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During the French and Indian War, two young Pennsylvania soldiers with a taste for fresh plums unwittingly set the stage for an incident that left a third soldier dead at a place in central Pennsylvania known ever since as the Bloody Spring.
A state historical marker has long stood next to the spring, making the site easy to find. The spring water still comes off a hillside overlooking the Susquehanna River floodplain on which the Pennsylvania Provincial Regiment erected Fort Augusta during the summer of 1756. The site is within present-day Sunbury, but 260 years ago, it was deep in a forested region.
Few colonists lived in the mountains north of Harrisburg, then called Harris’ Ferry, but for many decades, hundreds of Native American had lived in wigwams and long houses in the Indian town of Shamokin at the forks. The town sprawled from Sunbury over an island in the North Branch and into Northumberland.
In late 1755, Indians and French soldiers began attacking Pennsylvania’s frontier settlements. In early 1756, Gov. Robert Hunter Morris decided to build a fort at the confluence of the Susquehanna. To do this he sent a force of 400 soldiers more than 50 miles upriver to the forks. They belonged to the 3rd Battalion of the Pennsylvania Regiment, often called the Augusta Regiment.
Most soldiers walked, and the regiment was accompanied by a fleet of 20 flat-bottom boats carrying cannons, barrels of gunpowder, salted pork and other supplies.
The battalion encountered few Indians, but the troops frequently saw signs that hostile warriors were tracking their progress.
Accompanying them were a number of women who cooked, took care of sick or wounded soldiers, and washed and mended soldiers’ uniforms.
There were also about 20 cows.
The natives had abandoned Shamokin by the time the soldiers reached the confluence in July. The troops immediately set about building Fort Augusta. An outdoor model of Fort Augusta occupies the site of the 1756 fort. It’s along Sunbury’s North Front Street on the grounds of the Northumberland County Historical Society.
The soldiers braced for battle as they approached the site, but nothing happened. Although the warriors didn’t contest the battalion’s arrival, they kept a close eye on the fort’s construction. Soldiers who ventured too far from the fort did so at their own peril.
On Aug. 23, for example, Indians surprised two soldiers following a forest trail several miles south of Fort Augusta. They killed one man, but the other escaped by running to the fort.
The ambush at the spring happened six days later. Two 16-year-old soldiers – Samuel Miles and Samuel Attlee – took a long walk, heading for the fruit-laden plum tree half a mile from the fort. They failed to notice two hostile warriors watching them from the hill.
As the soldiers neared the tree, the warriors ran down the ravine through which the spring water flowed. They suddenly spotted – and shot – the third soldier, James Pattin, who had been guarding the cows. Pattin was kneeling to get a drink of water. The warriors tomahawked and scalped Pattin, then ran up the hill and into the woods.
Warned by the shots, Miles and Attlee hurried back to the fort without injury.
Meanwhile, soldiers at the fort ran toward the spring when they heard the gunfire, but the warriors got away. As they pursued the Indians, the soldiers “discovered the marks where two Indians had been sitting on the side of the hill in the bushes about 15 yards from the spring,” Pattin’s commanding officer, Capt. Joseph Shippen, said in a Sept. 3 letter.
Ever since, the site has been called Bloody Spring. The hillside is now part of the Chief Shikellamy Elementary School property.
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John L. Moore is an author and storyteller based in Northumberland, Pa. Information about the eight non-fiction books in his Frontier Pennsylvania Series is available online at johnleonmoore.blogspot.com