Teaoga and Queen Esther's Town

At the meeting of rivers near here stood two Native towns that shaped the history of this valley for generations.

Teaoga was an Iroquois watch town, on the southern edge of the Iroquois confederacy's territory. Nearby along the Chemung River stood Queen Esther's Town, home of the Delaware leader known to colonists as Queen Esther, a figure associated with the border violence of the Revolutionary War.

The broad flatlands stretching along the river were known as Queen Esther's Flats, where tribal herds grazed for decades. In September of seventeen seventy-eight, Colonel Thomas Hartley led American troops through the area and destroyed both towns, part of a larger campaign to neutralize Native settlements that had allied with the British during the war. The land shifted permanently after that autumn, and these towns vanished from the maps.