Native Americans in the Revolution

The Iroquois Confederacy and the Coming of War

The American Revolution proved catastrophic for Native American nations in the eastern woodlands, and nowhere more so than among the Iroquois Confederacy—the alliance of six nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora) that had dominated the politics of the northeastern interior for over a century. The confederacy had maintained a precarious neutrality during previous colonial conflicts, playing British and French interests against each other to preserve Iroquois autonomy. The Revolution eliminated this strategy: both sides demanded allegiance, and neutrality was not a viable option.

The confederacy split along lines that reflected existing internal divisions and differing assessments of which side posed the greater threat to Iroquois interests. The Mohawk, led by the war chief Thayendanegea (known to the English as Joseph Brant), aligned firmly with the British. Brant had traveled to London in 1775–1776 and had received assurances that the Crown would protect Iroquois lands. The Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga also generally supported the British, though with less enthusiasm than the Mohawk. The Oneida and Tuscarora, influenced by the Congregationalist missionary Samuel Kirkland and by their geographic proximity to Patriot settlements in New York, sided with the Americans.

This division transformed what should have been a unified Iroquois response into a civil war that devastated the confederacy. Iroquois warriors fought against Iroquois warriors, villages were destroyed by former allies, and the political institutions that had held the confederacy together for generations were shattered beyond repair. The Onondaga, whose territory included the confederacy’s traditional council fire, were particularly hard hit, as their central position made them vulnerable to attacks from both sides.

The Mohawk and Joseph Brant

Joseph Brant emerged as the most prominent Native American leader of the Revolutionary period. Educated at Eleazar Wheelock’s school in Connecticut (a precursor to Dartmouth College), fluent in English, and connected to British Indian Department officials through his sister Molly Brant’s relationship with Sir William Johnson, Brant occupied a position between Iroquois and European worlds that gave him unusual influence.

Brant led Mohawk and Loyalist forces in a series of raids on frontier settlements in New York and Pennsylvania from 1777 onward. These raids were militarily effective—they disrupted American supply lines, diverted Continental troops from other theaters, and terrorized frontier communities—but they provoked devastating retaliation. The raids on Cherry Valley, New York, in November 1778, and Minisink, New York, in July 1779, killed dozens of settlers and inflamed American public opinion against the Iroquois. At Cherry Valley, a combined force of Loyalist rangers under Walter Butler and Iroquois warriors under Brant killed over forty civilians and soldiers, an event that became a rallying cry for American retaliation.

Brant’s motivations were complex. He believed that British victory offered the best prospect for Iroquois survival, and he understood that American expansion posed an existential threat to Native lands. His military operations were conducted with considerable tactical skill, and he attempted to limit violence against noncombatants, though he could not always control the warriors and Loyalist rangers who accompanied him. Brant’s reputation among Americans as a ruthless savage reflected both genuine atrocities and the propaganda needs of a society that required Native peoples to be portrayed as barbaric in order to justify their dispossession.

The Sullivan Expedition

The American response to Iroquois raids was the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, the largest military operation the United States had yet mounted against Native Americans. George Washington ordered Major General John Sullivan to lead approximately 4,000 Continental soldiers and militia into Iroquois territory with instructions to destroy villages, crops, and food stores and to capture as many prisoners as possible. Washington’s orders were explicit: “The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible.”

The expedition marched through the Susquehanna Valley into the heart of Iroquois country in late summer 1779. The only significant engagement was the Battle of Newtown (near present-day Elmira, New York) on August 29, where Sullivan’s forces defeated a combined Iroquois-Loyalist force under Brant and the Loyalist ranger John Butler. After Newtown, the Iroquois offered no further resistance, and Sullivan’s army methodically destroyed over forty villages and an estimated 160,000 bushels of corn, along with orchards, gardens, and food stores.

The immediate military impact of the Sullivan Expedition was limited—Iroquois raids continued in 1780 and 1781, and the expedition did not end the Iroquois-British alliance. But the long-term consequences were devastating. Thousands of Iroquois refugees fled to Fort Niagara, where they depended on British rations for survival through the winter of 1779–1780. The destruction of villages and food stores undermined the Iroquois capacity for self-sufficiency and accelerated the confederacy’s decline as an independent political force. The psychological impact was equally significant: the expedition demonstrated that the Americans could and would carry the war into Iroquois territory with overwhelming force.

The Cherokee and the Southern Frontier

In the South, the Cherokee initially attempted to maintain neutrality but were drawn into the conflict by a combination of American aggression and British encouragement. In 1776, Cherokee warriors attacked frontier settlements in the Carolinas and Virginia, prompted by encroachments on Cherokee land and by British agents who promised support for Cherokee territorial claims. The attacks provoked retaliatory expeditions that destroyed Cherokee towns and crops. General Griffith Rutherford led a force of 2,400 North Carolina militia into Cherokee territory in September 1776, destroying over thirty towns and driving thousands of Cherokee into the mountains.

The Cherokee signed treaties with the American states in 1777, ceding significant territory in exchange for peace. But factions within the Cherokee nation disagreed about the terms, and some Cherokee warriors continued to fight alongside the British. Chickamauga Cherokee, led by Dragging Canoe, established new towns along the Tennessee River and conducted raids on American settlements throughout the war, maintaining resistance long after the formal peace. The Chickamauga wars, as these conflicts are sometimes called, continued into the 1790s and represented one of the longest sustained Native American military resistance to American expansion.

The Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw nations were also drawn into the conflict, primarily through British efforts to secure their alliance. Spanish involvement in the war further complicated the situation, as Spain had its own relationships with Southeastern Native nations and its own territorial ambitions in the region. The intersection of European imperial rivalries and Native American politics created a complex web of alliances and enmities that defied simple categorization.

Native American Motivations and Strategies

Native American nations did not participate in the Revolution as passive instruments of European powers. They pursued their own interests, made strategic calculations based on their assessments of which side offered the best prospects for their survival, and adapted their strategies as circumstances changed. The decision to support the British was not irrational—it reflected a realistic assessment that American expansion posed a greater threat to Native lands than British imperial authority, which had at least nominally restricted colonial settlement through measures like the Proclamation of 1763.

Some Native leaders attempted to maintain neutrality or to play both sides. The Delaware (Lenape) initially sought neutrality but were drawn into the conflict by American aggression and internal divisions. The killing of the Delaware leader White Eyes in 1778 and the massacre of Christian Delaware converts at Gnadenhutten, Ohio, in 1782 by Pennsylvania militia destroyed any possibility of Delaware-American cooperation. The Gnadenhutten massacre, in which ninety-six Christian Delaware men, women, and children were killed, was one of the war’s most horrific episodes and illustrated the racial hatred that drove frontier violence regardless of the strategic calculations of political leaders.

The Treaty of Paris and Its Aftermath

The Treaty of Paris that ended the war made no provision for Native American interests. Britain ceded all territory east of the Mississippi to the United States, including lands occupied by Native nations that had been British allies. The Native nations were not consulted, and their claims to sovereignty were ignored. From the American perspective, Native peoples who had supported the British were conquered enemies whose lands were forfeit. From the British perspective, the Native allies were expendable—sacrificed to secure peace terms favorable to British commercial and strategic interests.

The postwar period saw accelerated American expansion into Native territories. The confederation government and later the federal government negotiated treaties with Native nations that extracted land cessions through a combination of diplomacy, coercion, and military pressure. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 proclaimed that “the utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians,” but this principle was honored more in its violation than its observance.

For the Iroquois, the war’s aftermath was particularly grim. The confederacy, which had been a major political force in North America for over a century, was reduced to a shadow of its former power. Some Iroquois, led by Brant, relocated to lands granted by the British in Upper Canada (present-day Ontario), where they established new communities at the Six Nations of the Grand River. Those who remained in New York were confined to increasingly small reservations, their lands eroded by state treaties and private speculation.

The Long-Term Consequences

The Revolution marked a turning point in Native American history—not because it changed the trajectory of European-American expansion, which had been proceeding for over two centuries, but because it removed the imperial constraints that had partially protected Native lands. Under British rule, the Proclamation of 1763 and the need to maintain Native alliances had limited colonial settlement west of the Appalachians. American independence eliminated these restraints, and the new republic pursued expansion with a determination that British imperial authorities had never matched.

The participation of Native nations in the Revolution has been overshadowed in historical memory by the conflict between Patriots and British. But for Native communities, the war was a defining event that accelerated the loss of land, the destruction of political institutions, and the marginalization of Native peoples in the new republic they had helped to create. The consequences of the Revolution for Native Americans were, by any measure, catastrophic, and they set the pattern for the dispossession and displacement that would continue throughout the nineteenth century.

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