Battle of Wyoming

Battle of Wyoming Valley
Part of the American Revolutionary War
Depiction of the battle by Alonzo Chappel, 1858
Date July 3, 1778 Location Wyoming Valley (in and around present-day Wyoming, Pennsylvania) Result British-Iroquois victory
Belligerents
Great Britain  Iroquois	United States
Commanders and leaders
John Butler  Sayenqueraghta  Cornplanter	Zebulon Butler Nathan Denisson George Dorrance †
Strength
110 Butler's Rangers 464 Iroquois (primarily Seneca, but also Cayuga, Onondaga, Lenape, and Tuscarora)	360 (24th regiment Connecticut militia, detachment of Continentals, Wyoming riflemen)
Casualties and losses
3 killed 8 wounded	about 340 killed 5-20 captured

The Battle of Wyoming (also known as the Wyoming Massacre) was an encounter during the American Revolutionary War between American Patriots and Loyalists accompanied by Iroquois raiders that took place in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania on July 3, 1778. More than three hundred Patriots were killed in the battle.

After the battle, settlers claimed that the Iroquois raiders had hunted and killed fleeing Patriots before using ritual torture against thirty to forty who had surrendered, until they died.

In 1777, British General John Burgoyne led a campaign to gain control of the Hudson River in the American Revolutionary War. Burgoyne was weakened by loss of time and men after the Battle of Oriskany and was forced to surrender after the Battles of Saratoga in October. News of his surrender prompted France to enter the war as an American ally. Concerned that the French might attempt to retake parts of New France they had lost in the French and Indian War (something they did not know the Franco-American Treaty of Alliance specifically forbade), the British military adopted a defensive strategy in Quebec. They recruited Loyalists and enlisted Indians allies to conduct a frontier war along the northern and western borders of the Thirteen Colonies.

Colonel John Butler recruited a regiment of Loyalists, while Seneca chiefs Sayenqueraghta and Cornplanter recruited primarily Seneca warriors, and Joseph Brant recruited primarily Mohawks for what became a guerrilla war against the American frontier settlers. By April 1778 the Seneca were raiding settlements along the Allegheny and Susquehanna Rivers, and by early June the three groups met at the Indian village of Tioga, New York. Butler and the Seneca decided to attack the Wyoming Valley, while Brant and the Mohawks (who had already raided Cobleskill in May) targeted settlements further north.

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