The Sullivan Expedition (also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, the Sullivan Campaign, and the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign) was a United States military campaign under the command of General John Sullivan 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 Iroquois and Loyalist destruction of American settlements in the Wyoming Valley, and Cherry Valley. The campaign had the aim of "the total destruction and devastation of their settlements." Four Continental Army brigades carried out a scorched-earth campaign in the territory of the Iroquois Confederacy in what is now central New York.
The expedition was largely successful, with 40 Iroquois villages razed and their crops and food stores destroyed. The campaign drove just over 5,000 Iroquois to Fort Niagara seeking British protection, and depopulated the area for post-war settlement. Some scholars argue that it was an attempt to annihilate the Iroquois and describe the campaign as a genocide, although this term is disputed. 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 on 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 on the Chemung River in western New York, the expedition severely damaged the Iroquois nations' economies by destroying their crops, villages, and chattels. The death toll from exposure, starvation and disease the following winter dwarfed the casualties received in the Battle of Newtown, during which Sullivan's army of 3,200 Continental soldiers decisively defeated about 600 Iroquois and Loyalists.
In response to 1778 attacks by Iroquois and Loyalists on American settlements, such as on Cobleskill, German Flatts, the Wyoming Valley and Cherry Valley, as well as Iroquois support of the British during the 1777 Battles of Saratoga, Sullivan's army carried out a scorched-earth campaign to put an end to Iroquois attacks. The American force methodically destroyed 40 Iroquois villages throughout the Finger Lakes region of western New York. Thousands of Indigenous refugees fled to Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River. The devastation created great hardship for those who sheltered under British military protection outside Fort Niagara that winter, and many starved or froze to death, despite efforts by the British authorities to supply food and provide shelter using their limited resources.
The Iroquois homeland lay on the frontier between the Province of Quebec and the provinces of New York and Pennsylvania. Following the October 1777 surrender of British General John Burgoyne's forces after the Battles of Saratoga, Loyalists and their Iroquois allies began raiding American frontier settlements, as well as the villages of the Oneida. From a base at Fort Niagara, men such as Loyalist commander Major John Butler, Mohawk military leader Joseph Brant, and Seneca war chiefs Sayenqueraghta and Cornplanter led the joint British-Indigenous raids.
thumb|upright|Letter from John Sullivan, 1779
On May 30, 1778, a raid on Cobleskill by Brant's Volunteers resulted in the deaths of 22 regulars and militia. On June 10, 1778, the Board of War of the Continental Congress concluded that a major Indian war was in the offing. Since a defensive war would prove inadequate, the board called for an expedition of 3,000 men against Fort Detroit and a similar thrust into Seneca country to punish the Iroquois. Congress designated Major General Horatio Gates to lead the expedition and appropriated funds for the campaign. Despite these efforts, the campaign did not occur until the following year.
In September 1778, a response to the Wyoming defeat was undertaken by Colonel Thomas Hartley who destroyed a number of abandoned Delaware and Seneca villages along the Susquehanna River, including Tioga.
The Cherry Valley massacre convinced the Americans that they needed to take action. In April 1779, Colonel Goose Van Schaick led an expedition of 558 Continental Army troops against the Onondaga people. About 50 houses and a large quantity of corn and beans were burned. Van Schaick reported that they took "thirty three Indians and one white man prisoner, and killed twelve Indians." Despite Van Schaick's superior James Clinton ordering him to prevent his soldiers from assaulting any Onondaga women (noting that "Bad as the savages are, they never violate the chastity of any women"), the Americans committed numerous atrocities during the expedition. American soldiers "killed babies and raped women", and an Onondaga chief recounted to the British in 1782 how the Americans "put to death all the Women and Children, excepting some of the Young Women, whom they carried away for the use of their Soldiers & were afterwards put to death in a more shameful manner".
When the British began to concentrate their military efforts on the southern colonies in 1779, Washington used the opportunity to launch a major offensive against the British-allied Iroquois. His initial impulse was to assign the expedition to Major General Charles Lee, however, Lee as well as Major General Philip Schuyler and Major General Israel Putnam were all disregarded for various reasons. Washington offered command of the expedition to Horatio Gates, the "Hero of Saratoga," but Gates turned down the offer, ostensibly for health reasons. Finally, Major General John Sullivan accepted command. Sullivan was assigned four Continental Army brigades totalling 4,469 men. By the time the expedition set out this number had fallen to just under 4,000 due to disease, desertions and expired enlistments.
Battle of Chemung
After arriving at Tioga, Sullivan dispatched a small party to reconnoitre Chemung, a Delaware village upstream, where he believed Indigenous and Loyalist forces were gathering. When the scouts returned they reported the presence of a large number of "both white people and Indians" in "great confusion" but were unable to tell if the enemy were preparing to fight or depart. Sullivan decided an immediate attack was warranted. Leaving behind a garrison of 250 at Tioga, Sullivan's forces marched overnight and arrived at Chemung at dawn on August 13. They discovered that the village had been hastily abandoned. While Poor's soldiers torched the village and destroyed the crops in the surrounding fields, Hand's brigade searched for traces of the escaped villagers. About a mile west of the village, a detachment of the 11th Pennsylvania Regiment was ambushed by 30 Delaware led by Roland Montour. The Continentals were able to counterattack and force the Delaware to retreat but suffered six killed and 12 wounded. Later a detachment of the 1st New Hampshire Regiment was fired upon while destroying crops on the opposite side of the river, killing one and wounding four. Sullivan's forces withdrew from Chemung that afternoon and returned to the encampment at Tioga after nightfall. Five of the wounded later succumbed to their injuries bringing the total to eight dead. Butler reported five of his Rangers killed or taken and three wounded as well as five killed and nine wounded among the Iroquois.
thumb|right|A memorial to Sullivan's pack horses in the village of [[Horseheads, New York]]
Exhausted from carrying the expedition's supplies, many of Sullivan's pack horses reached the end of their endurance on the return to Tioga. Just north of what is now Elmira, New York, Sullivan ordered most of them euthanized. A few years later, the skulls of these horses were lined along the trail as a warning to potential settlers. The area became known as "The Valley of Horses Heads" and is now known as the town and village of Horseheads.
Sullivan, with the main body of his forces, returned to the Chemung River on September 24 and waited for Dearborn and Butler to arrive. Dearborn's detachment reached Sullivan's camp two days later while Butler's did not arrive until September 28. Sullivan's army returned to Tioga on September 30. Fort Sullivan was demolished on October 3, and the following day Sullivan's army boarded the flatboats for a three-day journey down the Susquehanna to Wyoming. Two days after arriving at Wyoming, Sullivan received orders to bring his army to West Point.
Brodhead's expedition
Further to the west, a concurrent expedition was undertaken by Colonel Daniel Brodhead. Brodhead, who had been given command of the Western Department in March 1779, was a strong advocate of launching an offensive against the western Seneca. Washington's strategy for the "chastisement of the savages" initially included an operation from Fort Pitt, but in April 1779, he had ordered the expedition cancelled due to supply issues. Brodhead, however, indicated that he had sufficient men and provisions to mount an attack, and on July 21, Washington gave permission for the expedition to proceed.
Brodhead departed Fort Pitt on August 11, 1779, with a contingent of 605 "rank and file" from the 8th Pennsylvania Regiment, the 9th Virginia Regiment and the Maryland Rifle Corps, as well as militia, volunteers and allied Delaware warriors. Gansevoort reached Fort Stanwix on September 25, and four days later surprised and captured the occupants of Tiononderoga's four houses. Gansevoort wrote, "It is remarked that the Indians live much better than most of the Mohawk River farmers, their houses very well furnished with all necessary household utensils, great plenty of grain, several horses, cows, and wagons".
A group of local colonists, homeless after earlier Indigenous raids, successfully petitioned Gansevoort to turn the houses over to them. Gansevoort's actions were criticized by Philip Schuyler, Commissioner for Indian Affairs and member of the Continental Congress, because the captured Mohawks were strictly neutral. The Mohawks were held prisoner at Albany until released on Washington's orders in late October.
British reaction
Canadian historian Gavin Watt described the British reaction to the invasion of the Iroquois homeland as "incredibly weak and ill-timed." Following France's declaration of war against Britain in June 1778, Governor Frederick Haldimand of Quebec became preoccupied with the possibility of a Franco-American invasion. As a result he focused on reinforcing the defences of the St. Lawrence River valley rather than supporting Britain's Iroquois allies by establishing a long-promised post at Oswego on Lake Ontario or increasing troop strength at Fort Niagara.
By the spring of 1779 the British had become aware that the Americans were planning a major offensive although the target was unclear.
On July 20, Joseph Brant led his volunteers and a detachment of Butler's Rangers against the settlement of Minisink in the upper Delaware River valley. Ten houses, eleven barns, a church, and a gristmill were destroyed in the raid. Most of the settlers escaped to main fort but four men were killed and three were taken prisoner. Brant reported three of his men killed and of the ten wounded, four were unlikely to survive. On November 6, 1779 he informed George Washington that he intended to resign from the Continental Army, writing "My Health is too much impair’d." Sullivan elaborated further in a letter to Congress dated November 9, 1779: "My Heal⟨th⟩ is so much impair’d by a violent bilious disorder, which seize⟨d⟩ me in the commencement, and continued during the whole of the western expedition." Congress accepted Sullivan's resignation on November 30, 1779.
On September 21, 1779, there were 5036 Indigenous refugees at Fort Niagara. This number decreased to 3,678 by October 2, and by November 21, roughly 2,600 refugees still remained at Fort Niagara. Two Seneca villages west of the Genesee River had escaped destruction and absorbed some of the refugees. A small number relocated to Carleton Island at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Some refugees returned to their razed villages, and some moved into hunting camps. After wintering at Fort Niagara, most of the remaining Seneca and Cayuga resettled at Buffalo Creek at the eastern end of Lake Erie.
In February 1780, Philip Schuyler, a member of the Continental Congress, sent four pro-rebellion Iroquois messengers to Fort Niagara. Little Abraham, a neutral Mohawk leader, told his listeners that the Continental Congress was ready to offer peace if the refugees were to return to their own country and embrace neutrality. The Seneca war chief Sayenqueraghta was indignant. Mohawk war leader Aaron Hill accused the four of being deceitful spies. Guy Johnson, the Superintendent of the British Indian Department, ordered the messengers imprisoned in Fort Niagara's "black hole," an unheated, unlit stone cell. Little Abraham died as a result of his harsh confinement. The seemingly miraculous arrival of the cicadas (specifically, Brood VII also known as the Onondaga brood) is commemorated by the Onondaga as though it were an intervention by the Creator to ensure their survival after such a traumatizing, catastrophic event.
294 formerly rebel Onondagas, Tuscaroras, and Oneidas arrived at Fort Niagara in early July 1780 and declared their support for the British. In his conclusion to his journal of the campaign, Major Jeremiah Fogg noted: "The nests are destroyed, but the birds are still on the wing."
The Iroquois were ignored in the peace negotiations between the United States and Britain that led to the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Beginning in 1784, the United States negotiated a series of treaties with the Iroquois that led to the cession of most of their traditional territory. In the October 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Iroquois delegates relinquished their claims to the Ohio Country, and ceded a strip of land along the east side of the Niagara River as well as all of their territory west of mouth of Buffalo Creek. The Six Nations in council at Buffalo Creek, however, refused to ratify the treaty, denying that their delegates had the authority to surrender such large tracts of land. In 1785, Joseph Brant led about 1,450 to the Haldimand Tract. Others, primarily Mohawk, settled with John Deseronto on the Bay of Quinte. A significant number of Seneca, Cayuga and Onondaga remained at Buffalo Creek. The name had been given to Washington decades earlier during the French and Indian War, while Washington's great-grandfather John Washington had been given a similar appellation by the Susquehannock in 1675.
Genocide controversy
A number of scholars have labelled the Sullivan Expedition as a genocide, arguing that Washington clearly intended to "extirpate" the Iroquois. Still others, while acknowledging that aspects of the campaign were genocidal, prefer to use phrases like "ethnic cleansing."
In Surviving Genocide, Jeffrey Ostler writes that historians "are more inclined than they once were to gesture to particular actions, events, impulses, and effects as genocidal, but genocide has not become a key concept in scholarship." He notes that while some scholars have argued that Washington was well aware that the campaign would cause more than just dispossession, others have questioned whether Washington had genocidal intent since he ordered Sullivan to "capture as many prisoners of every age and sex possible."
In George Washington's War on Native Americans, Barbara Alice Mann asserts that the Revolutionary War resulted in "thousands and thousands of desperate and starving refugees fleeing the Continental Army and its ruthless militias." Mann states as unquestionable fact that Washington ordered attacks against the Iroquois so as to "seize those lands under the cover of a war of liberation." According to Mann "land, not reciprocation" motivated the campaign. Mann diminishes or denies Iroquois culpability at the Battle of Oriskany, the Battle of Wyoming and the Cherry Valley Massacre, and stresses that Washington and his subordinates "visited a holocaust upon the Indians." David Dixon wrote that Mann's book "lacks objectivity and is, at times, punctuated by flawed interpretations and outright distortions." Frank Cogliano called it "polemic rhetoric that renders it wholly inadequate as a history of this important subject," and notes Mann's failure to cite seminal work on the topic, including Colin Calloway's The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and diversity in Native American Communities and Max Mintz's Seeds of Empire.
In her 2018 article, "Hostile Nations: Quantifying the Destruction of the Sullivan-Clinton Genocide of 1779," Historian Rhiannon Koehler asserts that the campaign was an "effort to wipe out the Iroquois as an entity and claim their lands." She dismisses the idea that Washington was acting in response to Indigenous raids, and insists that the orders Sullivan received were a clear indication of Washington's genocidal intent to "destroy the Haudenosaunee as an ethnic group."
In The American Revolution in Indian Country, Colin Calloway of Dartmouth University describes in detail the conditions at Fort Niagara following the Sullivan campaign. He estimated that "several hundred" succumbed that winter despite the best efforts of the British to supply clothing, blankets, provisions and medical care. Alan Taylor in The Divided Ground also reports "several hundred" deaths
Koehler, on the other hand, wrote that "mass death was a reality of the campaign." She suggests that the overall death toll may have been a high as 55.5 percent or roughly 5,000 individuals. She bases this number on the questionable assumption that the 5,036 refugees at Fort Niagara in September 1779 represented every surviving Iroquois individual, and that at least 20 percent of the refugees died during the winter. Koehler further states that between 473 and 580 men, women and children died from direct military action, however, neither of the sources she cites appear to support her assertion.
Commemoration
thumb|right|upright=.9|In 1929, on the 150th anniversary of the Sullivan Expedition, the U.S. Post Office issued a postage stamp commemorating the event.
To celebrate the centennial of the Sullivan expedition, a monument was erected in what is now Newtown Battlefield State Park in 1879. One of the speakers at the dedication ceremony was General William Tecumseh Sherman, famous for his March to the Sea during the American Civil War. In his speech, Sherman justified Sullivan's "scorched earth" campaign and the displacement of Indigenous people by appealing to the widespread American 19th-century belief in manifest destiny. He told his audience, "Wherever men raise up their hands to oppose this great advancing tide of civilization, they must be swept aside, peaceably if possible, forcibly if we must. The monument collapsed during a storm in 1911 and was replaced with the current monument the following year. The inscription states that Sullivan and Clinton led "an expedition against the hostile Indian nations which checked the aggression of the English and Indians on the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania, extending westward the dominion of the United States." Similar markers were erected in Pennsylvania marking Sullivan's route from Easton to Tioga. A number of other monuments were erected by various local organizations while a plethora of cast-iron roadside markers were placed by the New York State Education Department.
Celebrations of the bicentennial of the Sullivan expedition in 1979 were far more subdued. The overall lack of interest may have been the result of a growing unwillingness to celebrate military victories against Indigenous peoples. The most significant event was the reenactment of the Battle of Newtown staged at Newtown Battlefield State Park. For the 225th anniversary, a much larger reenactment was staged. In recent years, reenactments have included the participation of both Indigenous and Canadian reenactors.