Many Pennsylvanians may not know that a definite, well-planned battle of the Revolution was fought far up in old Northumberland County. This is a fact and until now this battle has only been known of as an ordinary Indian incursion. Such was not the case.
True there were Indians in the battle of Fort Freeland, July 28, 1779, and they were the ferocious Seneca, 300 of them under the command of Hiokatoo, the most bloodthirsty and cruel Indian of whom we have any direct evidence.
After Colonel Thomas Hartley led his successful expedition against the Indians in 1778, the savages did not long remain subdued, but the year following again became so vicious that the settlers, who had returned after the Great Runaway, lived in such constant fear of attack that General Washington ordered General John Sullivan to rendezvous his troops at Wyoming and wipe out every Indian town from that point to Elmira in New York State.
The troops were supplied with rations and stores from Fort Augusta. This fort was defended by a line of forts, or blockhouses extending in an almost straight line from Fort Jenkins near Berwick, on the North Branch, to Fort Wheeler, at Fishing Creek, to Fort Bostley, at Washingtonville, to Fort Montgomery, to Fort Freeland, two miles above McEwensville, to Fort Muncy, where the line of defense touched the West Branch.
No sooner had General Sullivan started his march from Easton toward Wyoming than the Indians learned of his plans and put into operation a series of movements which were intended to defeat the design of the Continental troops.
Captain John MacDonald, of the British Army, a Tory of New York State, was in command of a large detachment of British who had employed 300 Seneca Indians as allies. They made a forced march from the vicinity of Wyalusing, and arrived near Fort Muncy on the morning of July 28, 1779, and immediately started down, over what is now the Susquehanna Trail, toward Fort Augusta. The Continental troops had unfortunately been withdrawn from Fort Muncy.
Less than six miles march brought the British and their Indian allies in contact with the garrison at Fort Freeland, where, in addition to the troops, all the inhabitants of the valley below Muncy Hill and as far south as Chillisquaque Creek, had fled for protection.
When the battle for possession of the fort began, the firing could be heard at Fort Boone, about four miles south, a mile above the present site of Milton. Captain Hawkins Boone, cousin of Daniel Boone, and himself one of the bravest soldiers in the Continental army, with a detail, consisting of thirty-two as brave men as ever fired a gun, rushed to the relief of the unfortunate defenders of Fort Freeland.
But in a few terrible hours the most advanced haven of refuge for the frontier settlers in the West Branch Valley was a mass of ruins; its defenders either victims of the tomahawk or prisoners of war; and the women and children objects of charity.
The defenders of Fort Freeland did their utmost in this trying hour. Their resistance was so stubborn that the articles of capitulation were not accepted until the third proposal, and not then until all their ammunition was expended. The women even melted the pewter into bullets, while the men fired them at the besiegers. No further relief was believed possible.