Battle of Wyoming, 1778: the Wyoming Valley massacre

The Wyoming Valley, a 25-mile stretch of the Susquehanna around today's Wilkes-Barre, took its name from a Delaware word meaning "upon the great plain". It was contested long before the Revolution. A royal grant had given the same land to both Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and from 1753, when Connecticut's Susquehanna Company began to settle it, "Yankees" from Connecticut and "Pennamites" from Pennsylvania fought a series of small wars over farms and forts, as Thomas Verenna recounts in the Journal of the American Revolution.²

A divided valley

By 1775 some 3,000 people lived in the isolated valley. Both groups backed the Patriot cause, but Loyalist families moving in from New York, above all the Wintermoots, were not welcome. Patriot committees arrested suspected Tories and sent several to prison in Connecticut. Those who escaped fled to the British post at Niagara, and Verenna notes that disaffected Pennamites, burned out by the Yankees, made willing recruits for the Loyalist rangers being raised there. The valley also sent two companies of regulars to Washington's army, leaving it short of trained defenders.³

Butler's raid

In June 1778 Major John Butler left Niagara with his Rangers, a detachment of Johnson's Royal Greens and Loyalist volunteers, about 400 men by the account of the Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, supported by about 500 Iroquois, mainly Senecas and Cayugas, under the chief Gi-en-gwahtoh. Verenna gives a smaller count of over 100 rangers and a few hundred Seneca warriors. Either way, Butler outnumbered the militia he would meet.⁴

The Wintermoots surrendered their fort to him and told him that no Continental troops could be spared for the valley, since Washington was busy with the Monmouth campaign. The Patriot defense rested on a volunteer company of 40 to 60 men at Forty Fort under Captain Detrick Hewett and on Colonel Zebulon Butler, a Continental officer home on leave and no relation to the Loyalist commander. He raised about 300 militia, but many insisted on staying at the valley's other small forts.⁵

The trap

On 3 July John Butler set Wintermoot's fort on fire and pretended to retreat. Zebulon Butler took the bait, led his men out of Forty Fort and pressed forward across open fields, by some accounts shouting taunts at the enemy he believed was falling back. He commanded the right, Colonel Nathan Denison the left and Hewett's volunteers the center. John Butler had anchored his own left on the fort with the Rangers, placed the Greens in the center and the Iroquois on the far flank.⁶

The Patriots returned the Loyalists' fire, and before they could reload, the Iroquois rushed in with axes, knives and hatchets. The militia broke and fled, many throwing away their muskets. Dozens leapt into the Susquehanna, and the warriors followed them into the water and killed most of them. Others ran for Forty Fort and were cut off by the Loyalists.⁷

Counting the dead

No one knows exactly how many died. The Encyclopedia of the American Revolution records that at least 20 militia officers and three Continental officers were killed, Hewett among them, and that only about 60 men escaped the pursuit. John Butler claimed 227 Patriots killed for the loss of two Rangers and one Iroquois; Verenna writes of over 300 killed. The killing of fugitives and the torture of prisoners went on through the night, though some of the most lurid stories cannot be confirmed. Denison led the survivors back to Forty Fort, while Zebulon Butler rode on to Wilkes-Barre and withdrew from the valley.⁸

Surrender and legend

On the morning of 4 July Denison accepted John Butler's terms: the settlers would not take up arms again, would pull down their forts and would stop persecuting Loyalists. Butler left on 8 July, reporting a thousand houses destroyed and a thousand head of cattle taken. Bands of warriors kept raiding the defenseless valley, and the dead on the battlefield were not buried in a common grave until 22 October.⁹

Across the colonies, newspapers turned the defeat into an atrocity story in which, it seemed, not a soul in the valley had survived. The outrage had consequences. Verenna notes that the massacre pushed Congress to strike at the Iroquois, which led to what became known as the Clinton-Sullivan Expedition. The Encyclopedia's verdict on the battle itself is harsh: Zebulon Butler's handling of 3 July was singularly inept, while John Butler, after a 200-mile march through the wilderness, achieved what it calls a battle of annihilation.¹⁰