Sullivan Expedition

The Sullivan Expedition (also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, the Sullivan Campaign, and the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign) was a United States military campaign under the command of General John Sullivan during the American Revolutionary War, lasting from June to October 1779, against the four British-allied tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy. The campaign was ordered by George Washington in response to the Haudenosaunee and Loyalist destruction of American settlements in the Wyoming Valley, and Cherry Valley. The campaign had the aim of "the total destruction and devastation of their settlements." Four Continental Army brigades carried out a scorched-earth campaign in the territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in what is now central New York. The expedition was largely successful, with 40 Haudenosaunee villages razed and their crops and food stores destroyed. The campaign drove just over 5,000 Haudenosaunee to Fort Niagara seeking British protection, and depopulated the area for post-war settlement. Some scholars argue that it was an attempt to annihilate the Haudenosaunee and describe the campaign as a genocide, although this term is disputed. 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 Haudenosaunee 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.