Wyoming Valley massacre

From Freepedia

The Wyoming Valley "massacre" was a military battle in the American Revolutionary War that took place in Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley on July 3, 1778, in which more than three hundred Americans died at the hands of Loyalist and Iroquois raiders. American Patriots called it a "massacre", but historians now generally believe that this was primarily a battle. Historians who have studied the events in detail, reading survivor accounts and other contemporary history, would concur that this was both a battle and a massacre. The movement to contact conducted by the Patriots was followed by a sharpe battle between the two sides that lasted approximately 45 minutes, from the accounts of survivors. An order to reposition the Patriot line turned into a frantic route when the inexperienced Patriots panicked. This was the end of the battle. What followed can only be described as a massacre in which fleeing Patriots were hunted down and killed. Those who surrendered, about 30 to 40 in number, were tortured to death by the Iroquois. The killing of prisoners of war qualifies, under the definition, as a massacre.

After a British army surrendered at Saratoga in upstate New York in 1777, Loyalists and their Iroquois allies in the region turned to hit-and-run tactics, raiding American Patriot settlements as well as the villages of American-allied Iroquois. Working out of Fort Niagara, men such as the Loyalist commander Colonel John Butler, the Mohawk captain Joseph Brant, and the Seneca chief Cornplanter led the Loyalist-Indian raids.

In the Wyoming Valley—along the Susquehanna River near present Wilkes-Barre—Colonel Butler led Butler's Rangers with a force of Senecas (led by Cornplanter) and Cayugas in a surprise attack in which the 360 armed Patriot defenders of Forty Fort were practically annihilated. After the battle, some of the victorious Loyalists and Indians began to harass prisoners and fleeing settlers, killing and torturing an unknown number of people. Although captured Patriots who had fought in the battle were all executed, Butler insisted that non-combatants had not been killed, despite widespread rumors to the contrary. About 1,000 Patriot homes in the Wyoming Valley were destroyed, and Butler reported the taking of 227 American scalps.

Reports of the massacre enraged the American public and they demanded retribution. That retribution came in 1779 with the devastating Sullivan Expedition which methodically destroyed at least forty Iroquois villages throughout what is now upstate New York.

The massacre was famously depicted by the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell in his 1809 poem "Gertrude of Wyoming." In the poem, Campbell described Joseph Brant as a "monster" because of the atrocities, but it was later determined that Brant had not actually been present.

References

• Williams, Glenn F. Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois. Yardley: Westholme Publishing, 2005.
• Boatner, Mark Mayo. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. New York: McKay, 1966.
• Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1972.