Introduction
Roadside signs, monuments, and historical plaques that commemorate the 1779 Sullivan Expedition can be found across northeastern Pennsylvania and central New York. This expedition was originally called Washington’s Indian Expedition, and in New York is referred to as the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign. This scorched-earth expedition involved over a quarter of the Continental Army. Troops in the four forays into the Haudenosaunee homelands destroyed at least 53 towns and other settlements, burning homes, crops, and all stored foodstuffs (for map of the four components of Washington’s Indian Expedition of 1779, see below).
Despite the grim nature of this mission, non-Native people commemorated it with projects from the nineteenth century into the present day. The hundreds of stone monoliths and roadside signs identified on this website trace out the campaign’s vast extent and note the locations of the Native American villages the troops destroyed. Our website includes sites that date as early as 1841; the vast majority were established in the 1920s and 1930s, timed for 150th anniversary celebrations. These markers and roadside signs follow the campaign’s vast extent and note the locations of the Native American villages that the troops destroyed.
| Title | Category | Address | Description | Link | Marker Text | Image Source | Founder Type | Additional Founders | Secondary Text | Status | Links to Related Websites | Source Information | Year | Founder | Town | County | State |
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A Somber Subject
The Sullivan Expedition is a somber topic. For many Americans, the Revolutionary War is the most revered period in the nation’s history. Some people proudly celebrate their ancestors’ service in that war and consider all of the war’s military engagements with equal reverence. For Haudenosaunee and other Indigenous people, the tactics of Washington’s 1779 military campaign, which involved the erasure of whole towns, hundreds of homes, ancient orchards, stored foods, and living crops, were horrifying and are nothing to celebrate. For Indigenous people whose ancestors were targeted by the soldiers, and thus by the campaign’s mastermind, George Washington, this was a time of terror.
This is thus a challenging history to summarize or even consider. We include here a historical summary of the expedition, links to scholarly works by professional historians for those who wish to learn more, and a section with links to primary sources. These include official sources, such as Washington’s orders to Major General John Sullivan and Sullivan’s report back to Washington, as well as eyewitness accounts from several Native Americans, such as Seneca warrior Cornplanter, and Seneca woman Mary Jemison.
Historical Summary
[in progress; to include primary sources with emphasis on N. American voices]
How are Historic Markers Made?
It is important to note that this extensive “commemorative complex” (Smith 2023) was not orchestrated by the federal or state governments. Instead, the Sullivan commemorative complex involved independent projects established by people working on their own or within civic organizations. Patriotic hereditary societies such as independent chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution or historical societies established many of the markers. As a result, the appearance, texts, and overall messages of the different elements of this complex vary greatly, as this website reveals.
In the twentieth century, state agencies became involved in celebrating Sullivan. In 1929, the Pennsylvania Historical Commission and the New York State Education Department developed dozens of grand stone monoliths with bronze plaques for the 150th anniversary of the expedition. These stone monuments were followed with dozens of metal highway signs established by these same agencies or their successor organizations in the 1930s into the present day. The messages on this highway signs were often blunt and unforgiving, as we see below.
This is thus a challenging history to summarize or even consider. We include here a historical summary of the expedition, links to scholarly works by professional historians for those who wish to learn more, and a section with links to primary sources. These include official sources, such as Washington’s orders to Major General John Sullivan and Sullivan’s report back to Washington, as well as eyewitness accounts from several Native Americans, such as Seneca warrior Cornplanter, and Seneca woman Mary Jemison.
Many people are surprised to learn that historical markers had little oversight before the twentieth century. From the start of the nation, there was a concerted effort to keep the federal government out of the monument-making business to avoid what was viewed as Old-World ancestor-worship associated with absolutist forms of government. As a result, until states created oversight groups (such as the Pennsylvania Historical Commission in 1913), people who wanted to recognize a historic event had to come up with the funds and determine the wording and commemorative stylistic features on their own. There were no national-level organizations to vet language, artistry, or to fact-check. Many of the markers found on this site were the work of individual elites or social clubs like historical societies or patriotic hereditary organizations, composed not of professional historians but of people interested in history, groups that wanted to get across certain perspectives at certain times, sometimes for very personal reasons. Many of the marker texts present antiquated and derogatory language and interpretations. These early efforts at public history-making do not represent contemporary practice. It is important to consider that the results of this work may have had lasting effects on how people today understand this past.
Newtown Monument site
A good example of the idiosyncratic origins of our traditions is the Newtown Monument (also known as the Sullivan Monument) located in Newtown Battlefield Park in Lowman, NY, Chemung County. This monument was almost placed in a different (Tioga) county. A 1879 centennial celebration was first proposed by Waverly, NY lawyer, William Fiske Warner. Warner thought the one pitched battle of Washington’s Indian Expedition was worth celebrating. He proposed Waverly as the ideal location for a public event because it was halfway between the battle site and the military base at Camp Sullivan (but miles from either location). The committee formed to plan the event soon to instead to situate the celebration near the battle site in Chemung County. Committee members were unclear where the battle occurred, however, and even what to call it. In the end, they chose to call it the “Battle of Newtown,” but they placed the monument far from the battle site on a hilltop where it could be seen by passengers traveling on the new railroad lines the committee chair owned.
Practicalities determine Marker Placement
State and local officials sometimes knowingly located markers far from the actual sites out of concern for public safety or to be more visible or accessible to automobile travelers. Many of Pennsylvania’s 1929 monuments that trace the path of Sullivan’s soldiers were situated on the wrong side of the Susquehanna River, along more well-traveled roads.
Narrations are Simplified and sometimes Wrong
Historical markers must capture a great deal of information in a few lines and thus grossly simplify historical events. Some assertions made on New York’s 1929 Sullivan-Clinton monuments are highly debatable if not outright wrong. Their author, state historian Alexander C. Flick, was a medieval European historian who found himself responsible for the Education Department’s Revolutionary War programming. He spent considerable time learning about the Sullivan Expedition, gathering sources, and coming up with accounts to share with the residents of the state. He did not have available many of the sources today’s historians can access, nor could he read the historical texts of the future. The 35 New York 1929 monoliths state the following
This text implies that the expedition, designed to stem attacks on frontier settlements, succeeded in this mission (“checked the aggressions”). Several historians have since pointed out that this was not the case: that Haudenosaunee/Tory/British attacks on frontier communities accelerated after the expedition. This text also implies that it was this expedition that was responsible for extending the United States to the west (“extending westward the dominion of the United States”). This too is quite debatable. We now know that many Haudenosaunee returned to many of their former settlements or started new ones nearby, such as at Buffalo Creek, and that the land that became western New York was under Seneca sovereignty until partway through the nineteenth century. Seneca lost this land only after illegal “treaties” with state officials and land speculators that did not follow federal law. This history is missing from the 1929 marker text, which implies that immediately following the Sullivan Expedition, the lands ravaged by the troops automatically became the land of the new nation (and, thus, the State of New York).
How We Located the Markers
This website has its origins in the research for Memory Wars: Settlers and Natives Remember Washington’s Sullivan Expedition (2023, University of Nebraska Press). This book explores the origins of the Sullivan commemorative complex, examines how the Sullivan story is expressed by public history and in everyday talk, and contrasts these perspectives with that expressed at Haudenosaunee cultural centers [link to Nebraska here?}
A first stage in preparing Memory Wars was to develop a sense of the scale and scope of the Sullivan commemorative complex. Because markers were established by different entities at different times, there is no one database or volume that includes all of the monuments and markers. Smith compiled the list found on this website by extensive road trips since 2013; from various archival sources; and databases of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the Bradford County Historical Society, the Association of Public Historians of New York State, and the Historical Marker Database website. The resulting dataset was far too extensive to be incorporated in full in the Memory Wars volume, and this website can be seen as a companion project.
Lafayette College students working with A. Lynn Smith helped confirm the texts found in archival sources and cross check with actual markers that we found in situ. All marker texts have been verified in this way, and locations checked in person or via Google Earth.
This is thus a challenging history to summarize or even consider. We include here a historical summary of the expedition, links to scholarly works by professional historians for those who wish to learn more, and a section with links to primary sources. These include official sources, such as Washington’s orders to Major General John Sullivan and Sullivan’s report back to Washington, as well as eyewitness accounts from several Native Americans, such as Seneca warrior Cornplanter, and Seneca woman Mary Jemison.
Why We Made this Website
Our intent in making this website is not to celebrate the expedition, John Sullivan, or George Washington, a reverence that is already amply communicated by the markers and their texts. Instead, we offer this site as a resource to encourage readers to develop a deeper understanding of the expedition and its consequences. By bringing together a variety of perspectives left out of the marker texts, we hope readers’ understanding of this period of time is further developed and enriched, leading to a more complete and accurate history. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War, we hope that this website will be a useful tool that allows viewers to develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of this challenging period of U.S. history and its lasting consequences for Haudenosaunee, Munsee, Delaware, and other Native people, their relations, and their descendants.
This website was made possible through the generous funding of the Excel Scholars program and a grant from the Cyril S. Lang ’49 Center for the Humanities Endowment Fund.
Many thanks are due Janna Avon, Digital Initiatives Librarian, and Sarah Beck, Visual Resources Curator, Digital Scholarship Services, Lafayette College for assistance in preparing this website. Field research to collect this information was supported by a Postdoctoral Grant, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (2013); a research grant from the Academic Research Committee (2013), Lafayette College, and a Richard King Mellon Fellowship (2019), Lafayette College.
Student research conducted by Sofia LaMarco and Santiago Brousset was funded by an Excel Scholarship and a grant from the Cyril S. Lang ’49 Center for the Humanities Endowment Fund, Lafayette College.