"No man shall suffer for the murder of a Savage": The Augusta Boys and the Virginia and Pennsylvania Frontiers

In the mid- to late 1760s, a series of murders perpetrated by Anglo-Americans against Native Americans occurred in the colonial backcountry. Although not unusual events in this region, the attempted prosecution of the murderers resulted in tension between Anglo-Americans who desired punishment and those who rejected punishment for killing an Indian. Those opposing stances reveal a larger battle over different understandings of English constitutionalism and frontier societies' use of rights. What is unusual historiographically is that these murders and the subsequent contestation of authority between frontiersmen and government transpired in Virginia. By examining these understudied events, this article reconsiders the depiction of inter-Anglo-Virginian society as tranquil, connects the Virginia backcountry to similar events in Pennsylvania, and credits frontiersmen with the political knowledge and sophistication usually reserved for Anglo-Americans who lived in coastal, urban settlements.