Scorched Earth

Throughout 1778, Iroquois war parties repeatedly raided the frontiers of Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. In 1779, General George Washington decided to punish them. He sent Major General John Sullivan into the Iroquois country with orders to make it uninhabitable. "Scorched Earth - General Sullivan and the Senecas" tells how Sullivan's invasion force of thousands of soldiers marched it into the Pennsylvania hinterland, up the Susquehanna River, and into the Iroquois homeland. Along the way, the troops burned every village and destroyed every farm they found. As the army advanced, the Indians - men, women, and children - fled. Drawing upon first-person accounts kept by Sullivan's officers, author John L. Moore chronicles how the troops devoted much more time to laying waste to cornfields than they did to fighting Iroquois warriors. Washington himself was ecstatic. "Their whole country has been overrun and laid waste," he said. In the end, many more Indians starved during the following winter than were killed in battle with Sullivan's soldiers.