Clearing Iroquoia - by Travis M Bowman & Matthew A Zembo (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book critically examines archival materials to investigate the driving force behind the 1779 Sullivan-Clinton Campaign: the destruction of Iroquoia.

Book Synopsis

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 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.

Review Quotes

Clearing Iroquoiarecovers the hard truths and enduring importance of the American invasion and dispossession of the Haudenosaunee homeland. Behind the beauty of the Finger Lakes farmlands today, lies a great historical tragedy for Native peoples driven by the American Revolution and ruthless land speculators.

The work introduces and addresses the multiple perspectives of, and divisions sown between, the Six Nations as they were impacted by the warring armies who fought for control for their ancestral lands... [Bowman] and Zembo effectively highlight powerful details that position these campaigns as early examples of the young nation's 'Manifest Destiny' ideology and its results.
The Hudson River Valley Review: A Journal of Regional Studies

This book offers a fresh perspective on the Sullivan-Clinton campaign, emphasizing its place in the broader history of American settler colonialism. Centering the theme of Haudenosaunee dispossession, Bowman and Zembo ground their findings in careful readings of an extensive array of primary sources to demonstrate how the campaign's objectives extended beyond retaliation for prior acts of Haudenosaunee aggression and was instead an outright extirpation of Haudenosaunee people from their ancestral homelands.

About the Author

Travis M. 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 A. Zembo is associate professor of history and military history at Hudson Valley Community College and instructor of American history at Bard Early College.