In the 1990’s documents discovered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania archives confirmed what many, including living descendants, knew all along to be true. There were Conestoga-Susquehannock who had survived the massacre of 1763.

In 1845, the documents list 7 descendants of the Conestoga including Peter Doxtater of Oneida, New York, who traveled to Lancaster in search of the manor township tract that had been set aside for his ancestors. Doxtater claimed that during the Conestoga massacre, his maternal grandmother had been at Oneida nation in New York, and had not returned after. This is corroborated by the 1768 Penn deed, which pays $300 to the surviving relations of Sheehays, who were living in New York, and the 1872 joint resolution, which declared that living descendants had survived among the Oneida nation. This resolution, if passed, would have federally acknowledged the Conestoga-Susquehannock tribe and returned the land to the tribe.