Massacres North and South

Abstract

From almost the first conflicts in North America, colonists resorted to destroying Indian crops and villages as the surest way to defeat Indians. Hundreds of Pequots died when the Puritans burned their village on the Mystic River in Connecticut in 1637; French expeditions into Mohawk country in the 1660s targeted Mohawk villages for destruction, and British troops carried fire and sword to Cherokee towns in 1760. During the American Revolution, patriot troops launched recurrent assaults on Cherokee and Shawnee villages, and General John Sullivan’s expedition in 1779 rampaged through Iroquois country burning crops, cutting down orchards, and burning forty towns.