Indian Attacks in Shermans Valley

Scotch-Irish settlers moved north from Carlisle to Perry County after the Treaty of Albany in 1754, not realizing the danger remained. As conflict between Great Britain and France spread, Delaware Indians returned across Pennsylvania in 1756 and drove settlers from Shermans Valley between 1756 and 1763. They attacked isolated cabins and Robinson's Fort near present-day Centre Presbyterian Church, where more than 100 men, women, and children had gathered for safety. In late July 1756, about forty men left the fort to harvest fields while twenty-five Indians waited nearby. The attack killed a young girl and two mothers outside the fort looking for cattle, and raiders captured two teenagers, Hugh Gibson and Betsey Henry, carrying them to a camp near Pittsburgh. Frightened settlers retreated south of Blue Mountain for two or three years. After nearly three years in captivity, Hugh and three others escaped from an Ohio camp and walked for two weeks to Fort Pitt, where they had to convince officers that they had been captives, but Betsey never returned. Indians from the Ohio Valley attacked again in the summer of 1763, and settlers fled Shermans Valley. Though the valley remained unsafe, some men returned in July to harvest fields for winter food. After attacks on isolated cabins north of Tuscarora Mountain, twelve settlers set out to warn others and encountered Indians on the south side of the mountain along Big Buffalo Creek about two miles west of Ickesburg; five settlers died in the fight. In 1764 only a few settlers remained in the valley, but colonial troops provided security near Elliottsburg and Kistler, more families gradually returned by the end of the year, and although the attacks had ended, settlers carried muskets to church for years afterward.

Pennsylvania · United States