In 1763 twenty indigenous people in the colony of Pennsylvania were murdered by an armed gang. The victims had been a peaceful group of Conestogas, who had been wrongfully accused of aiding in violent raids against the settlers. The infamous attack would go down in history as the Conestoga massacre. However, almost immediately after the murders the meaning of the event became the source of a fierce war in the press. The so-called “pamphlet war” saw two competing groups trying to sell contrasting interpretations of the attack. The perspective that was inevitably left out of these pamphlets, and the “official” historical record, was the indigenous perspective. The new graphic novel Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of Conestoga seeks to remedy that by telling the story with the focus squarely on the Conestoga people. In this episode Sebastian is joined by the creative team behind Ghost River, Weshoyot Alvitre, Lee Francis IV, and Will Fenton, to discus the graphic novel and how fake news can become fake history. Tune in and find out how hand ground paints, blood memory, and Ben Franklin’s biggest political defeat all play a role in the story.

Thank you to our guests!

Lee Francis 4 (Author): https://redplanetbooksncomics.com/

Weshoyot Alvitre (Illustrator): https://www.weshoyot.com/

Will Fenton (Editor): https://www.willfenton.com/

Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga is part of Redrawing History: Indigenous Perspectives on Colonial America, a project of the Library Company of Philadelphia supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. 

Read Ghost River for FREE here:

https://read.ghostriver.org/