A Failed Peace: The Friendly Association and the Pennsylvania Backcountry during the Seven Years’ War
Scholars interested the complex, violent, and ultimately tragic relations between native peoples and colonists in eighteenth-century America could do worse than to examine the Friendly Association Papers at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The Friendly Association was a Quaker organization dedicated to ending Indian attacks on Pennsylvania’s frontier by addressing native grievances over the loss of Indian lands to colonization. The association, which operated from 1755 to 1764, was supported by wealthy Philadelphia Quakers, most notably Israel Pemberton. The documents found in the Friendly Association col-lection reflect the myriad and conflicting responses of Friends, settlers, government officials, and the region’s native inhabitants to the violence that engulfed Pennsylvania’s backcountry during the Seven Years’ War.