=204. Organization of Tories and Indians in the Northwest.=—Meanwhile matters of no less importance were occurring on the northwest frontier. Washington fully understood the necessity of taking from the British as much as possible of that vast territory which extends from the Catskills to the Mississippi River, and which had been made a part of Canada by the Quebec Act (§ 136). This was by no means an easy task. The Six Nations (§ 3), constituting the most powerful Indian confederation ever known, were under the immediate leadership of the greatest of all Indian chiefs, Joseph Brant, and under the influence of Sir John Johnson, the most formidable of the Tories. Brant had been liberally educated in Mr. Wheelock’s School, afterward Dartmouth College, and had even visited England and had dined with Burke and Sheridan; but his education seemed only to sharpen his wits and make him the better able to use the characteristics of other Indians. Though he exerted his influence to prevent the killing of women and children, as a strategist he was unequaled among savages, and on the battlefield he could out-yell any other chief. Throughout the West the Indians had generally combined with the Tories and the British. Two forces were now organized, one at Niagara and one at Detroit, for carrying out their designs. =205. The Wyoming and Cherry Valley Massacres.=—In the summer of 1778 twelve hundred Tories and Iroquois, led by John Butler, advanced stealthily from Niagara toward the southeast and fell upon the peaceful inhabitants of the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. Hundreds of innocent inhabitants were tortured and scalped, and the horrors of the massacre sent a pang into all parts of the civilized world. Similar outrages occurred at Cherry Valley and elsewhere, and every settlement was in danger. Prisoners who refused to give information were put to torture with ingenious cruelty. =206. Sullivan’s Expedition.=—In order to destroy the power of the Six Nations and put an end to this savage method of warfare, Washington decided to send out a strong force in the summer of 1779. The command of the expedition, having been declined by Gates, devolved upon Sullivan,[93] who had orders to lay waste the entire country of the Iroquois. The right wing of his army, under General James Clinton, advanced up the valley of the Mohawk, while Sullivan himself, with a force of about five thousand men, pushed into the valley of the Susquehanna. Both forces destroyed the Indian villages and the growing crops wherever they went. Finally, meeting the united forces of Johnson, Butler, and Brant near Newtown (now Elmira), Sullivan achieved a complete victory, August 29.[94] [Illustration: GENERAL JOHN SULLIVAN.]