20 _ NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



planted much thicker than is common with our Farmers. The 

 quantity of Corn and other vegetables destroyed at the several 

 Towns, from the best accounts I can collect from the officers em- 

 ployed to destroy it must certainly exceed five hundred acres which 

 is a low estimate and the plunder is estimated at 30m Dollars^ . . . 



1 Meaning probably $30,000. 



Quotations from the journals of soldiers and officers could be mul- 

 tiplied to some length with but one result, that of corroborating the 

 fact that the Iroquois cultivated corn, beans, squashes, pumpkins 

 and other vegetables in large quantities and to an extent hardly ap- 

 preciated by the general student of history.^ 



The beautiful valley of the Genesee, renowned among the Indians 

 as the fertile garden region of the Seneca was cultivated for miles 

 of its length. Luxuriant fields, patches of forest land and wide 

 openings of grass land were found throughout the valley. The im- 

 petuous army of Sullivan, inflamed by the depredations of the Iro- 

 quois and bent upon wreaking vengeance upon a tribe of ignorant 

 savages entered the Genesee valley with feelings of utmost surprise 

 for they found the land of the savages to be, not a tangled wilder- 

 ness but a smiling blooming valley, and the savages domiciled in 

 permanent houses and settled in towns. General Sullivan describes 

 the town of Genesee, for example, as containing 128 houses, mostly 

 large and elegant, and names it as one of the largest. It was beauti- 

 fully situated, he added, " almost encircled with clear flat land ex- 

 tending a number of miles ; over which extensive fields of corn were 

 waving, together with every kind of vegetable that could be con- 

 ceived." Forty towns were obliterated, 60,000 bushels of corn de- 

 stroyed, fruit orchards uprooted, girdled or chopped down, one 

 containing 1500 trees. Ruin was spread like a blanket over the Iro- 

 quois country and their garden valley reduced to a idesolate blighted 

 and forsaken region dotted with blackened ruins. Hardly a food 

 plant remained for the oncoming winter.^ 



2 See Stone. Life of Brandt. N. Y. 1838. v. 2, ch. 1 ; Journals of the 

 Military Expedition of Major General John Sullivan against the Six Na- 

 tions, 1779. Auburn 1887. 



^Cf. Stone. Brant, 2:33. 



