Talk:Enoch Brown school massacre

Change Title Back to "Enoch Brown School Massacre"
I propose that the current title, "Pontiac's Rebellion school massacre," should to be changed back to "Enoch Brown School Massacre," as given to the article intially. The latter seems to be the most commonly established form outside of Wikipedia, and in period writings dating back to the late 19th century.

The reason given for the change was that 'the massacre shouldn't be named after a victim.' While I don't quite follow that logic, one could also content that it wasn't being named simply for the man, but for the school UNIT where he taught -- it was Enoch Brown's SCHOOL that was attacked, and naming it after the school would be a common convention similarly to how the "Columbine High School massacre" is identified here on Wiki.

Further, this event was an isolated incident in a region that saw much conflict between the native population, and the encroaching colonists. There were killings perpetrated by BOTH sides before this, and there were instances after; indeed, the Paxton Boys massacre of 20 or more peacefully-existing Indian men, women and children PRE-dates this event by about eight months -- should that be called the "Pontiac's Rebellion Indian massacre?" To name this event after the wider conflict that was taking place over a vast region, and during a timeframe of several years diffuses the personal nature of this horrifically tragic event -- it would be like calling the Malmedy massacre the "World War II massacre," or the My Lai massacre the "Vietnam massacre."

The event should be given a more specific name, based on location or landmark -- so if not Enoch Brown school, then perhapse the "Greencastle school massacre." Also, it should be noted that the Wiki article on the Pontiac conflict has been more appropriately renamed as Pontiac's War.

Please offer comments, and if no strong sentiment to the contrary, I'll make the change in a month or so. --Chachap (talk) 04:49, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah, right after it was moved, I considered moving it back to the original (or another) title, for pretty much the same reasons you mention above, but forgot about it. Google Books suggests that the most common name for this event is simply the Enoch Brown massacre. —Kevin Myers 14:00, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * David Dixon calls it the "Enoch Brown Schoolhouse Massacre", which was actually the very first title for this article. —Kevin Myers 14:03, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Definitely should be "Enoch Brown School Massacre" and an article definitely should be in Wikipedia. That said, there is actually very little direct evidence that a massacre occurred here.  It was more of a local tradition than anything else until it was briefly mentioned by Parkman. In short, I think we should give a bit of the history of how the massacre came to be known, and leave a bit of doubt open, rather than presenting everything here as pure fact.  Smallbones (talk) 22:34, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Our job here is to reflect what the reliable sources say. If there's a reliable source that expresses doubt, we can report that. Otherwise, no. The recent scholarly sources on the war (Dixon, Dowd, Middleton) express no doubt that the event took place, since there are at least a couple of primary sources that support the local traditions. The massacre was reported by John M'Cullough (a prisoner among the Delaware) in his captivity narrative, which has often been published. We should cite that more fully here. Middleton also cites "News from Carlisle" in the Pennsylvania Gazette of August 9, 1764 (no. 1859) as a source. If anyone has access to that source (the Gazette archives are accessible online in certain libraries), please give us more details. If there are other primary sources, let's hear about that too. —Kevin Myers 05:30, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Scalp Bounty
The reasons given for the scalp tax are incorrect. After the Treaty of Paris, George III sent Jeffery Amherst orders to reduce the number of troops in North America. When Pontiac's rebellion began, the British forts were, as a result of the reduction, thinly garrisoned and it was difficult to defend the forts, let alone send out troops to suppress the rebellion. Since settlers were often the targets of the rebelling Indians, Amherst asked the governors of Virginia and Pennsylvania to supply militias. Virginia raised 1000 men, but Pennsylvania refused to raise troops. On December 14, 1763 (after Amherst had returned to England), a mob massacred a number of peaceful Conestoga Indians (see Paxton Boys). On December 27, the mob returned to massacre those who had escaped the first attack and who were now under the protection of the province. On 13 February 1764, representatives of the frontier inhabitants wrote a "remonstrance" to the Pennsylvania Assembly, in which they listed numerous reasons for their vigilantism, one of which was the fact that Pennsylvania had refused to raise troops to protect the settlers. Perhaps because the blame for the massacre of the Conestoga could now, by imputation, be laid at the door of the Assembly, it finally decided to act, but it could not afford to raise a militia, and so it proclaimed the scalp bounty on 6 July 1764. For more information, see "The Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania" (http://archive.org/details/minutesofprovinc00penn). Hattrick (talk) 07:17, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

We need reliable references
So far there is only one linked reference, an address presented by Glen L. Cump, Secretary, Enoch Brown Park Association, not exactly an unbiased source. Let me summarize what it says: The massacre occurred on On July 26, 1764. There were 2 witnesses. One was Archie McCullough, the youngest student, who was scalped and then became demented.

The second witness was Mrs. Betty Hopkins, who lived 1/2 mile away. She lived to be 104 and told the story to General General David Detrich and his father (perhaps when she was in her 80s).

(Connection between Detrich/Hopkins and Rankin not clear)

In 1843 A. B. Rankin and twenty other responsible citizens were looking for proof and dug up an unmarked grave with one adult and 10 children's bodies in the area.

In 1883 Rev. Cyrus Cort, David Detrich, and Col. Benjamin Winger decided to erect a memorial. Which was erected in 1885.

The Franklin County School District essentially boycotted the dedication.

Am I correct in saying that the above shows only a local legend? Certainly we can't take the exhumation as a scientific investigation. It's also not clear where any of the juicy details often reported would have come from.

There is more of course: the famous Francis Parkman has about 2 sentences in his 1880s book on the Pontiac Rebellion. Never come to peace again: Pontiac's uprising and the fate of the British ... By David Dixon, has one paragraph, with gory details. War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire, by Gregory Evans Dowd - can't be searched online.

Pontiac's War: its causes, course, and consequences, by Richard Middleton (referred to above?) - I can find anything in this book.

The Pennsylvania Gazette of August 9, 1764 (no. 1859) is mentioned above - I doubt it is really reliable for what we need. The report by John M'Cullough (a prisoner among the Delaware) - he didn't see it, but only reported what he heard from the supposed war party. Not even clear that M'Cullough wrote it.

So I'll suggest that we not treat any of these as solid sources yet, but only "xxx states" type of text.

Am I the only one to see a problem here?

Smallbones (talk) 02:52, 21 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I'll add that this is a good summary of the material presented above, but nothing new or reliable in itself. I should also point out why I'm a bit skeptical - I'd read about this as a kid (in another state) and so when I saw it on Wikipedia, I thought I'd better check it out.  But there is really nothing here, so I've looked in the obvious places - including two projects of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.  There's no state historical marker, and it's not on the National Register of Historic Places.  There'd be a historical marker, even if only some of the above could be verified, but there isn't. It would be on the NRHP if half of it could be verified, but there isn't.  So I'm a bit skeptical and would like to see sources, properly cited.  Smallbones (talk) 03:41, 21 November 2011 (UTC)


 * You skepticism is well advised. I've found and removed bogus articles of this type on Wikipedia before (example). Bad information usually comes from the naive use of old or amateur sources instead of using modern scholarly sources. The Cump address is a good example of the type of source that we cannot cite on Wikipedia. It's probably okay as an external link.


 * The Brown massacre, however, is fairly well documented for an 18th century frontier incident. It was reported in the Pennsylvania Gazette at the time, in more than one issue (Middleton cites August 9, Parkman cites an update from August 30, which reported that the scalped boy was still living). Presumably the "juicy details" come from those newspaper articles. Bouquet referred to the incident in his October 20 council with the Natives on the Muskingum. Although less reliable, historians have apparently decided that the reminiscences of two settlers (M'Cullough and Richard Bard) ring true enough to cite. The fact that people went digging for the bodies years later, and found them where they should have been, means that this event has more supporting evidence than many other similar incidents.


 * Ultimately, however, as Wikipedians our own assessment of the reliability of the evidence does not matter here. Your analysis of the sources above is good critical thinking, the type of thing historians do. Alas, what historians do and what Wikipedians do are not the same thing. As I said above, our job here is just to identify the reliable sources and report what they say. Articles should usually be based on reliable secondary sources. Dixon, Dowd, and Middleton are academic historians who have published peer-reviewed works on Pontiac's War. They are our reliable secondary sources, the only ones we really need. We must report what they say; we cannot express our own doubts about their work is this article. We can cite scholarly sources that disagree with them, should we find them, and we can cite primary sources for fuller context. That's about it. Yes, it's more fun to do historian stuff than Wikipedia stuff. I think analysis of the evidence on talk pages is fine, since it promotes understanding of the subject matter and may lead to finding more reliable sources, but we can't do it in the article.


 * It would be nice to find reliable sources that deal with this event in more detail. Apparently a woman named Nancy Rice wrote a master's thesis called "A Historical Study of the Enoch Brown Indian Massacre"; too bad she apparently didn't get it published in a scholarly (or even a popular) journal. We should keep an eye out for similar works. Until then, we must simply report what our reliable sources (Dixon, Dowd, Middleton, etc.) say and leave it at that. —Kevin Myers 03:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

So can we say ...
... that this was America's first school shooting, so to speak? Daniel Case (talk) 05:00, 21 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Seems odd to classify it as such considering the context of the massacre Fjii (talk) 07:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)