We like to think of the American Revolution as a war fought by high-minded gentlemen and their armies who followed a sort of civilized warfare.  These gentlemanly rules of war that allowed for prisoners to be taken and even paroled.  Sometimes they were even granted the privilege of marching out with “drums beating and colours flying” to be returned to their country their pride intact even in defeat. Combat generally followed a warning and opportunity for early surrender.  Aid was offered to defeated armies.  Their wounded given medical treatment.  Prisoners were to be afforded humane treatment (especially officers). And, above all — armies did not target civilians who were not actively supporting enemy forces and non-combatants were protected from harm whenever possible.  This was not the case when our native allies got involved.

The Revolutionary War was not just a war between the British Army and American rebels.  It also involved the Native peoples who lived in and around the British colonies.  These Native Americans were not passive observers in the conflict. While most Native communities tried to remain neutral in the fighting between the Crown and its colonists, as the war continued many of them had to make difficult decisions about how and when to support one side or the other. The Cherokee nation was split between a faction that supported the colonists and another that sided with Britain. The Iroquois Confederacy, an alliance of six Native American nations in New York, was divided by the Revolutionary War. Two of the nations, the Oneida and Tuscarora, chose to side with the Americans while the other nations, including the Mohawk, fought with the British. Hundreds of years of peaceful coexistence and cooperation between the Six Nations came to an end, as warriors from the different nations fought one another as well as the various European and American Armies on Revolutionary War battlefields.  Indians didn’t follow the
gentlemanly rules of war – they engaged in total warfare of the sort we see at Cherry Valley in 1778!

After the defeat of Brigadier General Barry St. Leger at Fort Stanwix and General John Burgoyne Saratoga in October 1777, the war in upstate New York became largely a frontier war with British Loyalist and their Indian allies targeting farmers who were supplying Patriot troops. Joseph Brant and other British-allied Natives developed plans to attack frontier settlements in New York and Pennsylvania with the intent of disrupting the follow of food and other needed materials destined for the main army in Pennsylvania.  The war in the Mohawk Valley was truly the most brutal of champaigns with attacks and counter reprisals form Indians and largely undisciplined militia who were more interested in revenge and terror than strategic advantage.  To make matters worse, lurid propaganda by accusing each side of massacre, rape, torture, and other atrocities fueled the anger.  Militia violated their parole and rejoined the war (making them subject to immediate execution upon capture), villages and towns were burned (sometimes with the occupants locked in the buildings), prisoners were executed (sometimes brutally), and all manner of civility had left the war.  It was truly total war.  The Mohawk River ran red with blood.

On November 11, 1778, a mixed force of two companies of 300 Senecas, as well as a large number of Mohawk and Cayuga warriors under the command of Walter Butler and Joseph Brant, descended on Cherry Valley. Cherry Valley had a palisaded fort that surrounded the village meeting house. It was garrisoned by 300 soldiers of the 7th Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army under the command of Colonel Ichabod Alden. Alden and his command staff were alerted on November 8 by Oneida spies that the Butler–Brant force was moving against Cherry Valley but the defenders failed to take even elementary precautions.

The main body of the attacking Loyalist army surrounded the fort but, lacking heavy weapons, they were unable to make any significant breach in the stockade walls. The fort was then guarded by the Loyalists while the Native warriors rampaged through the rest of the settlement. Not a single house was left standing, and the Senecas, seeking revenge, were reported to have slaughtered anyone they encountered.  The next morning Butler sent Brant and some rangers back into the village to complete its destruction. The raiders took 70 captives, many of them women and children. About 40 of these Butler managed to have released, but the rest were distributed among their captors’ villages until they were exchanged.

A Mohawk chief, in justifying the action at Cherry Valley, wrote to an American officer that “you Burned our Houses, which makes us and our Brothers, the Seneca Indians angry, so that we destroyed, men, women and Children at Cherry Valley.” The Seneca “declared they would no more be falsely accused, or fight the Enemy twice” (the latter being an indication that they would refuse quarter in the future).

The violent frontier war of 1778 brought calls for the Continental Army to take action. Cherry Valley, along with the accusations of murder of non-combatants at Wyoming, helped pave the way for the launch of the 1779 Sullivan Expedition, led by Major General John Sullivan. This expedition destroyed over 40 Iroquois villages in their homelands of central and western New York and drove the women and children into refugee camps at Fort Niagara. It failed, however, to stop the frontier war, which continued with renewed severity in 1780 and continued well into 1783.

My Cherry Lambic is blood red like the Mohawk River in 1778. 

Stats

• Batch Size       5 gal
• Boil Time          1 hr
• OG                   1.027 sg
• FG                   1.712 P
• ABV                 2.6%
• IBU                  35.4 (Tinseth)
• Color                11.1 srm (Morey)
• Estimated calories (per 12 oz) 87

Grain Bill

• Briess – 6 Row Brewers Malt,   15 lb
• Dark Brown Sugar,                     4 lb
• Caramel/Crystal Malt – 10L        4 lb
• Frozen pitted Cherries               4 lb

Hops Bill

• Centennial       10.5% AA         4 oz  boiled 1 hr
• Challenger         7.0% AA         8 oz added at flame-out

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