The Clinton-Sullivan Campaign of 1779: The Continental Army Against the Six Nations

Map of General Sullivan's march from Easton to the Seneca and Cayuga countries, 1779. Library of Congress

Why the Americans marched

In 1778, raids by Six Nations warriors and American loyalists struck the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania. They starved the Continental Army of food and men, spread terror, burned settlements and carried off prisoners, forcing whole frontier districts to be abandoned. By 1779, New York governor George Clinton warned that if the raids went on, the frontier would be pushed back to the Hudson River.

General Washington answered by committing a large part of the Continental Army to break the Six Nations' ability to make war:

• Destroy the main villages and food supplies of the Cayuga and Seneca nations.
• At best, force the Six Nations to seek peace; at least, cripple their ability to keep attacking.
• Take many prisoners as hostages for future "good behavior" — turning the raiders' own tactics against them.

The expedition

General John Sullivan commanded, with General James Clinton second. Four brigades of Continental troops — about 4,469 men from New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — plus riflemen, militia and Oneida allies, showed how much the Americans had riding on it. Two smaller expeditions would hit Seneca towns in western Pennsylvania and Onondaga towns in central New York.

The plan: Sullivan would march north up the Susquehanna River from Pennsylvania; Clinton's New York Brigade would gather at Canajoharie on the Mohawk, move southwest destroying villages, and join Sullivan at Tioga on the Pennsylvania–New York border. Together they would strike into the heart of Six Nations country.

Delay helped. Due to start in May, the march was held up by short supplies and the need to cut military roads through the wilderness — which convinced the British that no serious move against the Six Nations was coming. The British also distrusted their allies: they refused to believe Native reports of a large American army gathering, even after white scouts confirmed them, and American feints suggested an attack on Fort Detroit and another invasion of Canada. By the time the British saw the real target, it was too late to help.

The Battle of Newtown

Sullivan's army destroyed the mixed Native and white settlement of Chemung near Tioga, and began the invasion on August 26. Against it the British could muster only about 600 British, loyalist and Native fighters; reinforcements, including Sir John Johnson's King's Royal Regiment of New York, left Canada too late.

The British commander, loyalist Colonel John Butler, wanted guerrilla tactics: fall back before the larger army and harass it with small parties. But a small group of Delaware warriors, whose villages were nearby, insisted on standing to fight, and to keep their people united many Six Nations war chiefs agreed against their better judgment. Butler had to go along.

1. The ambush. They built hidden breastworks on a ridge where Sullivan's route narrowed, near the village of Newtown.
2. Discovered. On the afternoon of August 29, the wary Americans' advance parties spotted the breastworks. Sullivan pinned the defenders in front with infantry and artillery while New Hampshire and New York troops swung around the ridge. Butler saw the trap and urged retreat; the warriors refused.
3. Panic. Artillery fire shook their resolve; mortar shells bursting behind their lines made many think they were already surrounded. They fell back — and escaped just ahead of the closing ring, because the flanking column had been slowed by a creek and a swamp.

The Americans inflicted considerable casualties, but their real victory was breaking the defenders' morale. For the rest of the campaign, nothing stopped their advance.

Burning the towns

American morale soared; the troops even agreed to live on half rations plus food taken from the villages. By September 1 they reached Seneca Lake and destroyed the main villages there. Many soldiers were astonished: instead of crude bark huts, they found orderly rows of hewn-timber and framed houses with windows, well-kept vegetable fields, and large apple, peach and cherry orchards — towns as good as, or better than, their own.

Butler tried to rally a defense of Kanadesaga, a chief Seneca town and his loyalists' base, but the warriors, still shaken, thought only of getting their families to safety. By September 9, the major settlements around Canandaigua Lake were gone.

Boyd's party. Sullivan sent Lieutenant Thomas Boyd with 26 men to scout Chenussio, one of the largest Seneca towns, on the Genesee River. Butler had persuaded about 400 Native and white troops to make one last stand, lying in ambush as the Americans bridged a swamp. Boyd's party, returning, blundered into it and was destroyed; only a few escaped. The Oneida scout Hanyost Thaosagwat was killed at once. Boyd and another soldier, questioned by Butler and sent under loyalist guard toward Fort Niagara, were seized by warriors at Chenussio and tortured to death. Boyd's men were the Americans' only battle casualties. After this failed ambush, the Native forces kept retreating west.

On September 14, Sullivan's army reached Chenussio and destroyed 128 houses and its extensive fields and orchards. Believing, wrongly, that there were no more significant Seneca towns west of the Genesee, it turned for home, burning any villages it had missed.

A hollow victory

• By September 21, 5,036 Native people had gathered at Fort Niagara looking to the British for help. Famine was narrowly avoided by new supplies and by persuading many to make temporary settlements elsewhere.
• Many who might have stayed neutral were driven, by need and by a thirst for revenge, to the British side. The raids paused — and returned from 1780 onward, larger and more destructive.
• The campaign's lasting effect was on Six Nations independence: for the rest of the war they depended almost entirely on the British for food, clothing and equipment, straining British resources. In the end the British abandoned them: the 1783 peace treaty made no provision for their Native allies, leaving the Six Nations defiant but ill-prepared to face the new United States.

Sources

Based on "The Clinton-Sullivan Campaign of 1779," Fort Stanwix National Monument, National Park Service, part of the series The Military History of Fort Schuyler; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source says Sullivan's force reached Tioga both "by the beginning of August" and on August 22, so neither date is given; a misspelling in the map's caption ("Senaca") is corrected.