The Sullivan-Clinton Expedition of 1779 was ordered by George Washington and carried out by General John Sullivan and Brigadier General James Clinton against the four British-allied nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. It destroyed more than forty villages and their food stores. The expedition orders are at Founders Online. Sullivan's field reports back to Washington are also at Founders Online. The journals kept by the soldiers who participated are at the Internet Archive in full, public domain. This episode presents the documents from both sides.
Washington's May 31, 1779 letter to General John Sullivan is the foundational document of this episode. It is brief, direct, and specific. The expedition was ordered in response to the raids on Wyoming Valley in July 1778 and Cherry Valley in November 1778, which had destroyed settlements and killed dozens of settlers. Washington's stated objective was not to defeat the Haudenosaunee in battle. It was to destroy their capacity to sustain further operations.
The expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the six nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible.
I would recommend that some post in the center of the Indian Country should be occupied with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provision, whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed.
The New York State Legislature commissioned a compilation of the journals kept by soldiers on the Sullivan Expedition, published in 1887 and confirmed at the Internet Archive, public domain. The journals record the march in operational detail: distances covered, villages reached, crops destroyed, houses burned, orchards cut down, and the names of the places where these things happened. The Haudenosaunee villages encountered by Sullivan's army were described by the soldiers as extensive, well-built, and prosperous, with large orchards and fields of corn.
Sullivan's army destroyed more than forty Haudenosaunee villages between June and October 1779. The campaign drove more than 5,000 people to Fort Niagara seeking British protection. The winter of 1779 to 1780 was severe. The combination of the expedition's destruction and the harsh winter caused significant suffering and death among the displaced population. Sullivan reported back to Washington on September 28, 1779.
The number of towns burnt and destroyed by this army amounts to 40 besides a great number of scattering houses, the quantity of corn destroyed at a moderate computation amounts to 160,000 bushels with a vast quantity of vegetables of every kind.
The Haudenosaunee refer to the Revolutionary War as the Whirlwind. The Sullivan Expedition is part of that Whirlwind. Contemporary accounts from Haudenosaunee witnesses were recorded by British Indian Department officials and by Iroquois oral historians. An Onondaga chief's account of American actions during the related Van Schaick Expedition in April 1779, recorded for the British in 1782, states that American forces killed women and children and took others prisoner. This account is cited in the Wikipedia documentation of the Sullivan Expedition with reference to the Colonial Office Records at the British Library.
The Sullivan Expedition did not end Haudenosaunee military capacity immediately. Joseph Brant continued operations through the end of the war. But the strategic effect was lasting. The destruction of the food base and the displacement of thousands of people permanently altered the demographic and political situation of the Six Nations in their traditional territory. The region that Sullivan's army marched through became the heartland of Upstate New York in the post-war settlement era.
If you learned something new or just enjoyed the content, please share it and follow along on X and Substack. This page runs on a passion for our shared history.