Global Study Group

New York

Upstate New York (as well as parts of present Ontario, Quebec, Pennsylvania, and Ohio) was occupied by the Five Nations (after 1720 becoming Six Nations, when joined by Tuscarora) of the Iroquois Confederacy for at least a half millennium before the Europeans came. At the onset of the Revolutionary War, there lay a vast tract of land from the upper Mohawk River to Lake Erie, that was thinly occupied by the Iroquois and virtually unknown to the colonists. Since the colonial charters of both Massachusetts and New York granted unlimited westward expansion, the claim to this tract was disputed. There were also many tensions between the original Dutch settlers in the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys and the English who were rapidly arriving in Eastern New York, and the Germans who were also establishing settlements in the Mohawk area.

Upstate New York was also the scene of fighting during the French and Indian War, with British and French forces contesting control of Lake Champlain in association with Native American allies.

During the period prior to the American Revolution, a territorial dispute developed between New York and the Republic of Vermont that continued until after the war. Ultimately, the colonial counties of Cumberland and Gloucester were lost from New York after 1777.

The Revolution began with the Six Nations officially neutral, but this quickly broke down as British and Tory agents courted them on the one hand, and the American rebels on the other. In fact the Revolution effectively broke the Iroquois confederacy forever, with the Oneida Nation and Tuscarora Nations supporting the American side, and the Mohawk Nation, Onondaga Nation, Cayuga Nation and Seneca Nations going with the British and Tories. It was a strategic error for the latter four nations, as they picked the eventual loser in the Revolution.

The Iroquois were thus a serious problem to the Americans fighting for independence. In July of 1778 a force of perhaps one thousand Iroquois and Tories led by the Tory Colonel John Butler and the Seneca war chief Cornplanter overwhelmed a few hundred Americans in the Wyoming Valley (along the Susquehanna River near present Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), which came to be known as the Wyoming Valley Massacre. Whether or not a massacre took place in the Wyoming Valley is a matter of historical debate. However, a massacre occurred at Cherry Valley in November, when about 33 civilians (including women and children) were murdered and scalped by the Iroquois who accompanied a British and Tory raid.

As the Americans gained control of more and more of Eastern New York in 1779, Congress decided to end the Iroquois threat and General George Washington sent Major General John Sullivan in June northward from Wilkes-Barre. Sullivan's troops only had one serious engagement at Newtown near present day Elmira, where they decisively routed a force led by Colonel Butler and the Mohawk captain Joseph Brant.

The Sullivan Expedition moved northward through the Finger Lakes and Genesee Country with a "scorched earth" policy. All Iroquois communities were burned, their crops destroyed, and their orchards hewn down. They found an incredibly beautiful territory. The area between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes was maintained by annual burning as a grassland prairie, and it abounded in wild game including grazing American Bison herds. Orchards contained apples and peaches. There were fields of corn and gardens with potatoes, turnips, onions, pumpkins, squashes and vegetables of various kinds. The Iroquois did not live in simple hovels as expected, but had handsome multi-family houses, often called castles. The community of Seneca Castle is derived from one such Iroquois village. Fish were abundant, and the natives also had herds of milk cows and hogs for meat. They were amazingly prosperous.

As Sullivan's army devastated the Iroquois homeland, refugees were forced to flee to Fort Niagara, where they spent the following winter in hunger and misery, sustained by gifts of salted meat given to them by British at the fort community. Hundreds died of exposure, hunger and disease.

Sullivan's men returned from the campaign to Pennsylvania and New England to tell of the enormous wealth of this new territory. Some carried huge ears of corn in their knapsacks as proof of the fertility of the land. Many of them returned to land grants later in western New York, given by the government in gratitude for their service in the Revolution.

reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/