In February 1764, Matthew Smith and James Gibson wrote on behalf of the frontier inhabitants in the Pennsylvania counties of Lancaster, York, Cumberland, Berks, and Northampton to John Penn, the governor of Pennsylvania. The “declaration and remonstrance,” published as a pamphlet, was written to explain and gain sympathy for the Paxton Boys’ massacre of peaceful Native Americans, a Susquehannock population, in the towns of Conestoga Manor and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, two months earlier, in December 1763. The Paxton Boys were a vigilante group of white men that was founded for the purpose of revenge following Pontiac’s Rebellion, a series of attacks led by Chief Pontiac after the French and Indian War (1754–63), a bitter struggle between England and France and their Native American allies. Governor Penn ordered the vigilantes arrested and tried, but this did not happen.