[FN] At this time the settlements consisted of eight townships, viz: Lackawana, Exeter, Kingston, Wilkesbarre, Plymouth, Nanticoke, Huntington, and Salem; each containing five miles square. The six townships were pretty full of inhabitants; the two upper ones had comparatively few, thinly scattered.—Almon's Remembrancer, for 1778.
Congress being now in session, interposed its authority by way of mediatorial resolutions. But to no purpose. The interposition was repeated, and again disregarded. In the meantime the Pennsylvanians brought seven hundred men into the field, who were marched against Wyoming under the direction of Colonel Plunkett. But in ascending the west bank of the Susquehanna, on coming to a narrow defile, naturally defended by a rocky buttress, their march was suddenly arrested by a volley of musketry. An instant afterward the invaders discerned that the rocky parapets were covered with men bristling in arms—prepared for a Tyrolese defence of tumbling rocks down upon the foe, should their firearms prove insufficient to repel him. Taken thus suddenly and effectively by surprise, Plunkett retreated with his forces behind a point of rocks, for consultation. He next attempted to cross the river, and resume his march on the other side. But here, too, the people of Wyoming had been too quick for him. The invaders were so hotly received by a detachment in ambuscade on the other side, that they were constrained to retreat, nor did they attempt to rally again.
Thus terminated the last military demonstration of the Provincial government of Pennsylvania against the valley of Wyoming. Never, however, had a civil war raged with more cordial hatred between the parties—not even during the bloody conflicts between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines—than was felt between the adherents of the respective land companies, in the collisions just passed under review. Most unfortunate was it, therefore, that the quarrel broke out afresh at the precise moment when the services of all were alike wanted for the common defence—especially on a border exposed to the daily irruptions of the Indians.
Nor was this the only evil. There being a wide difference of opinion between the people in almost every section of the country, on the great question at issue between the parent country and the Colonies, it was natural to anticipate that such of these contending parties as adhered to the Royalist cause, would cherish a twofold enmity toward those republicans who had been previously in arms against them. These feelings of hostility were of course mutual; and as many of the adherents of the Delaware Company, and perhaps some from both factions, early escaped to the enemy, and enrolled themselves under the banners of Sir John Johnson and Colonel John Butler, there can be no difficulty in accounting for the peculiar ferocity which marked the conduct of such of the refugees as returned in arms against their former belligerent neighbors. [FN]
[FN] This sketch of the preliminary history of Wyoming, rapid as it is, has nevertheless occasioned a longer digression than was intended; but it has seemed necessary to the deduction of something like a just hypothesis, by which to judge of the peculiar features of the battle of Wyoming and the massacre that followed.
The population of the Wyoming settlements, at the commencement of the war, numbered five thousand souls. Three companies of regular troops were enlisted among them for the service of the United States. Their militia, regularly enrolled, amounted to eleven hundred men capable of bearing arms, and of this force three hundred entered the army; [FN] so prolific was their soil, and so industrious were the people, that they were enabled to furnish large supplies of provisions for the army. Three thousand bushels of grain were sent thence to the army in the Spring of the present year. The same plan of watchfulness against the scouts and scalping parties of the enemy was adopted as in other frontier settlements, and the utmost vigilance was observed; while regular garrison duty was, in successive turns, performed by the citizen soldiers in the several fortifications which defended their valley.
[FN] See Chapman's History of Wyoming—also Memorial to the Connecticut Legislature.