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Shikellamy's Old Town

Pennsylvania

On the plain below this ridge stood Shikellamy's Old Town, an Oneida village that served as a key diplomatic crossroads in colonial Pennsylvania. Shikellamy served as the Iroquois Confederacy's overseer in the Susquehanna country, tasked with managing relations between the Six Nations and the Pennsylvania colonial government. In seventeen thirty-seven, the German-born diplomat Conrad Weiser traveled through this region on his way to Onondaga, the Iroquois capital in present-day New York.

Shikellamy later moved his headquarters to Shamokin, now called Sunbury, a few miles south. He became one of the most trusted intermediaries of his era, helping keep a fragile peace along the Pennsylvania frontier for decades.

Sources (2)
Map of Pennsylvania with this story marked