Wyoming Valley, Desolation

of. The defeat of Zebulon Butler at Winter moot House was followed by awful scenes of ma acre and desolation throughout the Wyoming Valley. Sixteen of the patriots who had been taken prisoners by Giengwatah, chief of the Senecas, were reserved for the most terrible fate. They were tied fast around a large rock, and after being subjected to the most excruciating tortures all but two were brained with a tomahawk in the hands of a half-breed woman called Queen Esther. Two of the men managed to release themselves from their bonds and escaped to the woods. Early next morning Forty Fort surrendered and then the whole valley was made a desolation, not a life being spared that the savages could reach, and the inhabitants that fled nearly all perished in the great swamp at the foot of Pacono Mountains, since known as ‘‘ The Shades of Death.’’ Wythe, George (1726-1806), jurist, became a member of the Virginia House of Burge es in 1758 and served until the beginning of the Revolution. He drafted a remonstrance to Parliament against the Stamp Act in 1764. He was a delegate to the Continental Congre from 1775 to 1776 and signed the Declaration of Independence. Became Judge of the High Court of Chancery in 1777, and was sole chancellor of that court from 1786 to 1806. He was an ardent supporter of the Federal Constitution in the Virginia Convention of 1788, and ‘was of great note as a lawyer. «a X. 404