Abstracted from
Council Fires on the Upper Ohio
Randolph Chandler Downes
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1940
Chapter 11: ‘Indian War 1779-1782’

The expedition of Colonel Daniel Brodhead against the Seneca Indians, a tribe of the Six Nations, in August, 1779, was the one outstanding accomplishment of the Americans made possible by Clark's victories in the Northwest and by the subsequent friendliness of the northern Indian tribes.

Before setting out on his expedition he evacuated Fort Randolph, Fort Laurens, and Fort Hand, and erected Fort Armstrong and Fort Crawford on the Allegheny. He also reduced the garrison at Fort McIntosh to forty men. He took 605 troops with him, and the indications are that the militia were extremely backward in turning out.

Brodhead's army of six hundred men that set out up the Allegheny on August 11, 1779, had few supplies with which to enlist the active support of the Indians and had practically no militia, unless the two companies of rangers raised by Lochry at the time of the siege of Fort Hand, which were paid by Congress, be counted.

At the mouth of French Creek, on the site of the present city of Franklin, the little army surprised a hunting party of Seneca, and a hot skirmish took place in which several Indians, but no white men, were killed. Brodhead proceeded up the Allegheny but met with no opposition, as most of the warriors were away fighting against Sullivan, and the rest were warned of Brodhead's approach. On reaching the deserted upper Seneca towns he destroyed eight of them. At the town farthest north, Yoroonwago, just below the New York line, he destroyed one hundred and thirty houses and five hundred acres of growing corn and plunder, including furs, to the amount of thirty thousand dollars. On his return, the towns of Connewango (on the site of Warren), Buckaloon, and Mahusquechikoken (twenty miles above Franklin) were put to the torch.

Brodhead was convinced that he had prevented a general descent of the Six Nations on the Upper Ohio by way of the Allegheny.