The Wyoming Valley Massacre was an incident 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. Although American Patriots called it a "massacre," historians now generally believe that this was primarily a battle, not 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. What happened next has since been shrouded in uncertainty, but after the battle, some of the victorious Loyalists and Indians began to harass prisoners and fleeing settlers, perhaps killing and torturing an unknown number of people. Although captured Patriots who had fought in the battle were apparently all executed, Butler insisted that non-combatants had not been killed, despite widespread rumors to the contrary. What is certain is that about 1,000 Patriot homes in the Wyoming Valley were destroyed, and Butler reported the taking of 227 American scalps. Joseph Brant was widely accused in the American press (and by subsequent historians) of committing atrocities in the Wyoming Valley, but he was not present.

Whether or not a widespread massacre actually took place, Americans believed that it did, and they demanded retribution. That retribution came in 1779 with the devastating Sullivan Expedition.

The "massacre" was (fictionally) depicted by Scottish poet Thomas Campbell in his 1809 poem "Gertrude of Wyoming."

References

• Boatner, Mark Mayo. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. New York: McKay, 1966.
• Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse University Press, 1972.