Wyolutimunk
Exeter Township, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Across the river is the site of the Indian town. "King" Tedyuscung stopped here with Frederick Post, May 17, 1760, on his way to Tioga and the "great concourse in the West."
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Across the river once stood a Native settlement in the Wyoming Valley homeland of the Delaware (Lenape) people. In May 1760, the Delaware leader Teedyuscung passed through here with the Moravian missionary Frederick Post, bound for Tioga and a great council in the west. Their journey came amid the tense diplomacy of the frontier during the era of the French and Indian War, when Delaware leaders sought to secure their people's place between contending empires.
Why it matters
The marker preserves the memory of the Delaware presence in the Wyoming Valley and of Teedyuscung, whose efforts to defend Indigenous land rights made him one of the most consequential Native diplomats of colonial Pennsylvania.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The middle of the eighteenth century was a perilous time to live in the Wyoming Valley and the river country of what is now northeastern Pennsylvania. Rival European empires pressed in from different directions, and the Native peoples of the region found themselves caught between them, their lands coveted and their loyalties courted.
The Delaware, who call themselves the Lenape, were among the peoples whose homelands lay in this valley. Decades of treaties, land deals, and broken promises had pushed many of them westward and northward, and the era of the French and Indian War only sharpened the pressures on their communities.
The river that runs past this marker was a travel corridor long before any road. Native towns rose along its banks, and journeys up and down its length were part of the rhythm of diplomacy, trade, and survival in a contested land.
People & events
Across the water once stood a Native settlement, and this marker records a single moment of passage through it. In May of 1760, the Delaware leader known as Teedyuscung — the inscription gives him the title "King" — stopped here on a longer journey.
Traveling with him was Frederick Post, a Moravian missionary who moved in the difficult space between Native communities and colonial authorities, and who was trusted, at least in part, by both. Their path led toward Tioga and, beyond it, a great gathering in the west.
Teedyuscung spent his life working the hard diplomacy of the frontier, pressing the case for his people's land and place amid the maneuvering of colonial governments and competing empires. A brief stop like this one was a thread in that larger, exhausting effort to secure a future for the Delaware.
Its place in the American story
It is easy to tell the story of colonial America as a tale of settlers and governments alone. Markers like this one insist on the other half of the truth: that this was Native land, with Native towns, leaders, and journeys that mattered.
Teedyuscung stands among the notable Native diplomats of colonial Pennsylvania, a leader who tried to defend his people's claims through negotiation in an era stacked against him. Remembering his passage here keeps that history from vanishing beneath later settlement.
The larger American story includes the peoples who were here first and the difficult choices their leaders faced as empires collided. A quiet marker above a river is a small but real act of keeping that memory alive.
If you visit
The thing to look for here is the view across the river, because the site the marker commemorates lies on the far bank. There is no grand ruin to see — the settlement is gone — so the real work is one of imagination, picturing a Native town where the opposite shore now lies.
Take in the river and the valley around you. This is gentle, green country, and its calm belies the tense, consequential history that passed through it. Rivers like this one carried travelers, news, and diplomacy, and standing beside it connects you to that movement.
For a road trip attentive to the full sweep of American history, a stop like this is essential. It rewards quiet attention rather than spectacle, and it invites you to remember the Indigenous presence in the Wyoming Valley and a leader who tried, against long odds, to hold a place for his people.
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
- · Teedyuscung
- · Frederick Post
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
Keyser Creek
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The Bloody Rock
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On the night of July 3, 1778, the day after the Battle of Wyoming, this rock became the scene of one of the Revolution's grim atrocities. Fourteen or more captured American soldiers were killed here, according to tradition by a woman remembered as "Queen Esther," though her identity has never been certain. The battle and its aftermath spread terror through the Susquehanna frontier and hardened the war on the Pennsylvania borderlands.
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