Dr. Christopher Pearl will explore the struggle within and between Native Americans and British colonists over control of the Wyoming Valley in the latter half of the eighteenth century. By 1754, the Wyoming Valley, part of the larger Northern Susquehanna River Valley, was highly contested. Native American refugees like the Delaware, Shawnee, Mohican, Nanticoke, and Conoy displaced from their ancestral lands called the valley their home. Once there, they sought independence and sovereignty in the region, but to achieve that they had to resist not only British colonists, but also other Native Americans, especially the Haudenosaunee who claimed sovereignty over that land and the peoples on it.
At the same time, British colonists entered the fray, not only resisting Native American claims to the land but also fighting amongst themselves for the rights to the region. Both Pennsylvania and Connecticut laid claim to the Wyoming Valley, but so too did settlers and land speculators from across the British colonies. The result was a long struggle for control over the Wyoming Valley, and it is a story filled with intrigue, corruption, and destructive wars that ultimately shaped the future of not only that region, but of the young United States.
Christopher Pearl, PhD, is an Associate Professor of History at Lycoming College in Williamsport. His research interests are in early American history, especially the American Revolution. He is the author of Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State (2020), From Independence to the U.S. Constitution: Reconsidering the Critical Period of American History (2022), and numerous articles exploring Pennsylvania’s revolutionary history. He is currently writing a book on the struggle for independence between settlers, land speculators, and Native Americans during the American Revolution in the Northern Susquehanna River Valley. Pearl grew up in Allegany, New York, a small town on the border of New York and Pennsylvania. Like his research, his classes focus on many interesting facets of early American political and legal culture.
