Sheshequin Path

The Sheshequin Path was a major Native American trail in the U.S. State of Pennsylvania that ran between two Native American villages: "French Margaret's Town" on the West Branch Susquehanna River (part of modern-day Williamsport in Lycoming County) and "Sheshequin" on the North Branch of the Susquehanna River (modern-day Ulster Township, in Bradford County).

[1] The name Sheshequin is a corruption of Sheshequanink meaning "at the place of the gourd rattle" in the Lenape language.

[2] As was often the case with Native American trails, the Sheshequin Path split into multiple pathways at each end.

From Trout Run it continues past Fields Station, Bodines, Marsh Hill, Ralston to the source of Lycoming Creek in the southwest corner of Bradford County.

Bohemia Mountain at the headwaters of Lycoming Creek was said to be the residence of an "Otkan" or evil spirit because of the many thunderstorms and other bad weather there.

[3] For example, in March 1737 he travelled it with the Iroquois "vice chief" Shikellamy through snow up to three feet (1 m) deep on their way to Onondaga (modern Syracuse, New York).

Spangenberg wrote of the Sheshequin Path as traversing a "Dismal Wilderness" which was "so full of wood and trees which the wind has piled up sometimes three to four logs upon one another that often one does not know how one may get through."

In 1778 after the Wyoming Valley battle and massacre, American Colonel Hartley led 200 men north along the Sheshequin Path on a retaliatory raid as far north as Queen Esther's Town (south of modern Athens, Pennsylvania at the confluence of the Chemung River and the Susquehanna), which they destroyed.