"Indiantown"
East Hanover Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The native village from which, in turn, the Creek, Gap, and great Military Reservation derived their names, formerly stood near here. The Delaware Indians took this route to Shamokin, upon their removal from the Schuylkill region.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Near here once stood "Indiantown," a Native village whose name later attached to a creek, a gap, and a great military reservation. It marked a way-station on the path the Delaware people took to Shamokin as they were pushed north and west from their homeland in the Schuylkill region during the 1700s — one small trace of the displacement that reshaped Pennsylvania's original inhabitants.
Why it matters
The site records the forced removal of the Delaware from eastern Pennsylvania, a quiet reminder of how colonial expansion uprooted the Native nations who first lived on this land.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Blue Mountain Forts
East Hanover Township, PA · est. 1949
As frontier violence flared along the Blue Mountain in the 1750s and 1760s, Pennsylvania's colonial government paid volunteer companies to shield its exposed settlers. A chain of six fortified loghouse stations stretched roughly twenty-three miles from Fort Hunter on the Susquehanna to the Swatara Creek, garrisoned in 1763–64 by the Paxton Rangers, echoing an earlier defensive line held in 1756–57. These crude forts marked the raw, contested edge of British settlement during the French and Indian War and Pontiac's uprising.
Reed's Fort
East Hanover Township, PA · est. 1949
In 1755, as war raged along Pennsylvania's frontier, the home of Adam Reed just south of this point was fortified into a place of refuge. From here Reed and a company of Rangers drawn from Hanover Township stood guard over the surrounding countryside during a period of frequent raids. It was one link in the improvised chain of frontier defenses that ordinary settlers threw up when the empire's protection fell short.
Swatara Gap
Union Township, PA · est. 1947
Swatara Gap is a natural break in the Blue Mountain, and in the 1750s it became a dangerous doorway. During the French and Indian War, war parties allied with the French slipped through the gap to strike the scattered farms of the Pennsylvania frontier, and colonial authorities answered by raising Fort Swatara nearby to guard the pass. The steep, wooded notch that had long served as a travel route became a frontline in a brutal borderland conflict.
Barnett's Fort
Lower Paxton Township, PA · est. 1947
During the bloody frontier years of the French and Indian War, Joseph Barnett's fortified log house near the head of Beaver Creek became a refuge for settlers fleeing raids between 1756 and 1763. The war struck this family directly: Barnett's young son William was carried off in a 1756 raid and not returned until 1763, freed in the settlement that followed Colonel Henry Bouquet's campaigns. Such private strongholds were the thin line of defense along a violent borderland.