The Pontiac's Rebellion school massacre was an incident during Pontiac's Rebellion, in raids and warfare on the frontier following the French and Indian War. On July 26, 1764, four Delaware (Lenape) warriors attacked the teacher and students at a schoolhouse in what is now Franklin County, Pennsylvania, near present-day Greencastle. They killed Enoch Brown, the schoolmaster, and ten children. One child who had been scalped survived.[1]
Because of such raids, the Pennsylvania Assembly had already reintroduced bounties for scalps of American Indians, which they had offered during the French and Indian War. They paid for every American Indian killed above the age of ten, including women. The bounty was approved by Governor John Penn. The unrestricted bounty resulted in settlers' attacking Indian women and children, and leading to retaliatory raids by the Lenape.
When the warriors returned to their village on the Muskingum River in the Ohio Country and showed the scalps, an elder Delaware chief rebuked them as cowards for attacking children.
Settlers buried Brown and the children in a common grave. Years later, the village had lost the historical memory of the location of the grave. In 1843, villagers excavated the area to locate the grave for preservation and protection of remains. In 1885, the city of Greencastle designated the area as the Enoch Brown Park, and erected a memorial to the event. Five thousand people attended the dedication of the memorial and park.[1]