" The immediate objects," said Washington, in his letter of instruction to Sullivan, " are the total destruction and devastation of the Indian settlements," He added that the Indian country was " not to be merely overrun, but destroyed." If we have regard for proportions, greater losses were inflicted upon the Indians by Sullivan than were ever inflicted upon the settlements of New York by the Indians. The expedition, however, failed completely in achieving its main purpose, which was to suppress the Indian raids. Sullivan and his army had scarcely left the Western country, when the Indian attacks were renewed and for three years were continued with a savage energy before unknown. The Indians' thirst for revenge having been thoroughly aroused, nothing could afterwards restrain their hands. Aside from the burning of German Flats and the battle of Oriskany (the latter not properly an incident of the Border Wars, since it was an integral part of the Burgoyne campaign), the injury done by the Indians to the Mohawk Valley was done subsequent to the Sullivan expedition. In their entirety, the Border Wars constitute a phase of the Revolution ofwhich far too little has been remembered. We may seek

24 NEW YORK STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.

in vain for a territory elsewhere in the United States where so much destruction was done to non-com'batants. In Tryon county alone, 12,000 farms went out of cultivation; fully two-thirds of the population either died or fled, While of the one-third who remained 300 were widows and 2,000 orphans. And yet, as I have said, the losses of the Iroquois were greater still. But it is with the causes which led to this savage work that I am here to deal. For quite 100 years, Joseph Brant and the Tories of the Mohawk Valley, with Col.