The campaign had the aim of "the total destruction and devastation of their settlements. The expedition was largely successful, with 40 Iroquois villages razed and their crops and food stores destroyed. The campaign drove just over 5, Iroquois to Fort Niagara seeking British protection, and depopulated the area for post-war settlement. Some scholars argue that it was an attempt to annihilate the Iroquois and describe the campaign as a genocide although this term is disputed.
Today this area is the heartland of Upstate New York , with thirty-five monoliths marking the path of Sullivan's troops and the locations of the Iroquois villages they razed dotting the region, having been erected by the New York State Education Department in to commemorate the th anniversary of the expedition.
While the campaign had only one major battle at Newtown on the Chemung River in western New York , the expedition severely damaged the Iroquois nations' economies by destroying their crops, villages, and chattels. The death toll from exposure, starvation and disease the following winter dwarfed the casualties received in the Battle of Newtown, during which Sullivan's army of 3, Continental soldiers decisively defeated about Iroquois and Loyalists.
In response to attacks by Iroquois and Loyalists on American settlements, such as on Cobleskill , German Flatts , the Wyoming Valley and Cherry Valley, as well as Iroquois support of the British during the Battles of Saratoga , Sullivan's army carried out a scorched-earth campaign to put an end to Iroquois attacks.
The American force methodically destroyed 40 Iroquois villages throughout the Finger Lakes region of western New York. The devastation created great hardship for those who sheltered under British military protection outside Fort Niagara that winter, and many starved or froze to death, despite efforts by the British authorities to supply food and provide shelter using their limited resources.
