Washington Answers the Pioneer's Plea

In 1779 George Washington answered the frontier farmer's desperate plea for aid, resolving to accomplish, "the total destruction and devastation of the Iroquois camps."

Washington called on General John Sullivan and an army of 2500 from eastern Pennsylvania.  They made camp at Tioga Point on the New York- Pennsylvania border.  He was to await a second force of 1500 under General James Clinton.  Clinton would move from the Mohawk Valley southwest along the Susquehanna River.  When the two joined, they would drive deep into Iroquois country.

After many delays, the combined American force began moving west.  After only 12 miles,  the entrenched Tory-Indian force near Newton, New York challenged them.  After defeating them, the rest of the American campaign was more pillage than combat.  Forty Iroquois towns were destroyed, along with 160,000 bushels of corn, crops of vegetables and acres of apple, peach and pear orchards.

Although the Iroquois country was a smoking ruin, Sullivan made a serious error.  Assuming he had beat the Iroquois, he failed to push on and destroy the British supply base at Niagara on Lake Ontario.  Stripped on their possessions and homes (but not their will to fight), the Indians provisioned and armed themselves.  For the next two years, they joined the Tories.

Meanwhile another large chunk of western wilderness fell to the patriots. In  1778-1779 a small force of Kentucky sharpshooters led by George Rogers Clark fought the British in the Ohio Valley region.

Next time.. we'll look at Mr. Clark
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On this Day in Pioneer History: On October 8, 1871, flames spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, igniting a two-day blaze that kills between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings, leaves 100,000 homeless and causes an estimated $200 million. ($4 billion in today's dollars)

The "Western" American Revolution

While the American Revolution was largely along the eastern seaboard, lesser known but often savage encounters happened in the newly settled regions of the Ohio Valley.  Of the 2.4 million colonists in 1775, only a small percentage of those lived in the Allegheny Valley, and even fewer had gone through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and Tennessee.

To the Continental Congress, the west  (at this time the west was no farther than Kentucky) was of small importance at first.  They doubted the loyalties of the frontiersmen.  On the other hand, settlers had ample reason to distrust both patriots and loyalists. The "no taxation without representation" had little to do with the pioneers, who complained that their interests were ignored in favor of eastern merchant-planter elites.

John Stuart, British superintendent of Indian affair in the south, was warned in 1776 of impending raids on settlers in Tennessee.  The settlers repelled the Indians who attacked isolated farms and settlements in western Virginia, the Carolinas, and eastern Tennessee.  Finally met by a force of militia, their power was temporarily broken.  The situation was repeated in Kentucky.

In the northern Mohawk Valley in New York and Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, Indians attacked farming settlements.  By 1778 many of the fields that fed the Continental Army were ablaze.  Farmers lived in fear of being murdered by the Iroquois and the Loyalists like bloodthirsty John Butler and his Butler's Rangers.  Joseph Brant, Mohawk chief and his Iroquois teamed up with Butler's Rangers to threaten every settlement from New York to Pennsylvania.

Next time...Washington's Plans for the Iroquois
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Today in Pioneer History:  On October 5, 1892, the famous Dalton Gang attempts the daring daylight robbery of two Coffeyville, Kansas, banks at the same time. But if the gang members believed the sheer audacity of their plan would bring them success, they were sadly mistaken. Instead, they were nearly all killed by quick-acting townspeople.

Major Robert Rogers and His Rangers

In New York's Mohawk Valley, Sir William Johnson was forging an alliance between Britain and the League of Iroquois.  Johnson was one of the few colonels who genuinely liked the Indians. In 1756 Johnson became superintendent of the Northeast Indian Affairs. 

The Iroquois controlled the primary route to the south and west, making it possible to block French protection of inland ports.  Armed with British weapons, the Iroquois were more powerful than the French allies, the Algonquin.

Along with the Iroquois, the British had another weapon - Major Robert Rogers and his Rogers Rangers...Frontiersman, Indian fighter and author, Major Rogers became a hero, despite his legendary character deficiencies. (During the Revolutionary War, Rogers fought on the side of the British.)

He was a natural forest fighter and a man of great strength.  He and his Rangers wiped out the village of St. Francis Indians near the St Lawrence River in 1754.  The removal of this village put an end to the source of bloody Indian raids on New England settlers.

Major Robert Rogers commanded a force of irregulars and struck terror into the hearts of Frenchmen and their Indian allies.  Swift, punishing raids were his stock-in-trade and the ambush was his successful tactic. 

The climax of the French and Indian War came on the Plains of Abraham beside the French New World capital of Quebec.  On September 13, 1759  General James Wolfe overwhelmed the French in a bitterly fought battle in which both Wolfe and the French commander, Louis Joseph de Montcalm were killed.

French ambitions in America lessened and in 1760 Montreal was taken.  Official peace took two more years, but the west over the Appalachians now belonged to the British.

Next time...Dennis the Menace

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Today in Pioneer History: On September 14, 1901,  42-year-old Theodore Roosevelt is suddenly elevated to the White House when President McKinley dies from an assassin’s bullet. 17 years earlier two other deaths had sent the young Roosevelt fleeing to the far West where his political ambitions were almost forgotten - his beloved mother and wife within 12 hours of each other.