Ebony and Ivy (27 page)

Numerous Native nations were already involved in the colonial insurgency. The Reverend Samuel Kirkland had put himself in the service of the new government. In the spring of 1777 Kirkland
brought an Oneida sachem to New Jersey to treat with General Washington; at this meeting the Six Nations were informed that the colonists now had French support. Indian nations generally attempted neutrality in this civil war, but British and American policy aimed to force them into the conflict. “If we are conquered our Lands go with yours,” Chief Solomon of the Stockbridge assured the revolutionaries, “but if we are victorious we hope you will help us recover our just Rights.” The predicament of the Stockbridge left little room for diplomacy: their remaining lands were encircled by the colonists, they housed one of the oldest and most successful Christian missions, and the British had proven to be unreliable partners in the past. The Six Nations divided. The Oneida fought with the colonists. Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) led a large Mohawk faction to the British, and the Seneca eventually joined the English. The war posed an existential threat to the sovereignties of numerous nations. General Nathanael Greene advised Washington to make a summer attack on Iroquoia from three directions in order to inflict maximum damage on the food supplies and ease the burden of moving armies, equipment, and provisions.
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Washington imposed strict secrecy on his officers and repeatedly instructed them to hide the target of the expedition from their Native allies, particularly the Ohio Indians and the Oneida. He intended to force the western Indians to decide between Iroquoia and their own lands, and to make the Oneida choose between their own families and houses and those of their Iroquois brothers and sisters. He left Colonel Daniel Brodhead specific instructions on what to do when the plan could no longer be hidden: “Contrive ways to inform them, that you are going to meet a large force, to fall upon and destroy the whole country of the Six Nations,” and tell them that if they “give the least disturbance … the whole force will be turned against them; and that we will never rest, till we have cut them off from the face of the earth.”
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Washington intended to shatter the Six Nations. “Our army here is very respectable notwithstanding so many & so great detachments are made from it to Rhode Island against the Indians,
to Fort Arnold, & c.,” Dr. William Shippen wrote from his military camp at White Plains, New York. William Livingston had his troops stationed on the eastern border of Iroquoia, cutting off any escape and providing reconnaissance on British forces, Tories, and hostile Indians. Lieutenant Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt, an heir of the founder of the New York manor, served in General Poor's army. General Philip Schuyler, who led the later Montreal campaign, headed a family that spent a century encouraging conflicts that advanced their land claims in New York. After the Revolution, Schuyler was among the most aggressive usurpers of state and federal authority over the Iroquois lands. There were Stocktons, Ogdens, Hardenberghs, and other elite colonial families in the officer corps, and the rank and file of the New Jersey and Pennsylvania regiments included numerous backcountry settlers.
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Several prominent Christian clerics dressed for war, including John Rodgers of New York City; Andrew Hunter, later a trustee and professor at the College of New Jersey; Israel Evans, a graduate of the same school; and William Rogers, who became a professor at Philadelphia after the war. The Reverend Thomas Barton enlisted as a chaplain. Already a paid agent and advisor to the new government, Kirkland took a commission as a chaplain and interpreter in Sullivan's armies. Ministers offered Sunday services for the regiments and blessed their enterprise. Rev. Rogers opened the Fourth of July holiday with a celebration of the Declaration of Independence and a sermon that expounded on the biblical call to “remember Jehovah, who is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, sons and your daughters, your wives and your houses.” The men could choose a Dutch Reformed, Baptist, Presbyterian, or Congregational service, and they could also select ministers from their own colonies.
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The campaign sought to end Indian raids on the western frontier and reduce any long-term barriers to settler expansion. “While the Six Nations were under this rod of correction,” Washington boasted to the Marquis de Lafayette from his post on the Hudson River, Colonel Brodhead led six hundred troops to destroy the towns and food supplies of the Ohio Indians. Washington had
threatened the Ohio nations to keep them still during the Iroquois campaign, but he also wanted to open the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys. “Correction” was the euphemism that Master Washington used to order the whipping of his black slaves, and its application to Indians was more than rhetorical. “These unexpected and severe strokes have disconcerted, humbled, and distressed the Indians exceedingly,” he assured the French general. Sullivan's troops imposed their common racial vision upon the landscape. They responded with severity to the significant African American and Afro-Indian presence in Iroquoia. The Mohawk leader Joseph Brant alone had dozens of free and enslaved black people—many of the latter taken during colonial raids—on his estate. In April 1779 Colonel Goose Van Schaick's men attacked an Onondaga town, taking three dozen prisoners and executing fifteen others, “particularly a Negro who was their D[octo]r.” In fact, Sullivan's forces reported killing every black person they captured.
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His men also grasped the greater design of the campaign. “I should not think it an affront to the Divine will, to lay some effectual plan, either to civilize, or totally extirpate the race,” Major Jeremiah Fogg, Harvard class of 1768, wrote of the Native population. Fogg found the idea of befriending Indians offensive, and he doubted that any lasting peace could be maintained in the absence of a military threat. That suspicion reflected the popular digestion of academic discourses about race. “To starve them is equally impracticable for they feed on air and drink the morning dew,” he concluded in support of more violent measures.
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Sullivan had five thousand soldiers at his command. By the time they completed their mission at the end of September 1779, the troops had razed forty Iroquois towns and demolished several hundred buildings, including longhouses, storage houses, and churches and schools. On August 14, Lieutenant Erkuries Beatty's regiment burned the Susquehanna River town where Gideon Hawley had built his mission a generation earlier with the encouragement of the Susquehannah Land Company directors. Beatty's father was the Rev. Charles Beatty, an evangelical Presbyterian who succeeded William Tennent in the Scots-Irish stronghold of Neshaminy. This town was filled with “good Log houses with
Stone Chimneys and glass windows[,] it likewise had a Church.” The army destroyed a Christian town in the name of the Christian God. A month later Dr. Jabez Campfield's New Jersey regiment arrived at Shannondaque, which was “the best built Indian Town I have yet seen, the houses mostly new, & mostly log houses.” In early September, Lieutenant Charles Nukerck, a New Yorker, marveled at “an Old Inhabited Town—t heir Houses large and Elegant [and] b[ea]utifully painted”—off the shores of Cayuga Lake.
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That too they burned.

The troops were often genuinely shocked at the refinement of their allegedly savage enemies. They commented repeatedly upon the advanced construction of Iroquois houses, longhouses, public buildings, barns, and shops. “The situation of this village is beautiful,” admitted Lieutenant Colonel Adam Hubley after entering Chemung. A couple of weeks later, he saw “the finest village we have yet come to.” This town “contains about forty well-finished houses, and every thing about it seems neat and well improved.” Hubley was breathless when his forces invaded the heart of the Seneca nation, the most populous and powerful branch of the confederacy. “Oh! Britain, behold and blush,” he gasped upon seeing Genesee, a town of more than a hundred handsome buildings. A carpenter from New Hampshire, Captain Daniel Livermore, agreed: it is “the best town I have seen.” Lieutenant John Jenkins was born and raised in New England and worked for the Susquehannah Company in various capacities, including as a land surveyor. After the war, he settled in the Pennsylvania backcountry. Jenkins entered the capital of the Seneca in early September and carefully noted the features of this “very beautiful town” and territory in his journal. Gazing upon the ruins of one town, William McKendry counted about sixty houses that had cellars and wells. “It was a fine settlement before it was destroyed,” he reluctantly conceded, “considering that they were Indians.”
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In the name of white civilization, the army eradicated Indian civilization. As his troops torched Iroquoia, General Washington sent encouragement. Tearing down villages was but part of the task. “The nests are destroyed,” Major Fogg quipped, “but the birds are still on the wing.” Throughout the march, the men admired and
envied the abundance, quality, and range of food. The invasion was timed to leave the Iroquois with neither shelter nor food as winter approached.
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It required more than a million man-hours to raze the structures, food stores, plantations, orchards, and livestock.

The colonial army burned millions of pounds of vegetables and fruits that had been stored for the winter or had not yet been harvested. Soldiers poisoned water supplies with animal carcasses. Lieutenant Beatty helped torch “about 150 acres of the best corn that Ever I saw (some of the Stalks grew 16 feet high) besides great Quantities of Beans, Potatoes, Pumpkins, Cucumbers, Squashes, & Watermellons.” Sergeant Thomas Roberts of New Jersey saw “no End hardley” to one plantation. Lieutenant William Barton's “whole army has subsisted for days” off a single Seneca farm. “This morning we had a dainty repast on the fruits of the savages,” Major Fogg gleefully reported. Some soldiers became bitter when officers prohibited them from grazing in the orchards. When General Sullivan proposed reducing the troops' meat, flour, and salt rations by half in exchange for the freedom to eat from the Iroquois supplies, the men responded “by unanimously holding up their hands and giving three cheers.” The soldiers stayed up late into the evening “feasting on these rarities,” including cobs of corn more than a foot long, and then burned what they could not eat or carry. A New Jersey regiment marched through a cornfield plucking snacks. In a single Cayuga village Sergeant Major George Grant's men destroyed a vast orchard, “about 1500 Peach Trees, besides Apple Trees and other Fruit Trees.” Sullivan's forces girdled or burned thousands upon thousands of trees. During a late September feast, the men prayed to extend the campaign against the western Indians rather than to go home.
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Colonel Van Cortlandt had led an especially comfortable life but nonetheless marveled at “the finest Fields of Corn I Ever saw.” As they destroyed Chemung and ripped through Seneca country, his troops fed freely. “We have Lived like princes untill this time and shall for 5 or 6 weeks longer,” the colonel wrote to his brother in August 1779. Toward the end of the campaign several regiments camped near the Hudson. “This day Genl. Washington rode through this camp,” William McKendry excitedly recorded in early
November when the commander came to consult with General Sullivan.

Washington achieved his aim of breaking the military power of the Six Nations. The campaign left thousands of Iroquois desperate. “I very much apprehend that these Indians will join the enemy,” General Schuyler warned James Duane a couple of years later. The tragedy needed to be abated. Schuyler even requested discarded clothing to help his “distressed Oneida Friends.”
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It was a violent transfer of sovereignty. In a 1783 sermon celebrating the American Revolution, Yale president Ezra Stiles lauded the rise of the “Whites” whose numerical growth alone proved divine favoritism toward the children of Europe. God intended the Americas for “a new enlargement of Japhet,” the minister began, invoking the curse of Ham, and Europe's children were quickly filling the continents. Not a single Indian nation, including those allied to the Americans, was represented at the negotiations in Paris, which established a new sovereignty over an enormous slice of North America. Stiles defensively insisted that Protestants had faithfully purchased Indian land to erase any sense of historical wrong. He also crafted a bizarre defense of conquest: the surviving Indians benefited from colonialism since the value of their remaining territories had increased thousands of times. Projecting the growth of the white population to three hundred million, Rev. Stiles predicted “a constant increasing revenue to the Sachems and original Lords of the Soil” from whatever lands the survivors could hold.
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This odd rationalization of a human tragedy was made worse by President Stiles's belief that any remaining social injustices would disappear with Native Americans and Africans, whose decline seemed inevitable. It was “God's good providence,” the president continued, that the vanishing of nonwhite people would also erase the moral problem of dispossession and enslavement. Breaking with a long theological tradition, Stiles applied the curse of Ham to Indians too: “I rather consider the American Indians as Canaanites.”
These were Noah's least fortunate descendants, and their destruction proved God's benevolence toward white people. Stiles fathered a new metaphor: the United States was “God's American Israel.” Filled with allusions to superior blood and other suggestions of European supremacy, President Stiles's sermon exposed the tight braiding of eighteenth-century natural rights philosophy, science, and theology. “Can we contemplate their present, and anticipate their future increase, and not be struck with astonishment to find ourselves in the midst of the fulfillment of the prophecy of Noah?”
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