by Kevin Alfred Strom
IT WAS July 3, 1778 — almost two years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence by the racially-conscious founders of the American Republic. The foe was the multiracialist System of their day, the British Empire. The place was the rich and beautiful Wyoming Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, sparsely settled by pioneering farmers and their families. And coming down in force from New York to kill them was a band of British soldiers and a large number of Indians and half-breeds they had recruited with promises of plunder, more than a thousand strong.