History Revisited
From The Desk of George Washington
An Order of Genocide
From behind the hilltops, the Seneca nation watched the smoke from their burning villages rise into the clouds and consume their ancestral homes. The once-powerful and prosperous indigenous tribes of Central New York State were homeless. They would have to survive the winter solely on the food found in the rich forests in which they remained hidden from view. The events of August and September of 1779 would make them refugees.
The Haudenosaunee people had occupied those fertile lands for a thousand years. The colonial soldiers marched through the empty villages and saw fruitful crops and homes in every direction. They had orders to burn them all. The once-proud people could smell their homes burning and were left to watch everything they love vanish. Each of the days during those months brought the torches from a westward marching army of General Clinton and northern march from Pennsylvania by the forces of General Sullivan. The meeting of the two commanders commenced the building of a dam to flood and destroy all the crops in the region. The natives had never seen such a rise in the waters and watched in horror as their great stores of food disappeared.
Despite massive supply lapses for the armies, the generals decided to burn and submerge…
