In 1778, George Washington, Philip Schuyler, army officers, and New York officials began planning invasions against Iroquoia, the homeland of the Haudenosaunee and several other allied Indigenous nations.
This invasion was one of the largest American offensives of the Revolutionary War, curated to punish the Haudenosaunee for raids against frontier settlements in New York and Pennsylvania. However, the resulting 1779 campaigns of Goose Van Schaick, Daniel Brodhead, and Generals John Sullivan and James Clinton were not simple retaliation.
Clearing Iroquoia: New York’s Land Grab in the 1779 Campaigns of the American Revolution (Lexington Books, 2025) by Travis M. Bowman and Matthew A. Zembo critically examines archival materials from these campaigns to investigate the driving force behind the campaigns: removal.
Through their research, Bowman and Zembo explore how colonial leaders ignored peace efforts and how George Washington ordered his officers to do the same – prioritizing the destruction of Iroquoia and placing native peoples at the lower end of a racial hierarchy to justify their actions.
Using letters, journals, speeches, and reports, this book brings the buried truths to light, exploring these series of coordinated attacks that were designed to destroy Haudenosaunee political cohesion, clear the Indigenous population from the land, and replace it with a non-Indigenous one.
Travis Bowman is the Head of Museum Collections for the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation’s Bureau of Historic Sites.
Matthew Zembo is Associate Professor of History and Military History at Hudson Valley Community College and Instructor of American history at Bard Early College.
Upcoming Event
Johnson Hall State Historic Site will host authors Bowman and Zembo for a talk about their new book on Thursday, September 11 at 6 pm.
Located at 139 Hall Avenue in Johnstown, NY, Johnson Hall was the 1763 Georgian-style estate of Anglo-Irish immigrant Sir William Johnson and Molly Brant/ Konwatsi’tsiaienni of the Kanien’kehá:ka/Mohawk, whose combined influence made them the most powerful family in the colonial Mohawk Valley, deeply impacting the diplomacy of the region and their wider worlds.
This presentation is free and open to the public. For more information, call Johnson Hall at 518-762-8712.
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