As tensions leading to the American Revolution developed, Native nations were divided in their loyalties to England, the American rebels, and their own alliances. Initially, Haudenosaunee Nations viewed the conflict as a civil war between colonists and chose to remain neutral.
Over time, it became clear to Haudenosaunee leaders that the winners of the revolution would ultimately be the parties they negotiated their futures with. Loyalties and allyship among the Nations diverged, weakening the overall power of the Iroquois Confederacy.
In late 1774, the Six Nations were pulled into the fray when the First Continental Congress of Patriots passed the Continental Association, which instated an embargo on British goods.
This action disrupted the Haudenosaunee trade network into British-controlled Canada and violated the trade agreement between the Native nations and Great Britain.
First in October 1775 and again in July 1776 after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Patriot representatives met with the Haudenosaunee Council at Fort Pitt in present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to negotiate neutrality.
The Haudenosaunee Nations agreed to peace with the Americans and neutrality in the fast-approaching Revolutionary War if the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix would be honored and European settlement was kept to the east of the defined boundary between English colonies and Indigenous lands.
Patriots did not comply and continued to push further into Native lands.
When the political discontent erupted into the American Revolutionary War, the member Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy split their support between the British and newly formed American forces.
The majority of Nations and individual members supported the British under the belief that the Nations would be more likely to keep their relative independence and land under continued British rule, while the Oneida and Tuscarora backed the American colonists and fought alongside Patriot forces.
As with many British families living in North America, alliances were not clear-cut, and in some cases, allegiance was split on a person-by-person basis, which destabilized the clan-based society.
What had started as a European civil war on North American soil soon turned the Confederacy against itself, undermining the social unity and political stability that the Haudenosaunee had enjoyed for centuries. The divergence of allegiance during the war set the stage for the United States to aggressively pursue expansion into Haudenosaunee homelands.
In 1778, Loyalists and members of the British-backed Native nations participated in raids that crippled Continental forces and destroyed frontier colonial settlements in New York and Pennsylvania.
Fearing that the New York frontier attacks would be pushed east if decisive action was not taken, General George Washington ordered General John Sullivan to lead four brigades — approximately 4,500 men, making up a sizable portion of the Continental Army — on a scorched-earth campaign that would limit the Haudenosaunee’s ability to attack in the future.
This is known today as the Sullivan Campaign of 1779 (also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Genocide, Sullivan Expedition, and Sullivan-Clinton Campaign).
Washington tasked Sullivan with launching a terror campaign to destroy the food supply and weaken the Cayuga and Seneca Nations. Smaller expeditions were tasked with destroying Seneca settlements in western Pennsylvania and Onondaga settlements in central New York. Their progress was marked by the smoldering villages they left behind as they made their way across central and western New York.
The Battle of Newtown on August 29, 1779, ended in a retreat of British-allied Haudenosaunee forces, destroying morale for the British-backing Confederacy Nations, who now chose to proactively flee to other nearby settlements.
This series of devastating attacks on Haudenosaunee settlement locations, stability, political and economic power, and relationships cannot be overstated.
The Sullivan Campaign devastated the Haudenosaunee Nations, resulted in rapid displacement of Haudenosaunee peoples from their homelands, and destroyed the Native nations’ capacity to wage war and maintain their political and economic independence.
For the remainder of the war, they were almost wholly dependent upon the British for food, clothing, and equipment. This strained British resources, and in the end, the British would abandon their American Indian allies.
By the end of September 1779, the Six Nations faced starvation in the upcoming winter. More than 5,000 arrived at the British Fort Niagara expecting food, clothing, and shelter in the face of their catastrophic losses at the hands of the Americans, but many died.
Instead of lessening the threat to frontier settlements, the Sullivan Campaign increased the animosity of Haudenosaunee and British alike, laying the groundwork for fierce fighting within the expanding American New York territory and British-backed Native nations raids during the 1780s.
Read more about the Haudenosaunee.
This essay was drawn from the National Park Service’s 2024 Fort Ontario Special Resources Study, available in it’s entirety with footnotes here.
Illustrations, from above: British General Burgoyne addressing Native Americans to secure an alliance during the Revolutionary War (Hand-colored woodcut of a 19th-century illustration); Seneca Chief Red Jacket Iroquois Six Nations; Route of the Sullivan Campaign (courtesy Chemung County Historical Society); and the 1779 Sullivan-Clinton Campaign destruction.
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