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With the entry of France on the American side, the War for Independence moved from a regional conflict to a global war. To offset this new alliance, Britain devised a bold new strategy. Turning its attention to the colonial frontiers, especially those of western New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, Britain enlisted its Provincial Rangers, Tories, and allied warriors, principally from the Iroquois Confederacy, to wage a brutal backwoods war in an attempt to cut the colonies in half, divert the Continental Army, and weaken its presence around British-occupied New York City and Philadelphia.
http://www.imanchester.net/article.php?story=20050916101012562

Charging his troops "to not merely overrun, but destroy," Washington devised a two-prong attack to exact American revenge. The largest coordinated American military action against American Indians in the war, the campaign shifted the power in the east, ending the political and military influence of the Iroquois, forcing large numbers of loyalist to flee to Canada, and sealing Britain's fateful decision to seek victory in the south. In Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois, historian Glenn F. Williams recreates the riveting events surrounding the action, including the checkered story of European and Indian alliances, the bitter frontier wars, and the bloody battles of Oriskany and Newtown.
Just announced: a finalist for the Thomas Fleming Award for the
Outstanding Revolutionary War Book of 2005
http://www.westholmepublishing.com/id24.html

The "year" in the book's title refers to 1777, which participants on both sides saw as a crucial point in the Revolution. The losers might well face the gibbet (and, typographically, the year's numerals line up to resemble one). It was also the year that saw the Iroquois take part in the conflict in substantial numbers. Known as the Six Nations--after the constituent tribes (Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, Oneida and Tuscarora)--the Iroquois confederacy was the most powerful American Indian group along the northern frontier, famed for its ferocity and bravery. It was also a traditional ally of the British. Indeed, without its help in the French and Indian War, British North America might well have been lost to France in the 1750s.
But as settlement expanded westward, the Iroquois felt themselves more and more encroached upon. They looked for help to the Crown, whose official policy (however much it was ignored) was to forbid settlement west of the Alleghenies. The whites whom the Iroquois knew best--the officers of the Crown's Indian Department--were loyalists almost to a man. Naturally, they became crucial leaders of the British war effort among the Indian peoples. They traded with them, took part in Indian dances, brought rewards from London and even married into Iroquois families.
Joseph Brant--or Thayendanegea, as he was known among his fellow Mohawks--was the most feared of all the Indian war leaders. He was also the brother-in-law of the late Sir William Johnson, the British superintendent for Indian affairs whose third wife, a Mohawk, was Brant's sister. Whenever a farmer was killed in his fields, or a patriot detachment ambushed, Brant was said to be behind it. And often he was. His warriors acted in consort with Tory rangers led by Maj. John Butler and his son Walter--perhaps the next most hated men on the frontier.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110007014



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