When William Franklin arrived in New Jersey in 1763, unlike neighboring colonies, it had not been affected by hostile Native American actions in Pontiac’s Rebellion. While the intense fighting between English settlers and the Native Peoples occurred mainly in Trans-Appalachia (Ohio Country), it ingrained in many Anglos an intense hatred of all Indians. Historian Clinton Weslager notes:
Many friends or relatives of persons who had been massacred or taken into captivity by Indian war parties—particularly those who saw the mutilated bodies of loved ones lying in the smoldering ashes of burned homes—became “Indian haters” and sought reprisal. They called Indians “dogs” and “thieves” and cursed them to their faces.[7]
An example of this attitude toward all Native Americans was manifested in the actions of a group of Pennsylvanians who became known as the “Paxton Boys.” They murdered a group of Native Americans referred to as “Praying Indians” near Lancaster, Pennsylvania in1763.[8]
The first murder of a Native American during Franklin’s time in office occurred in April 1766. Governor Franklin described the murder in a Proclamation:
Whereas I have received Information from one of the principal Officers of the County of Sussex, that a most inhuman Murder and Robbery has been lately committed near Minisink, on the Body and Effects of an Indian of the Oneida nation, who had come there to trade, and had behaved himself soberly and discreetly; and that one Robert Simonds, alias Seamonds, had been charged with the same was on the second day of April Instant committed to the common Goal of the County aforesaid.[9]
The Oneida were part of the original Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy—Mohawk, Oneida, Onondagas, Cayuga, and Seneca (in 1722 a sixth was added, Tuscarora)—that controlled much of what became New York state and the Great Lakes region. Throughout the colonial wars between the French and English, the Iroquois, for the most part, remained, neutral. During the French and Indian War (1754-1763), under the influence of Sir William Johnson, the British Indian Agent in the north who had been adopted by the Mohawks, the Mohawk and Oneida took active parts in the war on the side of the English. The killing of a friendly Oneida caused consternation to those who wished to continue friendly relations with the Iroquois.[10]