Last White Man Killed by Indians

On May 29, 1795, Ralph Rutledge was killed and scalped by Indians in the city of Erie, which was a settlement at that time. He was the last white man killed by Indians in Erie County. Rutledge was buried where he died on a piece of rising ground on the West Side of State Street, near its junction with Turnpike Street. In the spring of 1795, the same year in which General Wayne compelled the Iroquois Nation to sign the Treaty of Greenville, an attack was made on May 7th by a party of ten white men on a family of friendly Indians, on the Allegheny, near Franklin, in Venango County, as these Indians were returning from their winter hunt. Two of the Indians were badly wounded, but all escaped with the loss of their goods. The Senecas, members of the Iroquois Nation, who had been strongly urged, by the nation, to go to war, gave their messengers a peremptory refusal. Notwithstanding this decision, disturbances never-the-less broke out on several occasions.

On Saturday, the 29th of May, 1795, four men who were journeying from Fort LeBoeuf to Erie, were attacked near the present Union Train Depot in Erie by a party of Indians, in retaliation, it is supposed, for the attack at Allegheny. Ralph Rutledge, one of the four killed and scalped, and his body being afterward found, was interred on a piece of rising ground on the west side of State Street, near its junction (before the 1960s) at Turnpike Street, possibly beneath what is now the Department of Labor and Industry. It’s not known if his remains was ever recovered, exhumed and relocated. This is the last documented Indian difficulty known to have taken place in the county.