Invasion of South Carolina: Tioga Point and Six Nations

The atrocities of the Indians in the valley of Wyoming and around the headwaters of the Susquehanna in the summer and autumn of 1778, kindled the hottest indignation of the American people, and it was determined by the Congress to chastise the savages who committed the murderous deeds, especially the Senecas. In the summer of 1779, Washington sent General Sullivan, with a little army of Continental troops, into the heart of the country of the Six Nations, all of whom, excepting the Oneidas, had been won over to the royal cause by the Johnsons and other British emissaries. Sullivan gathered his troops in the Wyoming Valley, and with these, three thousand strong, he marched up the Susquehanna on the last day of July. On the 22d of August he was joined, at Tioga Point, by General James Clinton, who had come from the Mohawk Valley with about fifteen hundred men. Meanwhile there had been hostilities in the wilderness. In April several hundred soldiers, led by Colonels Van Schaick and Willett, had penetrated the Onondaga country from Fort Schuyler, destroyed three villages, burned the provisions of the inhabitants, and slaughtered their live-stock. Three hundred Onondaga braves were immediately sent out upon the warpath charged with the vengeance of the nation. They spread terror and desolation far and near, in conjunction with other savages. They pushed down to the waters of the Delaware and the borders of Ulster county. In July, Brant, with Indians and Tories, fell upon and devastated the settlement of Minnisink in the night. Growing crops were destroyed, and cattle and other plunder were carried away. One hundred and fifty militia and volunteers went in pursuit, when, on the 22d of July, the savages turned upon them. A severe conflict ensued; the republicans were beaten, surrounded, and murdered after they were made prisoners. Only thirty of the patriotic pursuers survived to tell the dreadful story. These events gave strength to the courage of Sullivan's men.

The forces of Sullivan and Clinton, at Tioga Point, numbered five thousand men. They moved cautiously, and on the morning of the 29th, dispersed a party of eight hundred Indians and Tories strongly fortified at Chemung, now Elmira. Brant was at the head of the Indians, and Sir John Johnson, with the Butlers and Captain McDonald, led the Tories. The fight was severe. Sullivan's army rested on the battle-ground that night, and the next morning pushed on in pursuit of the fugitives.

That pursuit was quick and sharp. A part of the army penetrated the wilderness to the Genesee Valley, and a part to Cayuga Lake. In the course of three weeks, they destroyed forty-three Indian villages, with a vast amount of food in fields, gardens, and garrisons--one hundred and sixty thousand bushels of corn. Flourishing and fruitful orchards were cut down; hundreds of gardens were desolated; the inhabitants were driven into the forests to starve, and were hunted like wild beasts; their altars were overturned, and their graves were trampled upon by strangers; and a beautiful well-watered country, teeming with a prosperous people, and just rising from a wilderness state by the aid of cultivation, to a level with the productive regions of civilization, was desolated, and cast back almost a century. This scourging awed the Indians for the moment, but did not crush them. The fires of hatred were fiercely kindled, and spread like a conflagration far among the tribes upon the great lakes and in the valley of the Ohio. Washington, who ordered the chastisement, was called "The Town Destroyer." Cornplanter, a chief of the Senecas, standing before President Washington, said, in the course of a long speech: "When your army entered the country of the Six Nations, we called you The Town Destroyer; and to this day, when that name is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mothers."