From George Washington to Major General John Sullivan, 31 May 1779
From George Washington to Major General John Sullivan, 31 May 1779 Sir, The expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tri...
Texts
JOURNAL OF LIEUT. ERKURIES BEATTY, OF THE 4TH PENN LINE.
“21st. this morning set of about Day Break on the same line of march and went about 6 Miles when we halted, Capt. Graham with his Compy. was sent forward as ...
FROM THE LATE RAY FADDEN
“I love these woods. They’re alive to me. The woods have life of their own. From the smallest insect to the largest moose. Everything has a function. It is a...
DEVELOPMENT?
The forest which covers it, consisting chiefly [of] trees that live in excessive moisture, is now decayed and death struck, by the partial draining of the sw...
GOD’S CHOSEN
Indeed to see a forest tree, which had withstood the elements till it attained maturity, torn up by its roots, and bending itself to the earth, in obedience ...
AN EERIE CANAL
The forest which covers it, consisting chiefly [of] trees that live in excessive moisture, is now decayed and death struck, by the partial draining of the sw...
LIKE CORTEZ AND SHERMAN, BUT…
The expedition of General John Sullivan against the hostile Indian tribes of the north was one of the most important military movements of the Revolutionary ...
HOW THE WEST WAS WON
In September, 1776, Congress had passed resolutions for the enlistment of soldiers to serve during the Revolutionary War, resolved that each state was to fur...
(STILL) OPEN WOUNDS: NOLA DISPOSSESSED
America’s Open Wound by Bob Herbert It’s eerie. The air is still. There is no noise. Night is falling.
BURNING ONONDAGA, APRIL ‘79
21st. this morning set of about Day Break on the same line of march and went about 6 Miles when we halted, Capt. Graham with his Compy. was sent forward as a...
THAT VISION THING
GENERAL SULLIVAN’S RAID And when the soldiers in their marches, Advanced on that September morn, And pushed along through woodland arches, Or passed the fie...
CIVILIZATION DEFINED
A POPULAR ACCOUNT OF THE HEROES AND ADVENTURERS WHO, BY THEIR VALOR AND WAR-CRAFT, BEAT BACK THE SAVAGES FROM THE BORDERS OF CIVILIZATION AND GAVE THE AMERIC...
BURY MY HEART
“When we look at historical accuracy, we look at history as it plays in the service of a narrative,” said Sam Martin, a vice president at HBO Films in charge...
ODE TO A CHOSEN PEOPLE
Indeed to see a forest tree, which had withstood the elements till it attained maturity, torn up by its roots, and bending itself to the earth, in obedience ...
BEARING WITNESS
I have seen him shrinking from civilized approach, which came with all its vices, like the dead of night upon him. I have seen him gaze and then retreat like...
BOTTOM LINES
Total land holdings for the Iroquois in 1995 are about 86,716 acres remaining from the original 25,000,000 or .034% of what we once had. Doug George-Kanenti...
SULLIVAN-CLINTON 2005
Clearly, NY’s taking of millions of acres of Haudenosaunee land in 1788 was based upon the devastation of the Van Schaick April 1779 raid on Onondaga and the...
AFTER DINNER TOASTS
General Washington and the Army; General Sullivan & Western Expedition; King and Queen of France; A Successful and Decisive Campaign; May the new World ...
WE WILL HAVE OUR LANDS
Whole Indian nations have melted away like snowballs in the sun before the white man’s advance. They leave scarcely a name of our people except those wrongly...
RIGHTS OF RETURN
I would like to explain to you why we have the right and the desire to return to our native land here in New York: Each tribe here represented today has a s...
OURS OR MINE?
All of these things are a gift provided by the Creator for our needs. That everything we need has been provided here, but we have to treat it in a manner tha...
WHITE BIRDS CRY
After this transaction, the voice of the birds from every quarter cried out: “You have lost your country. You have lost you country. You’ve lost your country...
HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS
[I write of] the great Loneliness which is creeping into my Soul with every hour and every mile which separates me from you. I really feel guilty as I applie...
THE ROAD TO EMPIRE
The immediate purpose was to give protection to the defenseless frontier settlements. This was to be accomplished by destroying the Indian villages and sourc...
ODE TO TOWN DESTROYER
When your army entered the country of the Six Nations, we called you Town Destroyer: and to this day when that name is heard our women look behind them and t...
A DESERT CALLED PEACE
They make solitude, which they call peace - Tacitus We moved, on the next day, to Chinesee, crossing in our path a deep creek and the Little Seneca river, a...
TSUNAMIS, NOW & THEN
What makes it especially frightening is that whole communities have been annihilated. We’ve known for years now that the emotional devastation that survivors...
THE MARCHING ORDERS
The Expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. ...
TIMELINE
WHEN & WHERE: TIMELINE & MAIN EVENTS For the Main Events & Sites of the Sullivan/Clinton saga: A Mini-Timeline A Mini-Timeline The context is co...
WHO’S WHO: THE KEY PLAYERS
For a “Who’s Who” of the Sullivan/Clinton saga: SULLIVAN/CLINTON AT-A-GLANCE: THE KEY PLAYERS Brant, Joseph (Mohawk) The most prominent Iroquois mi...
CLARITY & RESISTANCE
Whole Indian nations have melted away like snowballs in the sun before the white man’s advance. They leave scarcely a name of our people except those wrongly...
RIGORS OF THE SEASON: DINNER IS SERVED, AS IROQUOIA STARVES
A handsome house halfway up the bank opposite the ferry seems to attract the eye and to invite strangers to stop at General Schuyler’s, who is its owner as w...
YANKEE ORIGINS…
The White Man comes, pale as the dawn, with a load of thought, with a slumbering intelligence as a fire raked up, knowing well what he knows, not guessing bu...
THE CHAPLAIN PREPARES
The necessity of a just & speedy retaliation for British & savage barbarity prompts the Army to encounter every fatigue & surmount every difficul...
THE DEATHS OF BOYD AND PARKER
The Boyd-Parker killings have stoked moral outrage and controversy. On the one hand, they were killed, if not tortured, in captivity, and their bodies left a...
SALT IN THE WOUNDS: THE MINES AT LITTLE BEARD’S TOWN
On March 12, 1994, a section of the massive 6,000-acre Retsof salt mine collapsed under Cuylerville. Underground water flooded the mines, threatening wells a...
SULLIVAN-CLINTON: A STRATEGY OF STARVATION?
The entries that follow address this terrible question… Provision is scarce with us, owing to our having been at Fort Stanwick &ca by which means our ...
FRONTIER METAPHYSICS
The instinct of antipathy against an Indian grows in the backwoodsman with the sense of good and bad, right and wrong. In one breath he learns that a brother...
KNOW THEM NO MORE FOREVER
The eastern tribes have long since disappeared; the forests that sheltered them have been laid low, and scarce any traces remain of them in the thickly-settl...
SENECAS SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER
Father, the voice of the Seneca Nations speaks to you, the great counsellor, in whose heart the wise men of all the Thirteen Fires have placed their wisdom; ...
ENGLAND IN DEFEAT: WHERE PITY MEETS PRAGMATISM
[War leader, Joseph Brant] is much better informed and instructed than any other Indians, he is strongly attached to the Interest of his Country of men, for ...
THE OFFICERS JOURNALS!
Arguably among the most, if not the most “journalized” expedition in military history, Sullivan-Clinton’s officers journals are now going online. A Must See:...
TOWN DESTROYER
To the Irouqois, General George Washington was Ha-no-da-ga-nears, which means Town Destroyer, and this remained the name they gave to all Presidents of the U...
CHERRY VALLEY TRAGEDY
Click this to view the Cherry Valley Memorial… O haste, men of strength, the savages are near you; Now hurry to the fort, taking with you those you love, ...
SCALPS & FIREWATER
The people [American settlers] are not [yet] Sensible what a good affect It [the burning of villages] has had on the Indians. The Onandaga warriors offer to ...
ONEIDAS: BETWEEN A ROCK & A HARD PLACE
The Rock: Caught in an English Web… BROTHERS : It is now about four years ago since the Bostonians began to rise, and rebel against their Father, the King o...
WYOMING VALLEY TRAGEDY
Perhaps more than any other event, the so-called “Wyoming Massacre” of July 3, 1778 was a rallying cry for launching the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign in retalia...
TEN YEARS AFTER…
Brothers, you must not think hard if we speak rash, as it comes from a wounded heart, as you have struck the hatchet in our head and we can’t be reconciled u...
THE AFTERMATH: IMPENDING STARVATION
‘but the Indians not being supported [by English/Loyalist reinforcements] as they expected, thought of nothing more than carrying off their Families, and we ...
THE IROQUOIS NATIONS
The five original Iroquois/Haudenosaunee tribes are: the Seneca, the keepers of the Western Door; the Cayugas, the “people of the marsh” and “keepers of the ...
REFUGEES OF NIAGARA 1779-1780: THE WINTER OF HUNGER
The expedition you are appointed to command is directed against the hostile tribes of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The im...
THE THREE SISTERS MEET SENECA FOODS
The Three Sisters - Corn, Beans and Squash - are the traditional core of Seneca survival and worldview. Today, the Seneca Foods plant in the area at Leiceste...
WHITE SETTLEMENT
When peace with England was finally declared, in 1783, there began a migration of settlers to western New York. Many of Sullivan’s men were given grants of l...
THE ERIE CANAL
The Erie Canal (1825), a monumental achievement, was ultimately made possible by Washington-Sullivan-Clinton’s ouster of the Iroqouis nations from the region...
LAND CALCULUS
Prior to European colonization the Iroquois exercised active dominion over most of what is now New York State. Of the 49,576 square miles of the state the Ir...
FINAL LAMENT
We are encircled, we are encompassed. The Evil Spirit rides the blast. The waters are disturbed. They rise. They press upon us and the waves settle over us. ...
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
The land between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes appears good. Level and well-timbered; affording a sufficiency for twenty elegant townships which, in the process of...
PROMISE TO KEEP
The Indians shall see that we have malice enough in our hearts to destroy everything that contributes to their support. General John Sullivan Sullivan-Clint...
NO NEGOTIATIONS
But you will not by any means listen to any overture of peace before the total ruinment of their settlements is effected’. Our future security will be in the...
VICTOR’S VERSES
‘The wigwam fell, and the log cabin arose’ ‘Gwah U Gwah, Welcome to Civilization’ ‘Scalps in 1779, Brains in 1879’ ‘From the Trail to the Track’ ‘The End...
GEN. SHERMAN’S CREDO
I know it is common, and too common a practice to accuse General Sullivan of having destroyed peach trees and cornfields, and all that nonsense. He had to do...
ETHNIC CLEANSING?
I flatter myself that the orders with which I was entrusted are fully executed, as we have not left a single settlement or field of corn in the in the countr...
US AND THEM
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absol...
BIG TREE TREATY
By the time appointed for the Treaty at Big Tree on the Genesee River in the summer of 1797, Robert Morris was a prisoner in his own mansion, unable even to ...
HOLLAND PURCHASE
Years after the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign, the Seneca sold their remaining Western lands to the land-speculating Robert Morris, former “financier of the Amer...
THE CONSEQUENCES
The nests are destroyed, but the birds are still on the wing… Major Jeremiah Fogg September 1779
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The objectives of the Sullivan Clinton Campaign were all realized. The hostile Senecas and Cayugas were terribly punished. Their homes were burned, their vas...
PUBLIC OPINION
The Sullivan Clinton Expedition against the Six Nations and their British Loyalist leaders captured the imagination of the Americans. It awakened tremendous ...
ADVANCE PLANNING & FINANCING
In advance of the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign, on June 11, 1778, Congress already had allocated the huge sum of $932,743.1/3, to resolve the problem of Indian ...
IN BROAD STROKES: TIMELINE/CONTEXT
Authorization and financing were from the Continental Congress of the thirteen rebel colonies. NYS congressmen were especially keen on securing New York’s se...
SIZE AND SCALE
The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign was one of the largest offensive movements in the entire War of Independence. In the Spring, Van Schaick’s force numbered 558, ...
NEW YORK’S BIG PARTY: A NATIVE VOICE AT THE TABLE
The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign of 1779 was the largest expedition ever before mounted against the Indians of North America. Deploying 5,100 to 6,200 troops - ...