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 settlers and granaries. The context is complex, involving: first the political division of the formally neutral Iroquois Confederacy into pro-English (Seneca, Oneida and Tuscarora) and pro-Yankee nations (Oneida, Tuscarora); second, a sequence of reciprocal raids against Yankee settlements and Indian settlements in NY and Pennsylvania, and third, the financing (1778); third, authorizaton (1778, 1779) by Congress of a grand anti-Indian expedition of which the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign was the result; fourth, Washington’s abandoning, for the moment, of a second grand invasion of British Canada and settling for “Plan B,” the anti-Indian campaign (1779) against the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas and their Mingo and Delaware allies.