THE CONSEQUENCES

The nests are destroyed, but the birds are still on the wing… Major Jeremiah Fogg September 1779

It was true. The Indians themselves were not destroyed. Only a mere handful had been killed in the campaign, but other things were destroyed that were of immeasurable importance to them.

Their towns were destroyed; nearly fifty of them consisting of about twelve hundred houses, in each of which two or three or even more families had lived.

Their corn was destroyed; nearly two hundred thousand bushels of the grain they most needed to subsist.

Their vegetables were destroyed; nearly fifty thousand bushels of the crops they had to have to live: potatoes, peas, beans, pumpkins, squash, watermelons, cucumbers, cabbages, carrots, parsnips.

Their fruit was destroyed; upward of ten thousand trees girdled or felled: apples, plums, peaches.

Their burial places were destroyed; the graves of their fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, had been opened and ransacked and the bones scattered; the sepulchers of their chiefs had been vandalized, pushed over, broken apart and the spirits disturbed.

Their health was destroyed; without proper food and shelter they became susceptible to famine and disease; the ensuing winter was the coldest on record and many of the Indians froze and starved and died of disease.

Their League was destroyed; the powerful Iroquois League that had existed for over a quarter of a millennium, the League that had ruled by conquest the tribes of a quarter of the continent, the League that had struck fear into the hears of tribes of over half the continent, the League that was mightier than any other confederation of Indians in North America had ever been or would ever be.

Their will was destroyed; the will to carry on, to hold their land or perish in the effort to do so.

Allan W. Eckert, Historian Author of The Wilderness War 1978