Sullivan's March
Tunkhannock, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Gen. John Sullivan's army on Aug. 3, 1779 camped by the river. Third camp from Fort Wyoming. Part of the Clinton-Sullivan campaign ending in the rout of the Six Nations Iroquois. The Tory-Indian menace on the frontier was eliminated.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The Sullivan Expedition was one of the Revolution's largest operations against Native nations, and it permanently reshaped the balance of power in the borderlands — opening the region to American settlement at a lasting cost to the Iroquois.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the summer of 1779, the American Revolution had ground into its fourth hard year, and much of the fiercest fighting was no longer along the coast but out on the frontier. The valleys of the Susquehanna, threading through what is now northeastern Pennsylvania, had become a war zone of raids, ambushes, and burned settlements.
This was borderland country — a patchwork of frontier farms, small forts, and the powerful homelands of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy to the north. Most of those nations had allied with the British, and together with Loyalist fighters they struck settlements the Americans considered vital to their war effort.
George Washington resolved to end the threat at its source. He ordered a large, coordinated expedition to march into Iroquois country and break its power. One arm of that operation moved up the Susquehanna itself, and its path led directly through this stretch of the river valley.
People & events
Command of the main column fell to General John Sullivan, a New Hampshire lawyer turned Continental officer. His army was no small raiding party but a substantial force of thousands, hauling supplies and artillery up a wild river corridor with few roads worth the name.
On August 3, 1779, that army encamped here beside the river — one in a chain of overnight camps as the troops pushed steadily north from Fort Wyoming toward their gathering point at Tioga. Moving an army of that size through frontier country was grueling work, measured in short daily marches and careful camps like this one.
What followed to the north was deliberate and devastating. The campaign systematically destroyed Iroquois towns, orchards, and cornfields, aiming not merely to win a battle but to break a people's ability to wage war. The inscription's blunt language reflects how the settlers of the day understood it — as the removal of a threat that had haunted their frontier.
Its place in the American story
The Sullivan Expedition was one of the largest operations the Continental Army ever mounted against Native nations, and its consequences reached far beyond the Revolution itself. By shattering the strength of the Six Nations, it shifted the balance of power on the New York and Pennsylvania frontier for good.
That shift opened the region to a wave of American settlement in the years after the war — a gain for the young nation that came at a lasting and severe cost to the Iroquois, whose communities and food supplies were deliberately destroyed. It is a chapter that sits uneasily in the larger story of independence, and honest history holds both truths at once.
A quiet campsite by the river may seem a small thing to mark. But it is precisely these ordinary stopping points that let us trace, step by step, how a distant order from Washington became boots on the ground in this valley — and how the Revolution reshaped not only the fate of thirteen colonies but the homelands of the nations already living here.
If you visit
Stand near the river and let the landscape do the work. The Susquehanna still runs where it ran, and the valley still funnels travel north and south much as it did for an eighteenth-century army. It takes little imagination to picture thousands of tired soldiers making camp along these banks for a single night.
This is a place for reflection more than spectacle. There is no fort or battlefield to tour, only the marker and the river — and that quiet is part of the point. You are looking at a waypoint on a long, consequential march, and the meaning lives in the story, not in a monument.
It fits naturally into a drive that follows the river valley, where other markers trace the same 1779 campaign from camp to camp. Take it slowly, read the marker with the water in view, and let it prompt the harder questions this history deserves about who won and who lost on this frontier.
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
- · Clinton-Sullivan Campaign of 1779
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 - Tunkhannock (PLAQUE)
Tunkhannock, PA · est. 1929
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.
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.