17781776 Club
Patriot militia routed in thirty minutes; 300 die in Wyoming Valley
Butler's Loyalist rangers and Seneca-Cayuga warriors flank and break the Patriot line; the valley's settlements burn in the days that follow.
By the summer of 1778, the frontier valleys of New York and Pennsylvania had become a second front in the Revolutionary War, one fought not by Continental armies but by militia, Loyalist rangers, and Iroquois warriors. On July 3, a Patriot force under Lieutenant Colonel Zebulon Butler marched out to meet Major John Butler's combined Loyalist and Seneca-Cayuga force in Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley. The battle lasted about thirty minutes before the Patriot line was flanked and broken, and roughly 300 militiamen died, many cut down as they fled or after they surrendered. The valley's settlements burned in the days that followed…
