Sullivan Expedition - Aftermath

Aftermath

Sullivan, whose illness had slowed the expedition at times, resigned his commission in 1780 when his health continued to worsen. Historians disagree as to whether an Iroquois nickname for Washington, "Town Destroyer", originates from this expedition.

The devastation created great hardships for the more than 5,000 Iroquois refugees that winter, and many starved or froze to death. But that this was not entirely because of the expedition can be seen as John Butler wrote: "The Indians in this part of the Country are so ill off for Provisions that many have nothing to subsist upon but the roots and greens they gather in the woods" in May, 1778 – i.e., before the expedition. Fearing attack, many Tuscarora and Oneida defected to the British cause.

In February, 1780, former general Schuyler, now in the Congress, sent a party of pro-rebellion Indians to Fort Niagara to appeal for peace with the British-allied Iroquois. Suspecting a trick by Schuyler, those Iroquois rejected the proposal. The four messengers were imprisoned where one of them died.

Despite widespread dispersion, Washington was disappointed by the lack of a decisive battle and the failure to capture Fort Niagara. Although in truth, Washington's guidance to Sullivan had been that he take Ft Niagara, "if possible," an option not easily within Sullivan's means given the limitations of his artillery (no guns bigger than six inch field howitzers) and his logistics. Iroquois warriors and Loyalists continued to periodically raid the Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys during 1780 and 1781, causing widespread devastation of property and crops, and killing more than 200 settlers. The destruction of Minden on August 2, 1780, was the most destructive raid in the course of the four-year civil war. The last significant raid devastated a 20-mile swath of the lower Mohawk Valley in October 1781, but was defeated at the Battle of Johnstown on October 25, 1781. Walter Butler was killed in battle on October 30 at West Canada Creek during the Tory retreat.

Even so, the homelands and infrastructure of Iroquois life had been devastated by the campaign. In the long term, it became clear that the expedition broke the Iroquois Confederacy's power to maintain their former crops and utilize many town locations; the expedition appeared to have caused little more than famine and dispersion of the Iroquois people. Following the war, much of the Iroquois land would be secured in the peace Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784), later to be absorbed by treaties with the State of New York. Much of its native population would move to Canada, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. In the wake of the Treaty of Paris (1783), European-Americans began settling the newly vacant areas in relative safety, eventually isolating the remaining pockets of demoralized Iroquois into villages and towns cut off under land treaties with New York State.