Sullivan's March
Wyalusing Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Gen. John Sullivan's army camped just west Aug. 5-7, 1779, en route to attack the New York Iroquois. A major campaign, destroying 40 villages and ending the Indian-Tory frontier menace.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the summer of 1779, at the height of the Revolution, General John Sullivan led a Continental army up the Susquehanna Valley, camping near here on August 5-7 as it pushed north. The expedition, ordered by George Washington, aimed to break the power of the Iroquois nations allied with the British and to end the devastating raids along the frontier. Over the campaign Sullivan's troops burned dozens of Haudenosaunee towns and their harvests.
Why it matters
Sullivan's 1779 campaign was a pivotal and destructive turning point in the Revolutionary War's frontier, permanently reshaping the fate of the Iroquois Confederacy.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the summer of 1779, the American Revolution had been raging for years, and the war on the frontier had become especially brutal. Along the upper Susquehanna and the New York borderlands, raids and reprisals had left settlements burned and communities terrified. This was not the war of set-piece battles between uniformed armies; it was a grinding conflict of villages, harvests, and homes.
The valley through which the Susquehanna runs here was a natural corridor, a route armies and war parties had long used to move through otherwise difficult country. In August of that year a Continental army passed this way, camping just west of this spot on the fifth through the seventh, part of a deliberate northward march into the homelands of the Iroquois nations allied with the British.
The Early Revolution's frontier had become a place of fear on every side, and the American command had resolved to change that with overwhelming force.
People & events
The army was led by General John Sullivan, and its campaign, ordered from the highest levels of the American command, was aimed squarely at breaking the power of the Iroquois towns that had supported British and Loyalist raids. Sullivan's soldiers camped near here in early August 1779 as they pushed toward New York.
What followed was systematic and devastating. Over the course of the expedition the army destroyed dozens of Haudenosaunee villages along with the crops and stores that sustained them, striking not just at warriors but at the foundations of community life. The marker records the scale plainly: forty villages laid waste, and the frontier raids that had terrorized settlers brought to an end.
It was a campaign of destruction rather than of pitched battle, and its consequences fell hardest on the Iroquois people, whose towns and harvests were deliberately burned to the ground.
Its place in the American story
Sullivan's 1779 march was a turning point in the Revolution's frontier war, and one of its most consequential and painful chapters. By destroying the Iroquois towns and their food supply, the campaign broke the ability of Britain's Native allies to sustain the raids that had made the frontier a place of dread, and it did so at enormous human cost to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
The expedition's legacy is genuinely two-sided, and honesty demands holding both halves. For the young United States it removed a strategic threat and helped open the door to later settlement of the region. For the Six Nations it was a catastrophe whose effects long outlasted the war, permanently altering the balance of power in the northern borderlands.
This quiet camping ground therefore marks something larger than a night's rest for an army. It marks the point where the Revolution's frontier turned decisively, and where the fate of the Iroquois Confederacy was reshaped for generations.
If you visit
You are in Wyalusing Township, along the Susquehanna in Bradford County, where the river valley opens into exactly the kind of natural corridor that made this a marching route more than two centuries ago. The army camped just to the west; the marker lets you stand near the path it took.
Take in the valley and the river, and notice how the land itself explains the history. An army moving north needed a route like this one, and the same geography that guided Sullivan's troops still shapes the roads and views today. The setting is peaceful now, which is worth sitting with, given what the campaign meant for the people who lived in its path.
For travelers drawn to the Revolution beyond its famous eastern battlefields, this is a thoughtful stop. It asks you to remember a harder, frontier side of that war, and to consider the full weight of what happened when this quiet valley became a road to conflict.
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
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 - Wyalusing (PLAQUE)
Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1929
Wyalusing had been the site of Friedenshütten, a Moravian mission town where Christian Delaware Indians lived before being pushed westward in the early 1770s. A few years later, in August 1779, General Sullivan's army made its fifth encampment here on the march from Wyoming toward Teaoga. The marker stands near the monument to that vanished Moravian Indian community.
Indian Hill
Tuscarora Township, PA · est. 1947
The hill southeast of this marker saw sharp frontier fighting on September 29, 1778, when Colonel Thomas Hartley's soldiers from Fort Muncy clashed with Native warriors here. Two days earlier Hartley's raid had burned Queen Esther's town near present-day Athens, part of the brutal back-and-forth of Revolutionary warfare along the Susquehanna. These running fights pitted Pennsylvania militia against the Iroquois and their British allies in a contest for the northern borderlands.
Indian Hill Battlefield - PLAQUE
Tuscarora Township, PA · est. 1928
During the Revolutionary War, Pennsylvania's northern frontier was ravaged by raids from British-allied Native war parties. In September 1778 Colonel Thomas Hartley led an expedition up the Susquehanna, burning Tioga and Queen Esther's Town before fighting a sharp engagement near this spot on September 29. His campaign broke the momentum of raids in the region and cleared the way for the massive Sullivan Expedition the following year.
Lime Hill
Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1947
On April 14, 1782, a small party led by Sergeant Thomas Baldwin came to this ground trying to free a woman and her children held captive by Native raiders — a common and wrenching feature of frontier war. The rescue turned into a four-hour fight. Three of the children were saved, but the mother was killed before they could reach her. The episode captures the intimate violence of the Revolution's final years along the Susquehanna.