Sullivan Expedition

Sullivan Expedition
Part of American Revolutionary War

Route of the Armies marker near Chemung, New York
DateJune 18 – October 3, 1779
Location
Upstate New York and Northeastern Pennsylvania
Result American victory
Belligerents
Iroquois Confederacy
 Great Britain		 United States
Commanders and leaders
Sayenqueraghta
Cornplanter
Joseph Brant
Little Beard
John Butler		 John Sullivan
James Clinton
Edward Hand
Enoch Poor
William Maxwell
Daniel Brodhead
Strength
1,000 Iroquois
200–250 Butler's Rangers		 4,000
Casualties and losses
Unknown 33 killed, 41 wounded
Total Iroquois casualties:
5,000 refugees; unknown number of deaths from starvation, exposure, disease, and violence

The 1779 Sullivan Expedition (also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, the Sullivan Campaign, and the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign) 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 Iroquois and Loyalist attacks on the Wyoming Valley, German Flatts, and Cherry Valley. The campaign had the aim of "the total destruction and devastation of their settlements."[1] The Continental Army 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 more than 40 Iroquois villages razed[2] and their crops and food stores destroyed. The campaign drove 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 expedition as a genocide,[3][4][5] although this term is disputed.[6][7] Historian Fred Anderson, describes the expedition as "close to ethnic cleansing" instead.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10]

  1. ^ "From George Washington to Major General John Sullivan, 31 May 1779". Founders Online. National Archives. Retrieved March 6, 2024.
  2. ^ "Not Merely Overrun but Destroyed. The Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779".
  3. ^ Koehler, Rhiannon (Fall 2018). "Hostile Nations: Quantifying the Destruction of the Sullivan-Clinton Genocide of 1779". American Indian Quarterly. 42 (4): 427–453. doi:10.5250/amerindiquar.42.4.0427. S2CID 165519714.
  4. ^ Ostler, Jeffrey (October 2015). "'To Extirpate the Indians': An Indigenous Consciousness of Genocide in the Ohio Valley and Lower Great Lakes, 1750s–1810". The William and Mary Quarterly. 72 (4): 587–622. doi:10.5309/willmaryquar.72.4.0587. JSTOR 10.5309/willmaryquar.72.4.0587. S2CID 146642401. Retrieved April 2, 2022.
  5. ^ Mann, Barbara Alice (March 30, 2005). George Washington's War on Native America. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. p. 52. ISBN 978-0275981778.
  6. ^ Leader, Matt (September 15, 2019). "Time to change? Effort seeks 'counter marker' for existing Sullivan-Clinton monument in Hemlock park". Livingston County News. Retrieved May 17, 2022. "I told her I objected to her… titling the counter marker as the Sullivan-Clinton Genocide," said Alden, speaking last week.
  7. ^ Birns, Nicholas (2007). "The Unknown War: The Last of the Mohicans and the Effacement of the Seven Years' War in American Historical Myth". James Fenimore Cooper Society – State University of New York at Oneonta. Retrieved May 17, 2022. The Sullivan expedition and the clearing-out of the Iroquois in central and western New York State—more like the Anglo-Saxons dispatching the Celts—something which more poetic souls still may lament, but which is not commonly called genocide.
  8. ^ Anderson, Fred (2004). George Washington Remembers: Reflections on the French and Indian War. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 138. ISBN 978-0-7425-3372-1.
  9. ^ "A well-executed failure: the Sullivan campaign against the Iroquois, July–September, 1779". Choice Reviews Online. 35 (1): 35–0457-35-0457. September 1, 1997. doi:10.5860/choice.35-0457. ISSN 0009-4978.
  10. ^ Smith, Andrea Lynn; John, Randy A. (2020). "Monuments, Legitimization Ceremonies, and Haudenosaunee Rejection of Sullivan-Clinton Markers". New York History. 101 (2): 343–365. doi:10.1353/nyh.2020.0042. S2CID 229355901. Retrieved April 29, 2022.