IN BROAD STROKES: TIMELINE/CONTEXT

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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.