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The 1779 Sullivan Expedition (also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, the Sullivan Campaign, and the Sullivan-Clinton Genocide) was a United States military campaign during the American Revolutionary War, lasting from June to October 1779, against the four British allied nations of the Iroquois (also known as the Haudenosaunee). The campaign was ordered by George Washington in response to the 1778 Iroquois–British attacks on Wyoming, German Flatts, and Cherry Valley, where the Iroquois and British massacred American villagers. The campaign had the aim of "taking the war home to the enemy to break their morale". The Continental Army carried out a scorched-earth campaign in the territory of the Iroquois Confederacy (also known as the Longhouse Confederacy) in what is now western and central New York.
The expedition was largely successful, with more than 40 Iroquois villages and their stores of winter crops destroyed, breaking the power of the Iroquois in New York all the way to the Great Lakes. The campaign drove 5,000 Iroquois to Fort Niagara seeking British protection. With the military power of the Iroquois vanquished, the campaign depopulated the area for post-war settlement and opened up the vast Ohio Country, the Great Lakes region, Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky to post-war settlements. Some scholars argue that it was an attempt to annihilate the Iroquois and describe the expedition as a genocide, although this term is disputed, and it is not commonly used when discussing the expedition. Historian Fred Anderson, describes the expedition as "close to ethnic cleansing" instead. Some historians have also related this campaign to the concept of total war, in the sense that the total destruction of the enemy was on the table. Today this area is the heartland of Upstate New York, with thirty-five monoliths marking the path of Sullivan's troops and the locations of the Iroquois villages they razed dotting the region, having been erected by the New York State Education Department in 1929 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the expedition.Overview
Led by Major General John Sullivan and Brigadier General James Clinton, the expedition was conducted during the summer of 1779, beginning June 18 when the army marched from Easton, Pennsylvania, to October 3 when it abandoned Fort Sullivan, built at Tioga, to return to George Washington's main camp in New Jersey. While the campaign had only one major battle, at Newtown (since the tribes evacuated ahead of the large military force) along the Chemung River in western New York, the expedition severely damaged the Iroquois nations' economies by burning their crops, villages, and chattels, thus ruining the Iroquois technological infrastructure. With the Haudenosaunee's shelter gone and food supplies destroyed, the strength of the Iroquois Confederacy was broken. The death toll from exposure and starvation dwarfed the casualties received in the Battle of Newtown, in which an army of 3,200 Continental soldiers decisively defeated about 600 Iroquois and Loyalists. The deaths in this battle were 11 Continental soldiers, 12 Iroquois, and 5 British soldiers.In response to 1778 attacks by Iroquois and Loyalists on American settlements, such as on Cobleskill, Wyoming Valley and Cherry Valley, Sullivan's army carried out a scorched earth campaign to put an end to Loyalist and Iroquois attacks. The American force methodically destroyed at least forty Iroquois villages throughout the Finger Lakes region of western New York. The survivors fled to British regions in Canada and the Niagara Falls and Buffalo areas. The devastation created great hardships for the thousands of Iroquois refugees who fled the region to shelter under British military protection outside Fort Niagara that winter, and many people starved or froze to death, despite strenuous attempts by the British authorities to import food and provide shelter via their limited resources.The Sullivan Expedition devastated the Iroquois crops and towns and left them dependent on whatever the British could provide in the harsh winter of 1779. With the Iroquois people decimated by disease and battle, their morale never fully recovered. The Iroquois, after that, mostly limited their incursions into the new United States to isolated hunting parties, the main populations having permanently migrated north of the border.On August 26, the combined army of approximately 3,200 men and 250 pack horse teamsters left Fort Sullivan, garrisoned by 300 troops taken from across the army and left behind under Col. Israel Shreve of the 2nd New Jersey Regiment. Marching slowly north into the Six Nations territory in central western New York, the campaign had only one major battle, the Battle of Newtown, fought on August 29. It was a complete victory for the Continental Army. Later a 25-man detachment of the Continental Army was ambushed, and all but five were captured and killed at the Boyd and Parker ambush. On September 1, Captain John Combs died of an illness.Sullivan's forces reached their deepest penetration at the Seneca town of Chenussio (also called Little Beard's town, Beardstown, Chinefee, Genesee, and Geneseo), near the present Cuylerville, New York, on September 15, inflicting destruction on the Iroquois villages before returning to Fort Sullivan at the end of the month. Three days later, the army abandoned the fort to return to Morristown, New Jersey, and go into winter quarters. By Sullivan's account, forty Iroquois villages were destroyed, including Catherine's Town, Goiogouen, Chonodote, and Kanadaseaga, along with all the crops and orchards of the Iroquois.
Immediately before the expedition, the Seneca war chief Sayenqueraghta gave a speech at Fort Niagara urging the Wyandot people to support "the King, our Father" and assist in the resistance against the Continental Army. Otherwise, he stated, "we must be a miserable People, and be left exposed to the Resentment of the Rebels, who, notwithstanding their fair Speeches, wish for nothing more, than to extirpate us from the Earth, that they may possess our Lands." Later, when the invasion was already in progress, Mohawk military leader Joseph Brant warned that the Patriots, whom he called "Bostonians", sought to commit genocide against the Iroquois, saying "their intention is to exterminate the People of the Long House."Appointed the British governor of Quebec in 1778, Frederick Haldimand, while kept informed of Sullivan's invasion by Butler and Fort Niagara, did not supply sufficient troops for his Iroquois allies' defense. Late in September, he dispatched a force of about 600 Loyalists and Iroquois, but by then, the expedition had successfully ended.
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