p. 110) An estimated 500 families of squatters pushed illegally into present-day Western Pennsylvania in the mid-1760s, dotting the rivers and creeks with their rough homesteads and keeping a safe distance from the reach of the British Army, still garrisoned at Fort Pitt. Colonial agents reported back to officials in Philadelphia that “all the Horrors of an immediate Indian War” would fall upon white settlers if no solution was found.
In his announcement of a more liberal “western policy” to the British Cabinet just four months before Stump’s killing spree, Lord Shelburne referred explicitly to the ability of Pennsylvania’s colonial officials to pacify Native Americans prior to the past twelve years of enmity. Shelburne noted that Pennsylvania had “never had a Dispute with any of their Tribes, untill the French beginning their encroachments at the back of our Settlements spirited up the Western Indians to fall upon the Frontiers of the Provinces particularly the Shawanese and Delawares who laid waste the Borders of Virginia and Pensylvania.”
Though the French were still a problem in 1767, Shelburne explained that maintaining western outposts without a shift of population had become too costly for the Crown. He referred to the “enormous Expense attending the present Method of supplying the Troops cantoned in the back Settlements and Frontier Posts of North America; with the heavy contingent Charges arising from the Transportation of Stores, and the Danger to which the Discipline of the Army is exposed by Regiments being broken into small Detachments…”
There were several east/west divides at play in the Stump affair:
- the division between the colonial authorities in Philadelphia and the white Pennsylvania frontier settlers who distrusted them:
- Sir William Johnson, perhaps the figure who best epitomized colonial interests, confessed to General Thomas Gage, “I much fear that the Lawless Gentry on the frontiers will render [the massacre] worse by Screening the Murderer, or contributing to his escape.”
- The backcountry inhabitants complained bitterly about the unwillingness of colonial lawmakers to fund frontier defenses or hold Native Americans accountable for what settlers saw as outrages.
- the division between western traders, who relied on warm relations with Native Americans, and the frontier settlers, to the east, who relied on only their own weapons and defenses
- the division between French traders and British traders, each maneuvering for advantage with Native Americans before and after Stump’s killing spree