To the Haudenosaunee, George Washington has been known for more than two centuries as the Town Destroyer. This episode looks at the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, when Washington sent about 4,000 men, a third of the Continental Army, to destroy Haudenosaunee towns after Loyalist and Native raids on frontier settlements like the Wyoming Valley and Cherry Valley.

We trace how John Sullivan’s troops burned 40 villages and destroyed about 160,000 bushels of corn and whole orchards, why British Governor Frederick Haldimand failed to respond, and how more than 5,000 refugees endured a brutal winter at Fort Niagara. We also cover why historians call the campaign a well-executed failure, and the ongoing debate over whether it should be called genocide or ethnic cleansing.

• Why the Seneca, Cayuga, Mohawk, and Onondaga sided with Britain while the Oneida and Tuscarora joined the Americans
• The Battle of Newtown, the Boyd and Parker ambush, and the origin of Horseheads, New York
• The 1780 cicada emergence the Onondaga remember as a lifesaving source of food
• How destroying farms led to more frontier raids by leaders like Joseph Brant
• The Treaty of Paris, later land cessions, and Cornplanter’s words to Washington in 1790