nt impact
on the West Branch Valley in the Great Runaway, although the Winters
Massacre of June 10, 1778, which prompted the evacuation of the valley,
actually preceded the Wyoming affair.[17]

Finally, the purchase of the remaining Indian lands in Pennsylvania
(except for the small corner of the Erie Triangle) was made on October
3, 1784, in a second Stanwix Treaty. This accession ended the
Pennsylvania boundary dispute with the Six Nations; and it also ended
the need for any extra-legal system of government in the West Branch
Valley, for this new treaty encompassed the Fair Play territory.[18]
However, this treaty raised the troublesome Tiadaghton question once
again, a question only partly resolved by the Legislature's designation
of Lycoming Creek as the Tiadaghton and the recognition of the
squatters' right of pre-emption to their settlements along the West
Branch of the Susquehanna.[19] The land office was opened for the sale
of this purchase July 1, 1785; by 1786 fifty heads of families were
listed for State taxes in Northumberland County.[20] Approximately fifty
per cent of these taxables had been in the area earlier.

Perhaps the only significant nationality trend to be noted in this
important sequence of events is the tenacity of the Scotch-Irish and the
subsequent increase of English and German settlers following this last
"New Purchase."[21] Over half of the taxables in Pine Creek Township,
the new designation for much of the Fair Play territory after it became
an official part of the Province, were Scotch-Irish. As a result, these
Scots from the north of Ireland continued to maintain their position of
leadership even after the area was included in the Commonwealth.

The reasons for migrating to the West Branch Valley in this fifteen-year
period from 1769 to 1784 were varied and numerous. For the most part,
the various nationality groups which emigrated from Europe came for
economic opportunity and because of religious and political
persecutions. Their movement to the frontier regions was prompted by
similar problems. In fact, much the same as the earlier settlers of
Jamestown and Plymouth, the squatters of the West Branch Valley came for
gain and for God. Furthermore, the promise of Penn's "Holy Experiment,"
in which men of diverse backgrounds could live together peacefully in
religious freedom and political equality, encouraged them to come to
Pennsylvania. However, once the dominant group of the Fair Pl