Washington’s supply problems were not over, and Valley Forge was not the last time he had to resort to Indian corn. Writing from Morristown on Christmas Eve that year, he told Congress that, lacking flour, he had ordered Indian corn from the forage department; “thus we are obliged to attempt to save the men at the expense of the Horses.”42 Nevertheless, news of the French alliance boosted his optimism, and, even before the Oneidas arrived at Valley Forge, he was planning ahead for the eventual victory that now seemed more certain. He dashed off a letter telling his stepson not to sell land to meet expenses. With paper currency depreciating, the money he got would “melt like Snow before a hot Sun.” Instead of selling, Washington intended to keep buying land, and he advised his stepson to do likewise. “Lands are permanent—rising fast in value—and will be very dear when our Independency is established, and the Importance of America better known.”43 Washington was occasionally interested in Indian allies; he was always—even amid the hardships of Valley Forge—interested in Indian land.
while washington cultivated the oneidas and Tuscaroras as allies, he planned to “extirpate” the Iroquois nations that sided with the British. Their warriors carried out devastating attacks on the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania, burning large stretches of the country between the Ohio and the Susquehanna, and in 1778 Joseph Brant’s warriors and John and Walter Butler’s Tory Rangers inflicted heavy losses on American soldiers and civilians at Wyoming and Cherry Valley.44 There was little Washington could do: “To defend an extensive frontier against the incursions of Indians and the Banditti under Butler and Brant is next to impossible,” he wrote in response to New York governor George Clinton’s pleas for help.45 He hoped their losses might cause the Iroquois to desist but could not predict how they would act. British intrigues, combined with the Indians’ inherent “disposition to ravage,” drove them to commit outrages.46 Washington and his officers justified expeditions into Iroquois country as necessary retaliations. Iroquois people suspected that the driving force behind Washington’s campaigns was not retaliation but land. Some historians agree.47
In late February 1778 the Continental Congress formally authorized Washington to plan and execute an expedition for the “chastisement of the savages.”48 In June Congress voted almost $1 million for campaigns against Detroit and the Six Nations. Washington argued against them. The time was not right; the season was too far advanced to organize an effective campaign, and diverting limited resources against the Indians would leave other areas vulnerable to British attack. Washington had seen firsthand the horrors perpetrated by Indian raids, but in the broader scheme of the war, defending frontier inhabitants was secondary “to matters of higher moment” and military operations elsewhere. The frontier settlers would have to wait. Congress deferred the campaign against Detroit. The campaign against the Six Nations was postponed until the next year.49
Meanwhile, in June a delegation from the Senecas, the primary target for an expedition against the Six Nations, came to Washington’s encampment on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River. Accompanied by a few Oneidas and Tuscaroras as peacemakers, they hoped to exchange a white captive for a chief named Astiarix, who had been captured on the Virginia frontier. Washington’s aide James McHenry recorded an account of the meeting in his diary. The Seneca speaker gave a bold and impassioned speech. He acknowledged his people were at war with the Americans, but, as he came on a peaceful errand, “he was sure that the great American Warrior woud not with-hold his Freind whom he sought. They were both great Warriors, & must know each other, & must both be inspired by the same generous Sentiments.” Washington treated the Senecas civilly but took a hard line. He knew nothing about the whereabouts of Astiarix, he said, and threatened that if they did not cease their hostilities, as soon as the British army was gone, he “would turn our whole force against them & the other Indian Nations who have taken a like blody part against us and cut them to pieces.” He hoped that when they returned home the accounts they gave about the strength of the Continental Army and the British evacuation of Philadelphia would have the desired effect on the disposition of their people.50
Washington and his senior officers were all of the opinion that, as General John Stark put it, “we never Shall be safe, in this Country, till an Expedition is Carried into the Indians Country, & Effectually, Root out these nefarious Wretches, from the face of the Earth.”51 The Senecas received a stay of execution. Iroquois communities that lay within closer striking distance were not so fortunate. Located on the upper Susquehanna River near present-day Windsor, New York, Oquaga was an Oneida town, but by the eve of the Revolution it was a mixed community with many Mohawk, Tuscarora, and Mahican residents. Although it had impressed visitors as a model Christian Indian community, it was riven between Christians and non-Christians and between an Anglican faction and a Presbyterian faction. Joseph Brant used Oquaga as his headquarters for launching raids in the Susquehanna Valley, and Governor Clinton urged Washington to destroy the place. In October 1778, Washington ordered an expedition against Oquaga and Unadilla, “places of Rendezvous for the Savages & Tories who infested them—and where they deposited their plunder.” As Lieutenant Colonel William Butler and the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment advanced, the inhabitants abandoned Oquaga. Butler said, “It was the finest Indian town I ever saw.” Nestled on both sides of the river, Oquaga consisted of about forty log cabins, many with shingled roofs, stone chimneys, wooden floors, and glass windows, as well as communal longhouses. Butler’s soldiers burned the town and destroyed two thousand bushels of corn. Years later a veteran of the expedition boasted they found several small children hiding in the cornfields and impaled them on bayonets.52
As Washington said of himself, no man knew better than he the need to wage offensive war against Indians. He recognized, as he had on the Virginia frontier twenty years earlier, that defensive tactics played into the Indians’ hands: “Supported on the one hand by the British, and enriching themselves with the spoils of our people, they have everything to gain and nothing to lose.” His ideas about fighting Indians had not changed; the only effective strategy was to invade Indian country.53 Unlike the young man in a hurry who had lobbied for an attack on Fort Duquesne, however, Washington was now commander in chief, with a broader perspective, and he preferred to wait than to risk all. Throughout the late fall of 1778 and the winter of 1779 there was much talk of launching expeditions—against Canada, against Detroit, against the Iroquois. His friend and protégé Lafayette favored a Canadian invasion with French officers. Washington opposed it. He may have done so because Gates, who had won a major victory at Saratoga while Washington had none, championed it and would have likely been its commander; he may have been fixated on New York, but at least on paper he took a longer view. Suppose the expedition succeeded, and then France retook Canada and rebuilt its Indian alliances, he posited. With Spain in possession of the lands west of the Mississippi, the young American nation would be hemmed in, a prospect, he informed Henry Laurens in November, that “alarms all my feelings for the true and permanent interests of my Country.” Like Washington in 1758, Washington in 1778 remained “convinced that the only certain way of preventing Indian ravages is to carry the war vigorously into their own country,” and fretted that an invasion of Indian country was not under way, but he had learned, perhaps from General Forbes twenty years earlier, that patience and preparation were preferable to haste: “I fear we must content ourselves with defensive precautions, for the present.” His arguments prevailed with Congress.54
Diverting a substantial part of the Continental Army to a western Indian campaign far from the main theater of war and from its logistical base represented a considerable risk. Washington had formerly thought the best way to end Indian raids was to invade Canada, not Iroquoia.55 Escalating Iroquois raids and consultations with Generals Greene and Schuyler convinced him that striking deep into Seneca country would stifle the raids at their source. It was a common strategy, executed in other assaults on Indian
country in 1779. In April, Colonel Evan Shelby led an expedition against the Chickamauga Cherokees on the lower Tennessee River, burning, Thomas Jefferson informed Washington, eleven towns and twenty thousand bushels of corn.56 In May, Colonel John Bowman and three hundred Kentucky militia crossed the Ohio and burned the Shawnee town at Chillicothe.57
The expedition against the Iroquois that summer is commonly called Sullivan’s campaign, after the general who led the main thrust. In fact, the expedition was Washington’s from start to finish. He conceived it, gathered information about the country and communities it targeted, planned it, secured congressional support and funding for it, oversaw and orchestrated its multiple components, and eagerly awaited reports coming in from the front. It was one of the most carefully planned campaigns of the war. With meticulous attention to detail and stressing the need for “the profoundest secrecy” in making inquiries and plans, Washington consulted with Greene, Schuyler, and Brigadier General James Clinton; he corresponded with officers and civilians; he interviewed frontiersmen and former captives; he sent out spies, and he circulated questionnaires as he compiled the information he considered vital to success. What was the topography in Iroquois country? Which water routes provided access, and how navigable were they? Where were the various Indian towns, what were their populations, and how many miles separated them? Which towns should bear the brunt of the attack? How many men would be needed, and what proportion of the army should be frontiersmen and rangers accustomed to Indian fighting? Would artillery be necessary? What supplies would be necessary, in what quantities, and at what locations? Should support posts be established as the army advanced? Would the British interfere? He compiled in his own handwriting a table with answers to his questions and appended relevant extracts from other sources. He sketched his own map of the New York/Pennsylvania frontier.58 His efforts demonstrated the seriousness of the Iroquois threat, but they also reflected the value of the prize. It has been suggested that his preoccupation with preparations for the Iroquois campaign diverted his attention from the growing dispute between Benedict Arnold and Joseph Reed, president of the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council, a feud that fueled Arnold’s alienation from the Patriot cause.59
Washington wanted the intended invasion to “distract and terrify the Indians” and hoped that in the confusion some old men, women, and children would be taken prisoner. If the army did not manage to defeat the Iroquois warriors, it would at least destroy their villages and the year’s crop.60 Greene advised that to “scourge the Indians properly” American forces should invade their country by multiple routes “and at a season when their Corn is about half grown.” The goal was simple: drive the Indians away, destroy their grain, and return home. Washington would have to use Continental troops “or else the Work wont be half done.”61 In other words, the expedition was to do what French and British armies had done when fighting Indians—burn their homes and food and leave them to starve.
At first, Washington wanted to strike Niagara, the hub of the British-Iroquois war effort.62 He hoped the Oneidas might be induced to persuade their relatives to betray the fort but acknowledged this was a long shot. An American campaign against Niagara had to find its way across Iroquois country, knowledge best obtained via Kirkland and Dean from the Oneidas. But Washington knew the Oneidas would be reluctant to wage war on fellow Iroquois and cautioned that information about the geography of Iroquoia be obtained “in such a manner as not to give them any suspicion of the real design.”63
Schuyler initially recommended the Mohawk Valley as the main invasion route, but Greene argued strongly for the Susquehanna; Washington accepted his advice, and Schuyler concurred.64 Washington originally envisioned sending an expedition from Fort Pitt as a third prong of the invasion and ordered Brigadier General Lachlan McIntosh to explore the possibility of transporting troops up the Allegheny River in large canoes and then heading overland to Lake Erie. But, concerned about supplies, accurate information, and timing, he reduced the expedition to a feint.65 When Colonel Daniel Brodhead took over as commander at Fort Pitt, Washington encouraged him to fuel rivalry between the Wyandots and Mingoes; inducing the former to attack the latter would create a “useful diversion.”66
Although the Iroquois harassing the frontiers were predominantly Mohawks and Senecas, Washington’s first strike targeted the Onondagas. Most Onondagas were still neutral, many had close ties to Washington’s Oneida allies, and some were actually allied to the United States by early 1779. Nevertheless, when Schuyler suggested it, Washington approved a surprise attack on “the Onondaga capital village.” He said it offered good prospects for success at little risk and an opportunity “to pay them in their Coin.”67 Joseph Brant’s first biographer, William Stone, noted in 1838 that the attack on Onondaga might look like “a harsh if not unnecessary measure,” but at the time Washington thought a blow against the political and military nerve center of the Iroquois League would reverberate through the confederacy.68 In April, over Oneida protests, Colonel Goose Van Schaick and 550 troops invaded Onondaga country. They burned fifty longhouses, destroyed cattle and stores of corn and beans, killed a dozen people, and took thirty-four prisoners. Brigadier General Clinton had warned Van Schaick to make sure his soldiers did not abuse the Indian women. “Bad as the savages are,” he said, “they never violate the chastity of any women, their prisoners.” As one might expect, official reports of the expedition said nothing about mistreatment of infants and sexual abuse of female prisoners, but Iroquois traditions assert, and other sources seem to confirm, that American soldiers killed babies and raped women. Three years later, an Onondaga chief told the British that when the Americans attacked his town “they put to death all the Women and Children, excepting some of the Young Women, whom they carried away for the use of their Soldiers & were afterwards put to death in a more shameful manner.” Van Schaick’s campaign drove hungry Onondagas west to the Senecas and the British at Niagara, although some sought refuge with their Oneida neighbors to the east.69 Washington congratulated Van Schaick on the successful outcome of a campaign that, he declared in general orders, brought “the highest honor” to the commander and his officers and men.70
Back in 1776 Schuyler had told Washington that if the Cayugas declared against the United States he would cut them off immediately; they were within striking distance of Fort Stanwix. The Senecas, on the other hand, were out of reach.71 In May 1779 the Cayugas sent out peace feelers. Washington’s first inclination was to have none of it, suspecting they intended only to evade the immediate threat and would resume their hostility as soon as they could do so with safety and success. However, the advantages to be gained from dividing the Iroquois persuaded him that it might “be politic enough to make a partial peace with some of the tribes.”72
Washington first offered the command of the Iroquois campaign to Gates, with instructions that if did he not feel up to the task, he should pass it on to Major General John Sullivan, which, as expected, he did.73 Sullivan, a hard-drinking New Hampshire lawyer and an ambitious officer with a volatile temper and a mixed record in the war so far, was not enthusiastic either and took a week to accept. He knew that he was up against a formidable enemy and that American troops faced a challenge in Indian country, but said his New Hampshire soldiers were “all marksmen, and accustomed to the Indian mode of fighting.”74
Washington corresponded with Sullivan throughout the spring and summer as the general organized the campaign and got it under way. Mindful of what had happened to Braddock, Washington gave detailed advice: guard against surprise; establish intermediate posts to safeguard communications and convoys; leave enough men to garrison the posts but not so many as to seriously deplete the attacking force. And while Washington deplored and denounced British and Indian terror tactics and raids on American settlements, he had no qualms about ordering Sullivan to employ terror tactics and wage total war against Iroquois settlements: “The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settleme
nts and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.” As the army cut its swath, Sullivan was to dispatch detachments to lay waste all the neighboring settlements so that the country would “not be merely overrun but destroyed.” The best defense was attack, Washington explained to Sullivan: peace “would be fallacious and temporary” unless the Iroquois were driven far from the frontiers and terrorized by “the severity of the chastisement they receive.” He forbade Sullivan to listen to any peace overtures until he had totally destroyed their settlements, and then only if they gave hostages as security.75 Writing to Lafayette on July 4, Washington said he expected the invasion would “extirpate them from the Country which more than probable will be effected by their flight as it is not a difficult matter for them to take up their Beds and Walk.”76 As several thousand American soldiers, including roughly one-quarter of the Continental Army, prepared to descend upon the Iroquois in a coordinated, three-pronged assault, Sullivan’s officers drank a toast (one of many toasts) promising “civilization or death to all American savages.”77
Washington told Sullivan that the success of his campaign depended on the speed of his movements and urged him to “proceed as light as possible.”78 Instead, Sullivan dilly-dallied, citing one supply problem after another, and even complaining to Congress about deficient support from Washington. Washington lost patience—and his cool—and ordered him to get a move on. Sullivan finally marched against the Iroquois on August 9, two months later than Washington had hoped.79
Once Sullivan got going, he did as he was ordered, taking precautions against ambush and devastating the country as he advanced. He led three brigades of Continental troops north up the Susquehanna; James Clinton and a fourth brigade advanced west from the Mohawk Valley, destroying five Indian villages. Their combined force numbered roughly 4,500 men. Meanwhile, Daniel Brodhead left Fort Pitt on August 11 with 600 men and eight Delaware guides and marched against the Seneca and Munsee towns on the upper Allegheny River, a region never far from Washington’s mind and crucial to his Ohio country plans. Guyasuta sent word to the British at Fort Niagara asking for help, but the British could spare no troops, wrongly expecting that any American assault would head for Niagara or Detroit.80
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