Memory wars : settlers and natives remember Washington's Sullivan Expedition of 1779

Memory Wars explores how commemorative sites and patriotic fanfare marking the mission of General John Sullivan into Iroquois territory during the Revolutionary War continue to shape historical understandings today.

Sullivan’s expedition was ordered by General George Washington at a tenuous moment of the Revolutionary War.

It was a massive enterprise involving thousands of men who marched across northeastern Pennsylvania into what is now New York state, to eliminate any present or future threat from the British-allied Iroquois Confederacy.

Sullivan and his men carried out a scorched-earth campaign, obliterating more than forty Iroquois villages, including homes, fields, and crops.

For Indigenous residents it was a catastrophic invasion.

For many others the expedition yielded untold bounty: American victory over the British along with land and fortunes beyond measure for settlers who soon moved onto the razed village sites. The Sullivan Expedition has long been fixed on the landscape of Pennsylvania and New York by a cast of characters, including amateur historians, newly formed historical societies, and local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Asking how it is that people continue to “celebrate Sullivan” in the present day, Memory Wars underscores the symbolic value of the past as well as the dilemmas posed to contemporary Americans by the national commemorative landscape.