Kittanning
Applewold, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The most notable Delaware Indian village west of the Alleghenies, was situated here from about 1730 until destroyed by Armstrong's expedition in 1756. Its name means "great river", applying to the Ohio-Allegheny.
The Story
For a generation before the French and Indian War, Kittanning was the largest Delaware (Lenape) town beyond the Allegheny front, a thriving community on the Allegheny River whose name carried the sense of the "great river" that fed the Ohio country. From the 1730s it grew into a hub of Native life and, by the 1750s, a staging ground for raids on frontier settlements. In September 1756 a Pennsylvania force under Lt. Col. John Armstrong marched west and burned the town, one of the war's few colonial strikes deep into Indian country.
Why it matters
Kittanning marks the violent collision of Delaware homeland and colonial expansion on the eve of the French and Indian War, a place where the contest for the Ohio Valley — and the displacement of its Native peoples — was written into the ground.
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Related people
- · John Armstrong
Related events
- · Armstrong's Expedition (Kittanning Expedition, 1756)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Kittanning
Kittanning, PA
For roughly a generation, this bluff above the Allegheny River held Kittanning, the largest Delaware (Lenape) town west of the Appalachian ridges — a thriving community whose name honored the "great river" it overlooked. During the French and Indian War it became a staging ground for raids on Pennsylvania's frontier settlements, and in September 1756 a colonial force under Colonel John Armstrong marched over the mountains and burned it. The destruction of the village broke a key node in the borderland war and became one of Pennsylvania's most celebrated frontier exploits.
Blanket Hill
Kittanning Township, PA
During the French and Indian War, Pennsylvania's frontier was raided repeatedly by warriors based at Kittanning, a Delaware (Lenape) town on the Allegheny River. In September 1756, Lt. Col. John Armstrong led a force of provincial soldiers on a bold overland strike against the town, and this rise marked one of their stopping points on the march. The expedition destroyed Kittanning, and tradition holds the hill took its name from the blankets the men discarded here as they moved fast toward their objective.
Fort Venango
Franklin, PA
By 1760 the British had won the struggle for the Ohio Country, and they raised Fort Venango where French Creek meets the Allegheny River—a strategic river junction the French had earlier fortified. Its garrison held the frontier only briefly. In 1763, as Pontiac's War swept the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, Native warriors overwhelmed the post and burned it, one of a string of British forts that fell in that coordinated uprising.
Kittanning or Attiqué Indian Town
Kittanning, PA
By the 1720s the Lenni-Lenape, or Delaware, were being pushed off their homelands along the Susquehanna and moved west toward the Allegheny River. On this broad river flat they built Kittanning, also called Attiqué, which by 1727 had grown into the largest and most important Delaware town on the frontier — a hub of trade, diplomacy, and Indigenous life at the western edge of European contact. It stood as a center of Delaware power for a generation before the pressures of the colonial era reached the Allegheny.