Written by On a summer’s day in 1743, three travelers presented a curious sight as they walked carefully down the steep slope of Shamokin Hill enroute to their destination– the Indian village of Shamokin.
“Descending this hill, it was so steep we were obliged to hold the horse which carried our luggage both by the head and the tail, to prevent his stumbling headlong,” wrote Lewis Evans, a member of the party.
Conrad Weiser, John Bartram and Lewis Evans had traveled north along the Tulpehocken Path from Weiser’s home at Womelsdorf on July 5 to meet the Iroquois viceroy Shikellamy at Shamokin at modern day Sunbury, Pa. From there, they would all depart to Onondaga, the Iroquois capital at modern day Syracuse N.Y.
This was no summertime jaunt, but rather a diplomatic, quasi intelligence-gathering mission into the heart of Iroquois territory by three well-connected colonial Pennsylvanians.
