Swetland, Luke, 1729-1823

The Sullivan Expedition was a campaign led by Major General John Sullivan against Loyalists or Tories and the four nations of the Iroquois who had sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War. It occurred during the summer of 1779 and only had one major battle, in which the Tories and Iroquois were decisively defeated. When the American Revolutionary War began, British officials as well as the colonial Continental Congress sought the allegiance of the influential Iroquois Confederacy. The Six Nations divided over what course to pursue. Most Mohawks, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Senecas chose to ally themselves with the British. But the Oneidas and Tuscaroras joined the American revolutionaries. On July 3, 1778, Colonel Butler led his Rangers with a force of Senecas and Cayugas in a massacre on Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley (along the Susquehanna River near present Wilkes-Barre) annihilating 360 armed Patriot defenders and slaughtering many women and children in Forty Fort.