Sullivan Expedition

Sullivan Expedition
Part of American Revolutionary War
Route of the Armies marker near Chemung, New York
Date June 18 – October 3, 1779 Location Upstate New York and Pennsylvania Result American victory
Belligerents
Iroquois Confederacy  Great Britain	United States
Commanders and leaders
Sayenqueraghta Cornplanter Joseph Brant Little Beard John Butler	John Sullivan James Clinton Edward Hand Enoch Poor William Maxwell Daniel Brodhead
Strength
1,000 Iroquois 200–250 Butler's Rangers)	4,000
Casualties and losses
Unknown	33 killed, 41 wounded[1]
Total Iroquois casualties: 5,000 refugees, 4,500 deaths from starvation, exposure, disease, and violence (per Koehler)[2]

The 1779 Sullivan Expedition (also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, the Sullivan Campaign, and the Sullivan-Clinton Genocide^[2]) was a United States military campaign during the American Revolutionary War, lasting from June to October 1779, against the four British-allied nations of the Iroquois (also known as the Haudenosaunee). The campaign was ordered by George Washington in response to the 1778 Iroquois and British attacks on the Wyoming Valley, German Flatts, and Cherry Valley. The campaign had the aim of "taking the war home to the enemy to break their morale."^[1] The Continental Army carried out a scorched-earth campaign in the territory of the Iroquois Confederacy in what is now western and central New York.

The expedition was largely successful, with more than 40 Iroquois villages razed^[3] and their crops and food stores destroyed. The campaign drove 5,000 Iroquois to Fort Niagara seeking British protection. The campaign depopulated the area for post-war settlement and opened up the vast Ohio Country. Some scholars argue that it was an attempt to annihilate the Iroquois and describe the expedition as a genocide,^[2][4][5] although this term is disputed, and it is not commonly used when discussing the expedition.^[6][7] Historian Fred Anderson, describes the expedition as "close to ethnic cleansing" instead.^[8] Some historians have also related this campaign to the concept of total war, in the sense that the total destruction of the enemy was on the table.^[9] Today this area is the heartland of Upstate New York, with thirty-five monoliths marking the path of Sullivan's troops and the locations of the Iroquois villages they razed dotting the region, having been erected by the New York State Education Department in 1929 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the expedition.^[10]