Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Armstrong Sr., this raid deep into hostile territory was the only major expedition carried out by Pennsylvanian provincial troops during a brutal backcountry war.

[3] With the surrender of George Washington at Fort Necessity in 1754 and Braddock's defeat in 1755, the settlers on the Pennsylvania frontier were without professional military protection, and scrambled to organize a defense.

The local Indians, mostly Lenape and Shawnee who had migrated to the area after white colonists had settled their lands to the east, had waited to see who would win the contest—they could not risk siding with the loser.

Notable among the Indian raiders were the Lenape chiefs Shingas and Captain Jacobs, both of whom lived at Kittanning which also served as a staging area for raids and a temporary holding center for captives.

Following the massacres of mostly unarmed settlers at Draper's Meadow, Penn's Creek, Great Cove, and Gnadenhütten in 1755, the colonial governments of Pennsylvania and Virginia offered rewards for their scalps.

[7] Captain Jacobs was on an expedition led by François Coulon de Villiers[8] that descended on Fort Granville (near present-day Lewistown) on the morning of August 2, 1756.

Signs of a small Indian camp prompted Colonel Armstrong to detach a dozen men under Lieutenant James Hogg to monitor it while the column moved on toward the village.

[16] The Indians then harvested their corn and moved to Fort Duquesne, where they requested permission from the French to resettle further to the west, away from the British colonists.

[22] Tamaqua eventually made peace with Pennsylvania in the Treaty of Easton, which enabled a British force under General John Forbes to successfully mount an expedition in 1758 that drove the French from Fort Duquesne.