Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 - Tunkhannock (PLAQUE)
Tunkhannock, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Twelve miles from Quialutimack on the march from Wyoming to Teaoga August 3, 1779 Lay on lowlands between this point and the river.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the summer of 1779, at the height of the American Revolution, General John Sullivan led a punishing campaign up the Susquehanna Valley against the Iroquois nations allied with the British. This plaque marks a waypoint on that march from Wyoming to Teaoga, where on August 3 the army camped on the lowlands between here and the river. The relentless expedition burned Iroquois towns and crops, breaking the military power of the Six Nations in the region.
Why it matters
Sullivan's Expedition was a turning point on the Revolution's frontier, opening the way for postwar settlement while dealing a devastating blow to the Haudenosaunee homeland.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the summer of 1779, the American Revolution reached deep into the valleys of the Susquehanna. For years the frontier had been ravaged by raids, and the war had settled into a grim cycle of burned settlements and reprisals. That summer, the Continental command launched a major campaign to strike at the root of the frontier war — an expedition led by General John Sullivan, moving north through the river country.
This was wilderness marching, not parade-ground soldiering. An army on such a campaign hauled itself along river valleys and Indian paths, measuring progress in miles between one landmark and the next, and making camp wherever the ground and the water allowed. The plaque preserves one such moment: a day's position on the long march, noted with the care of men who needed to know exactly where they were.
The country the army passed through was the homeland of the Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee — the Six Nations — many of whom had allied with the British. The campaign's purpose was to break the power of those nations in the region, and its route carried it through towns, fields, and river lowlands that had been lived in and cultivated for generations.
People & events
The inscription reads like a page torn from a soldier's journal. On August 3, 1779, on the march from Wyoming toward Teaoga, the army had come twelve miles from a place the plaque records as Quialutimack, and made its camp on the lowlands between this point and the river.
That spare notation is the whole drama in miniature. There is no battle here, no monument to a clash of arms — only the record of an army passing through, pausing on the flats by the water before pressing on. It marks a waypoint, one link in a chain of camps that traced Sullivan's route up the valley.
The names it preserves — the old place-names, the day's distance, the river lowland — are the working vocabulary of a campaign on the move. To read them is to stand for a moment inside the logistics of an eighteenth-century army, tracking its own progress mile by mile through unfamiliar country.
Its place in the American story
Sullivan's expedition was one of the turning points of the Revolution's frontier. By destroying Iroquois towns and the crops that sustained them, the campaign broke the military power of the Six Nations in the region — a blow whose consequences reached far beyond the war itself.
That outcome cut two ways, and honesty requires holding both. For the United States, the expedition helped secure the frontier and opened the way for the surge of postwar settlement that would follow independence. For the Haudenosaunee, it was a devastating assault on their homeland, their food supply, and their communities — a wound remembered in their history long after the Revolution ended.
A waypoint marker like this one, modest as it is, connects a quiet stretch of Pennsylvania ground to that much larger and more painful story. The army that camped on these lowlands was reshaping the map of the continent, and the future of the nations who lived on it, as it marched.
If you visit
Come to this marker with the mindset of a mapmaker rather than a battlefield tourist. There is no fortification and no field of conflict — only the lowlands by the river where an army spent a single night on a long summer march. The reward is in the imagining.
Let your eye travel from the marker down toward the river and picture the encampment spread across the flats: tents and fires, tired men, and the sense of a great column strung out along the valley, all of it moving north the next morning. The plaque's precise little distances help you feel the rhythm of that march.
If you're following the route of the 1779 campaign, this is one stop in a series that threads up the Susquehanna Valley, and it's worth pausing here to reflect. The story it points to is one of triumph and tragedy at once — a moment when the Revolution's frontier war passed through this quiet ground and left the region forever changed.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · John Sullivan
Related events
- · Sullivan Expedition of 1779
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sullivan's March
Tunkhannock, PA · est. 1947
In the summer of 1779, General John Sullivan led thousands of Continental soldiers up the Susquehanna Valley in a scorched-earth campaign ordered by George Washington against the Iroquois Confederacy, allies of the British. On August 3, that army made its third camp above Fort Wyoming here by the river as it pushed north toward Tioga. The march devastated Iroquois towns and croplands, breaking the power of the Six Nations on the New York–Pennsylvania frontier.
Wyoming County
Tunkhannock, PA · est. 1982
Formed in 1842 from Luzerne County, Wyoming County takes its name from an Indigenous word for extensive meadows, describing the broad Wyoming Valley. Tunkhannock, settled in 1790, became the county seat. Decades before the county existed, General Sullivan's army marched through this country in August 1779 during the Revolution's campaign against the Iroquois.
Sullivan's March
Exeter Township, PA · est. 1947
During the Revolution's Sullivan Expedition of 1779, General John Sullivan's Continental army moved north up the Susquehanna from Fort Wyoming at Wilkes-Barre toward Tioga. On August 1–2 the troops encamped on the lowland across the river here — the second stop on a grueling march through frontier country. The campaign was Washington's answer to raids on the frontier, aimed at the Iroquois Confederacy allied with the British.
Sullivan's March
Meshoppen Township, PA · est. 1947
On August 4, 1779, General John Sullivan's Continental army made its fourth encampment on the lowland here as it marched from Fort Wyoming toward Tioga Point. The column was part of a coordinated Revolutionary War campaign against the Iroquois Confederacy, whose warriors had raided settlements along the frontier. The soldiers' northward advance up the Susquehanna would culminate in the destruction of dozens of Native towns.