The 1779 Sullivan Expedition 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. The campaign was ordered by George Washington in response to the 1778 Iroquois and British attacks on Wyoming, German Flatts, and Cherry Valley. The campaign had the aim of "taking the war home to the enemy to break their morale". 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 Battle of Oriskany was a significant engagement of the Saratoga campaign of the American Revolutionary War, and one of the bloodiest battles in the conflict between Patriot forces and those loyal to Great Britain. On August 6, 1777, several hundred of Britain's Indigenous allies, accompanied by Loyalists of the King's Royal Regiment of New York and the British Indian Department, ambushed a Patriot militia column which was marching to relieve the siege of Fort Stanwix. This was one of the few battles in which the majority of the participants were American colonists. Patriots and allied Oneidas fought against Loyalists and allied Iroquois and Mississaugas. No British regulars were involved; however, a detachment of Hessians was present.
The Cherry Valley massacre was an attack by British and Iroquois forces on a fort and the town of Cherry Valley in central New York on November 11, 1778, during the American Revolutionary War. It has been described as one of the most horrific frontier massacres of the war. A mixed force of Loyalists, British soldiers, Senecas, and Mohawks descended on Cherry Valley, whose defenders, despite warnings, were unprepared for the attack. During the raid, the Seneca in particular targeted non-combatants, and reports state that 30 such individuals were killed, in addition to a number of armed defenders.
The Seneca ( SEN-ik-ə; are a group of Indigenous Iroquoian-speaking people who historically lived south of Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes in North America. Their nation was the farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League in New York before the American Revolution. For this reason, they are called “The Keepers of the Western Door.”
The Battle of Newtown was the only major battle of the Sullivan Expedition, an armed offensive led by Major General John Sullivan that was ordered by George Washington to end the threat of the Iroquois who had sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War. Opposing Sullivan's four brigades were 250 Loyalist soldiers from Butler's Rangers, commanded by Major John Butler, and 350 Iroquois and Munsee Delaware. Butler and Mohawk war leader Joseph Brant did not want to make a stand at Newtown, and instead proposed to harass the enemy on the march, but were overruled by Sayenqueraghta and other Indigenous war leaders.
The Phelps and Gorham Purchase was the sale, in 1788, of a portion of a large tract of land in western New York State owned by the Seneca nation of the Iroquois Confederacy to a syndicate of land developers led by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham. The larger tract of land is generally known as the "Genesee tract" and roughly encompasses all that portion of New York State west of Lake Seneca, consisting of about 6,000,000 acres (24,000 km2).
John Abeel III known as Gaiänt'wakê or Kaiiontwa'kon in the Seneca language and thus generally known as Cornplanter, was a Dutch-Seneca chief warrior and diplomat of the Seneca people. As a war chief, Cornplanter fought in the American Revolutionary War on the side of the British. After the war Cornplanter led negotiations with the United States and was a signatory of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784), the Treaty of Canandaigua (1794), and other treaties. He helped ensure Seneca neutrality during the Northwest Indian War.
The Battle of Wyoming, also known as the Wyoming Massacre, was a military engagement during the American Revolutionary War between Patriot militia and a force of Loyalist soldiers and Iroquois warriors. The battle took place in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania on July 3, 1778 in what is now Luzerne County. The result was an overwhelming defeat for the Americans. There were roughly 300 Patriot casualties, many of whom were killed by the Iroquois as they fled the battlefield or after they had been taken prisoner.
The Boyd and Parker ambush was a minor military engagement in what is now Groveland, New York on September 13, 1779, during the American Revolutionary War. A scouting patrol of the Sullivan Expedition was ambushed by Loyalist soldiers led by Major John Butler and their Seneca allies led by Cornplanter and Little Beard.
There are four treaties of Buffalo Creek, named for the Buffalo River in New York. The Second Treaty of Buffalo Creek, also known as the Treaty with the New York Indians, 1838, was signed on January 15, 1838 between the Seneca Nation, Mohawk nation, Cayuga nation, Oneida Indian Nation, Onondaga (tribe), Tuscarora (tribe) and the United States. It covered land sales of tribal reservations under the U.S. Indian Removal program, by which they planned to move most eastern tribes to Kansas Territory west of the Mississippi River.
The Treaty of Canandaigua, also known as the Pickering Treaty and the Calico Treaty, is a treaty signed after the American Revolutionary War between the Grand Council of the Six Nations and President George Washington representing the United States of America.
The Battle of Cobleskill was an American Revolutionary War raid on the frontier settlement of Cobleskill, New York on May 30, 1778. The battle, having taken place in the modern-day hamlet of Warnerville, New York, near the modern (2019) Cobleskill-Richmondville High School, marked the beginning of a phase in which Loyalists and Iroquois, encouraged and supplied by British authorities in the Province of Quebec, raided and destroyed numerous villages on what was then the United States western frontier of New York and Pennsylvania.
The northern theater of the American Revolutionary War after Saratoga consisted of a series of battles between American revolutionaries and British forces, from 1778 to 1782 during the American Revolutionary War. It is characterized by two primary areas of activity. The first set of activities was based around the British base of operations in New York City, where each side made probes and counterprobes against the other's positions that sometimes resulted in notable actions. The second was essentially a frontier war in Upstate New York and rural northern Pennsylvania that was largely fought by state militia companies and some Indian allies on the American side, and Loyalist companies supported by Indians, British Indian agents, and occasionally British regulars. The notable exception to significant Continental Army participation on the frontier was the 1779 Sullivan Expedition, in which General John Sullivan led an army expedition that drove the Iroquois out of New York. The warfare amongst the splinters of the Iroquois Six Nations were particularly brutal, turning much of the Indian population into refugees.
The Big Runaway was a mass evacuation in June and July 1778 of settlers from the frontier areas of north central Pennsylvania during the American Revolutionary War. A major campaign by Loyalists and Native Americans allied with the British devastated the small communities on the northern and western branches of the Susquehanna River, prompting local militia leaders to order the evacuation. Most of the settlers relocated to Fort Augusta at modern-day Sunbury at the confluence of the North and West Branches of the Susquehanna River, while their abandoned houses and farms were all burnt.
Brant's Volunteers, also known as Joseph Brant's Volunteers, were an irregular unit of Loyalist and indigenous volunteers raised during the American Revolutionary War by Mohawk war leader, Joseph Brant, who fought on the side of the British on the frontier of New York. Being military associators, they were not provided soldiers' uniforms, weapons, or pay by the British government, and survived by foraging and plundering.
The Treaty of Fort Stanwix was a treaty finalized on October 22, 1784, between the United States and Native Americans from the six nations of the Iroquois League. It was signed at Fort Stanwix, in present-day Rome, New York, and was the first of several treaties between Native Americans and the United States after the American victory in the Revolutionary War.
The attack on German Flatts was a raid on the frontier settlement of German Flatts, New York during the American Revolutionary War. The attack was made by a mixed force of Loyalists and Iroquois under the overall command of Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, and resulted in the destruction of houses, barns, and crops, and the taking of livestock for the raiders' use. The settlers, warned by the heroic run of Adam Helmer, took refuge in local forts but were too militarily weak to stop the raiders.
The Iroquois, also known as the Five Nations or the Six Nations and by the autonym Haudenosaunee, are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of Native Americans and First Nations peoples in northeast North America and Upstate New York. They were known during the colonial years to the French as the "Iroquois League", and later as the "Iroquois Confederacy". The English called them the "Five Nations", including the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora from the southeast were accepted into the confederacy, which became known as the Six Nations.
Jasper Parrish was a United States Agent and Interpreter for the Iroquois. Parrish was fluent in the Mohawk and Delaware languages after having lived among the Munsee and Mohawk nations for six years as a child. Parrish's residence with the Indian nations began when he and his father were kidnapped by members of the Munsee Indian nation on July 5, 1778.
