Queen Esther's Curse: A Tale of Cold Blooded Murder During the American Revolution and a Haunting that has Endured until Today

 A maul is a war hammer.  It is traditionally thought of, in reference to European history anyway, as a medieval weapon.  However, well into the 18th century many of the indigenous peoples of North America used stone war hammers, mauls, to protect their homeland from white settlers and to terrorize their enemies.  

In the unassuming suburban town of Wyoming, Pennsylvania in Luzerne County which sits along the banks of the Susquehanna River about five miles north of Wilkes-Barre is a large boulder known to posterity as “Queen Esther’s Rock” often simply called by locals “The Bloody Rock”.

During the 1960’a monument with a plaque was erected on this site in the middle of town by local historians to commemorate the supposed massacre of fourteen Continental soldiers during the American Revolution that took place on or near that site by a vengeful maul-wielding Iroquois woman who sought retribution for what she perceived as the unjust murder of her son.

The monument reads simply:

THE BLOODY ROCK

“On the night of July 3, 1778 after the Battle of Wyoming, fourteen or more captive American soldiers were murdered here by a maul wielded by a vengeful Indian woman, traditionally but not certainly identified as Queen Esther.”

The Iroquois woman may have gained vengeance for the death of her son by smashing in heads with her stone war hammer, but in the end at least according to most accounts, the Continental Army of the United States caught up with Queen Esther and her band of indigenous followers and she apparently ended her days swinging from a noose on a tree branch somewhere deep in the Pennsylvania woodland.

Native American maul

To this day it is said that her ghost and its mournful wailing haunts the state of Pennsylvania up and down the Susquehanna River as her restless spirit continues to seek vengeance for those who murdered not only her son but followers as well.

But who does history say was Queen Esther of the Iroquois People?  And what happened between the American settlers in Pennsylvania and the Native Americans of the nearby environs to cause this tale of murder, revenge and bloodshed that has led to one of America’s most enduring hauntings?

In order to find answers to those questions we must travel first back to the town of Wyoming, Pennsylvania and look more deeply into the folklore surrounding this story from history.   When it comes to the story of Queen Esther and her ghost all that can be said for certain is that nothing is really known “for certain”.

Surprisingly, for such a small seemingly innocuous place, the monument to Queen Esther’s Bloody Rock is not the only historic marker that stands in Wyoming, Pennsylvania.  Only a short distance away from Queen Esther’s marker stands another plaque, outside the Revolutionary War era site of the old frontier Fort Wyoming, which was fought over by American Patriots and Tory forces loyal to the British Crown during the 1770’s.

This marker commemorates, more generally, the battle that took place in Wyoming, Pennsylvania on July 3, 1778 almost two years to the day after our nation declared independence from Great Britain.  It reads:

BATTLE OF WYOMING

Nearby on July 3, 1778 300 Patriots under Colonel Zebulon Butler were defeated by 1000 British Tories and their Indian Allies under Major John Butler.  Captives were murdered.  Survivors fled to Forty Fort.

Two army officers both named Butler on opposing sides, one Patriot and one Tory faced off with one another in a battle on July 3, 1778.  Indigenous people, most likely Iroquois sided with the British.  The Tories and their Native American allies won and the American prisoners who surrendered were murdered in cold blood.

The Bloody Rock with Marker

Often during the course of the American Revolution from the mid 1770’s right up until hostilities ceased in 1784 control of the area along the banks of the Susquehanna River and the place then known as Fort Wyoming on the Pennsylvania frontier would change hands many times in fighting between Tories and Patriots.  Bloody atrocities would be committed in abundance on both sides and unfortunately Native American peoples would be unjustly dragged into all of the European bloodshed.

All of this most certainly happened and so did the pivotal battle on July 3, 1778 outside Wyoming, Pennsylvania between loyalist Tories and American Patriots. But did an Iroquois warrior woman nicknamed Queen Esther have anything to do with any of it at all?  

Maybe not…

Many retellings of the story behind Queen Esther and her ghost have little to do with the American Revolution other than the fact that most all agree that something involving murder and revenge by an Iroquois woman occurred in the year 1778.

The most common version of the origins behind what Pennsylvanians call “Queen Esther’s Curse” takes place way to the north of Fort Wyoming outside the town of Sayre, Pennsylvania which straddles the state’s northern border with New York.  The woodland of northern PA and of New York State was in the heart of Iroquois land during America’s War for Independence.

Battle of Wyoming July 3, 1778

This version of events has it that Queen Esther’s son, supposedly a mere lad in his early teenage years at the time, was killed by a notorious town drunk from Sayre, Pennsylvania, after an argument perhaps over some sort of bartering that went woefully wrong.

What did happen outside of Sayre, Pennsylvania is that on the night of September 27, 1778 a raid was launched by a war party of Iroquois, supposedly under the command of the this time Tomahawk wielding Queen Esther apparently in revenge for the murder of her son.  Two people, a farmer named Arthur van Rossum and his wife Jane were murdered and scalped by the Iroquois as revenge for the death of Queen Esther’s son.

In retaliation for this in October of 1778 a force of 200 Continental Army soldiers under the command of Colonel Thomas Hartley launched an attack on the Iroquois in search of Queen Esther.

Though the details of this expedition are murky, Colonel Thomas Hartley was in fact a real Patriot military officer who was in command of the American militia from York, Pennsylvania during the American Revolution.  After the war he would go on to serve in the Pennsylvania State Legislature and was a well known lawyer and respected politician in the early days of the American Republic.

He did lead the Pennsylvania militia on an expedition up the Susquehanna River in the Autumn of 1778 against marauding hostile Native American forces and Tory Loyalists but whether he caught up to Queen Esther and her band of murderous vengeful Iroquois is anyone’s guess.

However, legend says that Hartley’s column of 200 soldiers did in fact catch Queen Esther and her band of Iroquois warriors and that he had her watch as his soldiers massacred each and every man woman and child from her village right before her eyes before disposing of all of their lifeless corpses in the river itself.  After massacring all of the Iroquois, Colonel Hartley then, so the story goes, had the infamous Queen Esther hanged from a nearby tree before his column of Continental soldiers moved on its way down the Susquehanna.

Contemporary reports say that the screams of the murdered Iroquois could be heard all the way in the town of Athens, Pennsylvania nearly ten miles from the site of the oak tree where Queen Esther was supposed to have been lynched.  No matter what really happened it is probably true that Colonel Thomas Hartley and his column of soldiers murdered scores of Iroquois men, women and children in cold blood in retaliation for what they took to be a crime against their fellow Patriots from Pennsylvania.

According to a journal kept by an American soldier who was present at Queen Esther’s lynching, the young Queen of the Iroquois as the noose was being placed around her neck said, “May a curse be placed on the heads of any white men who dare set foot on this land.”

So was born the so-called “Curse of Queen Esther…”

Colonel Thomas Hartley

Within a decade of the supposed massacre and lynching locals in the area reported hearing the sound of screams and mournful wailing coming from the woods around the oak tree where legend has it Queen Esther was lynched near Wyoming, and the site of the Bloody Rock on the banks of Susquehanna River.

To this day local residents report hearing the blood-curdling screams of the massacred indigenous Iroquois villagers in the night.  Also, hunters out in the woods routinely report seeing the floating apparition of a Native American Woman carrying a stone maul still seeking revenge on those who murdered her and her son.  It has been reported by dozens of hunters that when they give chase, or even fire off a shot at Queen Esther’s Ghost, that she simply vanishes into thin air.

Is any of this true?  Who knows.  

But what is true is that the tales that gave rise to the story of Queen Esther’s Curse and her Ghost are some of the most enduring and longest lasting stories of the paranormal in American history.  

Perhaps, the tale of Queen Esther survives in our collective memory as an unfortunate reminder of a time when indigenous Americans and those who came here to found our great nation from countries throughout Europe were caught up in a cycle of warfare and violence that was often senseless and always brutal.  It is possible that Queen Esther’s Ghost still haunts the woodlands of Pennsylvania but it is almost certain that the crimes that Americans visited upon one another during our War for Independence continue to haunt our collective conscience as a nation to this very day.