Sullivan's March
Meshoppen Township, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Gen. John Sullivan's army camped on the lowland here Aug. 4, 1779. The fourth encampment between Fort Wyoming and Tioga Point.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The chain of marked campsites preserves the day-by-day path of one of the Revolution's decisive frontier campaigns, a turning point in the long struggle over the Pennsylvania and New York backcountry.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1779 the Revolutionary War had reached far beyond the seaboard into the frontier valleys of northeastern Pennsylvania. The Susquehanna country was a landscape of scattered settlements and small forts, worn down by years of raids and reprisals that made the interior one of the war's most perilous regions.
Northward stood the powerful Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, most allied with the British. Their fighters, joined by Loyalist forces, struck at frontier communities the American command believed essential to the war effort — and the pressure grew until Washington resolved to strike back at the source.
The result was a major expedition aimed at marching straight into Iroquois territory and dismantling its ability to fight. One column advanced up the Susquehanna from Fort Wyoming, and its northward route brought it to the lowland here beside the river.
People & events
General John Sullivan commanded that column, charged with leading thousands of Continental soldiers and their heavy supply train through difficult, largely roadless country. The march moved in measured daily stages, each ending in an encampment chosen for water, ground, and defense.
On August 4, 1779, the army made its fourth encampment on the lowland here, another link in the chain of camps stretching from Fort Wyoming toward Tioga Point. Each such stop marked a hard day's progress deeper into the frontier, closer to the campaign's objective.
Ahead lay a systematic effort to destroy the towns, orchards, and cornfields of the Six Nations — a strategy meant to break not an army in the field but an entire people's means of making war. The dozens of Native settlements laid waste in the weeks that followed made this one of the most consequential frontier campaigns of the Revolution.
Its place in the American story
Few operations of the Revolution were aimed so squarely at Native nations, and few had such lasting reach. By breaking the power of the Iroquois Confederacy, the campaign permanently altered who held sway over the backcountry of Pennsylvania and New York.
In the years after the war, that shift opened the region to American settlement — an advance the young nation prized, but one purchased at a grievous cost to the Iroquois, whose communities and food stores were deliberately destroyed. The honest telling keeps both the settlers' relief and the tremendous Native loss in view.
The importance of a single overnight camp lies in what the whole chain reveals. Marker by marker, these campsites let us follow a decisive campaign as it truly happened — an army advancing through a living valley, carrying the Revolution into lands whose original inhabitants would feel its consequences for generations.
If you visit
Find the low, flat ground near the river and you're looking at the kind of place an army needed — room to camp, water at hand, and a clear line of march. The land itself tells you why soldiers stopped here on their way north.
Don't expect a battlefield or a fort; this is a quieter kind of historic site, where the story rides on the marker and the setting rather than on anything built to be seen. Give it a few minutes and the plain riverside scene starts to fill with the movement of a long-ago march.
Because it's one of several markers tracing the 1779 route up the Susquehanna, it suits a leisurely drive through the valley, read in sequence with the others. Arrive ready to reflect on a campaign that opened this country to settlers while dealing a lasting blow to the Iroquois nations who lived here first.
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 - Vanderlip's Farm (PLAQUE)
Meshoppen Township, PA · est. 1929
As General Sullivan's army pushed north against the Iroquois in August 1779, it made its fourth encampment on the fertile bottomland here, remembered locally as Black Walnut Flats. The soldiers rested on the nights of August 4 and 5 before continuing the march from Wyoming toward Teaoga. The campaign systematically destroyed the towns and food stores of the Six Nations across this valley.
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.
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.
Sullivan's March
Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1947
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.