Devil's Hole Ravine is located along the American shoreline of the Niagara River Gorge just north of the Niagara Glen. It is a deep, bowl shaped basin of the Bloody Run tributary from Glacial Lake Tonawanda. The name Bloody Run recalls the massacre of British soldiers by the Seneca Indians in 1763.

By the summer of 1761, the British had all but displaced the French as a military threat or political organization in North America. The British and the French were still at war with each other. The portage routes along the Niagara Frontier were important to the military as essential supply lines and had to be protected. The job of ensuring the safe and free passage along this portage was assigned to John Stedman.
During the French rule, the local Seneca Indians were employed along the portage carrying supplies and cargo. They had the most difficult job of carrying these supplies up and down the escarpment; an area known to the Indians as "Crawl on all Fours".

During 1762, Stedman made many improvements to the portage which included the use of horses and carts. The Seneca porters objected to the arrival of the covered Conestoga wagons which soon resulted in those Seneca Indians becoming unemployed. Indian disenchantment soon followed.

On September 14th 1763, John Stedman was leading a supply convoy which was traveling southward along the overhanging ledge along the Niagara Gorge that the Seneca Indians called Devil's Hole. This rock dome formed what was actually the roof of a cave below.

As Stedman reached the center of the Devil's Hole crossing, he heard the yells of Seneca Indians from his left. At that same moment, a volley of flaming arrows attacked the wagon train. Five hundred Seneca Indians quickly overwhelmed the supply train, killing all in their way. Stedman sped away from the supply wagons and rode to safety and to get help from the troops at Fort Schlosser near the Falls. Stedman barely escaped with his life and was one of three persons to survive. A young boy survived this brutal attack when he was thrown from an overturning supply wagon. The boy was able to hide amongst a clump of bushes to avoid being killed by the Indians. A third member of the wagon train was also able to narrowly escape the attack.

A rescue party from Fort Gray at nearby Lewis Town (located north of Devil's Hole) responded after hearing the Indian war cries. The Seneca Indians waited for the arrival of British reinforcements and sprung a similar ambush upon them as well. Not a single person survived the Indian attack.

By the time troops arrived from Fort Schlosser, they found only the dead. Victims had been scalped. Fearing a similar attack, the British quickly withdrew to Fort Schlosser.

After several days, the British troops returned to the site of the Devil's Hole Massacre. Here they counted 80 dead bodies. Many of the bodies had been thrown into the gorge by the Indians following the ambush.