[Sidenote:  Victory of General Sullivan at Newtown.]

This victory cost the Americans about thirty men.  The ascertained loss of the Indians was also inconsiderable.  But they were so intimidated, that every idea of farther resistance was abandoned.  As Sullivan advanced, they continued to retreat before him without harassing his main body, or even skirmishing with his detachments, except in a single instance.

He penetrated far into the heart of their country, which his parties scoured, and laid waste in every direction.  Houses, corn-fields, gardens, and fruit trees, shared one common fate; and Sullivan executed strictly the severe but necessary orders he had received, to render the country completely uninhabitable for the present, and thus to compel the hostile Indians, by want of food, to remove to a greater distance.

The objects of the expedition being accomplished, Sullivan returned to Easton in Pennsylvania, having lost only forty men by sickness and the enemy.

The devastation of the country has been spoken of with some degree of disapprobation; but this sentiment is the result rather of an amiable disposition in the human mind to condemn whatever may have the appearance of tending to aggravate the miseries of war, than of reflection.  Circumstances existed which reconciled to humanity this seeming departure from it.  Great Britain possessed advantages which ensured a controlling influence over the Indians, and kept them in almost continual war with the United States.  Their habitual ferocity seemed to have derived increased virulence from the malignity of the whites who had taken refuge among them; and there was real foundation for the opinion that an annual repetition of the horrors of Wyoming could be prevented only by disabling the savages from perpetrating them.  No means in the power of the United States promised so certainly to effect this desirable object, as the removal of neighbours whose hostility could be diminished only by terror, and whose resentments were to be assuaged only by fear.

While Sullivan laid waste the country on the Susquehanna, another expedition under Colonel Brodhead, was carried on from Pittsburg up the Alleghany, against the Mingo, Munscy, and Seneca tribes.  At the head of between six and seven hundred men, he advanced two hundred miles up the river, and destroyed the villages and corn-fields on its head branches.  Here too the Indians were unable to resist the invading army.

After one unsuccessful skirmish, they abandoned their villages to a destruction which was inevitable, and sought for personal safety in their woods.