Washington [247]
By March 1779 Washington had steeled himself to act ruthlessly against the Six Nations and resort to cold-blooded warfare against civilians as well as warriors. His aim, he told Horatio Gates, was to “chastise and intimidate” these foes and “cut off their settlements, destroy their next year’s crops, and do them every other mischief of which time and circumstances will permit.”6 Even when Cayuga Indians sent out peace feelers in early May, Washington dismissed them as mere tactical ploys. “A disposition to peace in these people can only be ascribed to an apprehension of danger,” he told Congress, “and would last no longer than till it was over and an opportunity offered to resume their hostility with safety and success.”7
Fearful of further Indian defections to the British, Washington entertained six Delaware Indian chieftains on May 12. He thought that, as long-standing Iroquois enemies, they might be drawn squarely into the American camp. His speech to them began bluntly: “Brothers, I am a warrior. My words are few and plain, but I will make good what I say. ’Tis my business to destroy all the enemies of these states and to protect their friends.”8 He scorned the British as a “boasting people” who didn’t deliver on promises and contrasted them with the trustworthy French: “Now the Great King of France is become our good brother and ally. He has taken up the hatchet with us and we have sworn never to bury it till we have punished the English.”9 The speech, likely drafted by an aide, included Washington’s most explicit reference to Jesus: “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life and, above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.”10
From the safe distance of a carriage, Martha Washington monitored the curious proceedings, escorted by a gawking Lucy Knox and Caty Greene. As one might expect from a genteel Virginia lady, Martha was taken aback by the Indians and their seemingly outlandish regalia. “The General and Billy [Lee], followed by a lot of mounted savages, rode along the line,” she told her daughter-in-law. “Some of the Indians were fairly fine looking, but most of them appeared worse than Falstaff ’s gang. And such horses and trappings! The General says it was done to keep the Indians friendly toward us. They appeared like cutthroats all.” The editor of Martha Washington’s papers notes that this “letter, if authentic, has undergone editing.”11
Such diplomacy didn’t forestall the punitive measures Washington initiated against Indian settlements three weeks later. Clearly in a vengeful mood after attacks on American civilians, he contemplated a drastic removal of the Six Nations from their traditional hunting grounds and farms. He ordered General Sullivan and about four thousand soldiers to march to the Finger Lakes in upstate New York and the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania and undertake “the total destruction and devastation” of Iroquois settlements, grabbing women and children as hostages for bargaining purposes.12 The Indians must have been forewarned, for Sullivan’s men often swooped down on deserted villages, which didn’t stop the Americans from reducing forty towns to ashes and incinerating 160,000 bushels of crops. As Sullivan laid down this trail of devastation, Washington recounted to Lafayette in jubilant terms how Sullivan had “completed the entire destruction of the whole country of the Six Nations, except so much of it as is inhabited by the Oneidas, who have always lived in amity with us.”13
Although Washington admitted that Indian families were fleeing in terror, he rationalized these harsh measures as fit punishment for assorted cruelties practiced by the Indians on “our unhappy, frontier settlers, who (men, women, and children) have been deliberately murdered in a manner shocking to humanity.”14 This wasn’t the last word on Indian policy from Washington, who still hoped to develop friendly relations with even hostile tribes.