"The Battle of Newtown, August 29, 1779: An Aggressive" Topic

…Attack Carried Out With Audacity

"In 1778 the Continental Congress authorized funds and instructed General George Washington to send an expedition of the Continental Army into Iroquois country to "chastise," or punish, "those of the Six Nations that were hostile to the United Stated." For more than two years, four of the Iroquois Confederacy's Six Nations, specifically the Cayuga, Onondaga, Mohawk and Seneca, along with many of the tribes they considered their "dependents" and allies, had "taken up the hatchet" in the king's favor.

Although led by their own war chiefs, the war parties were often accompanied by officers and rangers of the British Indian Department, who coordinated their efforts with the British military. Other Crown forces were also operating against American settlements. One was a corps of Loyalist volunteers and Mohawk warriors commanded by Captain Joseph Brant, or Thayendanegea, a Mohawk leading warrior and officer of the British Indian Department. Another was Butler's Rangers, a corps of Provincial regular light infantry raised specifically to "cooperate" with the allied warriors and fight according to the Indian "mode" of warfare. It was commanded by long-time Indian Department officer John Butler. Butler served concurrently as the Deputy Superintendent for the Six Nations with the Indian Department rank of lieutenant colonel, while at the same time holding a major's commission in Provincial service as the commander of his ranger battalion. Together they these forces conducted a campaign that terrorized American frontier settlements of New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia…"

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Armand

Excellent and very useful account of a great battle to wargame!

Yes. It has long seemed to me, considering disasters such as Braddock's and St Clair's, that the Indians could win, and win spectacularly, but only when the opposing commander was ill-prepared for woodland fighting. Bushy Run and Fallen Timbers and Newtown demonstrate that disciplined troops with suitable tactical adjustments were more than native warriors could handle.

Plus, of course, the vast discrepancy between the resources of the native tribes versus the dense English settlements meant that the whites could sustain defeats and return later in even greater strength, while the tribes could not recover from a bad defeat.

Happy you enjoyed it….

Armand