Harnessing the Whirlwind: Cultural Influences on the American Revolution in Upstate New York

Summary

Present day Upstate New York was the location of some of the American Revolution’s major campaigns, such as Burgoyne’s campaign of 1777 and the Sullivan-Clinton campaign of 1779, as well as continuous raids and guerrilla fighting. Combat across Upstate New York centered on rural areas and relied on local partisans, such as Loyalist Rangers, Continental Militia, and Native American’s allied with the British and the Continental armies rather than professional forces. Using the results of historical and field research conducted by Binghamton University’’s Public Archaeology Facility, this paper will present how the landscape and combatants’’ cultural identities shaped the tactics used in the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign’’s Battle of Newton. This paper will detail how the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy’’s involvement influenced tactics on the battlefield and led Continental leaders to apply a level of violence on Native American communities beyond what was found in other regions of the American Revolution.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Encountering the Other on the Field of Battle : Global Conflict, Identity, and Archaeology in the Era of the American Revolution   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-48,02