Conotocaurius (Town Destroyer)... George Washington...

5fish

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George Washington is called "The Father of our Nation" and by some "Cincinnatus" but the Iroquois had a nickname for him as well "Conotocaurius"(Town Destroyer)... We talk about the Indian wars of the late 19th century but the late 18th century had Indian wars too... and George Washington was the man behind it...

snip...

Conotocaurius (Town Destroyer) was a nickname given to George Washington by Iroquois peoples in 1753. The name in its original language(s) has been given variously as Conotocarius, Conotocaurious, Caunotaucarius, Conotocarious, Hanodaganears, and Hanadahguyus. It has also been translated as "Town Taker", "Burner of Towns", "Devourer of Villages", or "he destroys the town". was a nickname given to George Washington by Iroquois peoples in 1753. The name in its original language(s) has been given variously as Conotocarius, Conotocaurious, Caunotaucarius, Conotocarious, Hanodaganears, and Hanadahguyus. It has also been translated as "Town Taker", "Burner of Towns", "Devourer of Villages", or "he destroys the town".

His Grandfather had the name first... John Washington...

snip...

Washington was given the name in 1753 by the Seneca leader Tanacharison. The nickname had previously been given to his great-grandfather John Washington in the late seventeenth century. He had participated in an effort to suppress Indigenous peoples defending themselves in Virginia and Maryland. It involved members of both the Susquehannah and the Piscataway, an Algonquian tribe that lived across the Potomac River from Mount Vernon.

snip.. John Washington.... murdered Chiefs... a Mafia hit...


During the events leading to Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, Washington was appointed a colonel in the Virginia militia. He led a company to back a group of Marylanders during a planned parley with the disgruntled opposition and their allied American Indian leaders. The militia killed six chiefs of various tribes. Outraged, their peoples later retaliated, conducting raids and attacks against the colonists.[10] Governor William Berkeley strongly criticised Washington for the murders of the American Indian chiefs, but colonists supported him.[citation needed] The Governor would later be replaced by John's cousin Nicholas Spencer who had traveled with him on his ship. Relations between the Indians and colonists deteriorated.[1

Following the massacre of five chiefs who had come out to negotiate under a flag of truce to the colonizers, the Susquehannahs gave John Washington an Algonquian name that translated to "town taker" or "devourer of villages."

Snip... George Washington excepts the nickname...



The elder Washington's reputation was remembered and when they met his great-grandson in 1753 they called George Washington by the same name, Conotocarious.[2][3]

Washington referred to himself as "Conotocaurious" in a letter he wrote to Andrew Montour dated October 10, 1755, in which he tried to manipulate the Oneida to resettle on the Potomac:

Recommend me kindly to our good friend Monacatootha, and others; tell them how happy it would make Conotocaurious to have an opportunity of taking them by the hand at Fort Cumberland, and how glad he would be to treat them as brothers of our Great King beyond the waters. "[4][5]
In 1779 during the American Revolutionary War, the Sullivan Expedition, under Washington's orders,[6] destroyed at least 40 Iroquois villages in New York, they claimed the tribe came from, after they defended against "American settlements" on their lands.[citation needed] In 1790, the Seneca chief Cornplanter told President Washington: "When your army entered the country of the Six Nations, we called you Town Destroyer."[7]
[8]
 

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Here another take...


snip... 1779...

From his headquarters in Middlebrook, N.J., Washington authorized the "total destruction and devastation" of the Iroquois settlements across upstate New York so "that country may not merely be overrun but destroyed."

snip...

By August, the expedition was moving through Iroquois country, meeting almost no resistance. In keeping with explicit orders from Washington, the Americans set ablaze every village in their path. "I am well persuaded," John Sullivan, the leader of the venture, bragged to Congress afterward, "that, except one town situated near the Allegana, about 50 miles from the Chinessee, there is not a single town left in the country of the Five nations." The campaign defeated the loyalist Iroquois army, burned 40 Iroquois villages to ashes, and left homeless many of the Indians, hundreds of whom died of exposure during the following frigid winter.

snip...

When he met with Washington 11 years after the devastating campaign, Chief Cornplanter, who headed the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois, stressed the durability of "Town Destroyer" as the commander in chief's nickname. "And to this day when that name is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mothers," Cornplanter said. But the title stuck even tighter than the Seneca chief could have imagined. To this day, "Town Destroyer" is still used as an Iroquois name for the president of the United States
 

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Here is this...


snip...

George Washington's first recorded encounter with Native Americans occurred while on a surveying trip in 1748 when he was 16 years old. Noting in his journal on March 23, at about 2:00 pm:
"we were agreeably surpris’d at the sight of thirty odd Indians coming from War"
snip...

By the time of his presidency, Washington and many of his contemporaries had come to believe that Native Americans had no choice but to assimilate into American society or face extinction. He also spoke of wanting to create policies based on "principles of Justice and humanity" towards native nations but the stability of the young republic and its citizens was his clear priority.
 

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Here is the Sullivan Expedition... 1779...


snip...

The savagery had begun early that morning, when a hundreds-strong force of Loyalist militiamen, Seneca Indians and a few British soldiers had appeared out of the fog and rain. The town and its small garrison were taken completely by surprise, and the raiders—led by Tory Captain Walter Butler and Mohawk war chief Joseph Brant—launched into an orgy of death and destruction. The fort managed to hold out, but the town and its people were defenseless. By the time the attackers withdrew, more than 30 civilians—mostly women and children—and 16 soldiers were dead and nearly 200 people left homeless. The assault soon became known as the “Cherry Valley Massacre,” and it would help convince General George Washington to launch a massive, no-holds-barred retaliatory expedition.

snip...

Their names have a romantic, almost mystical ring: Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida, Tuscarora. But there was a time when mere mention of these tribes struck terror in the hearts of settlers along America’s first frontier. They referred to themselves collectively as Haudenosaunee (“People of the Longhouse”). They were the Six Nations of the Iroquois, and by choosing sides during the American Revolution, they ensured their own destruction. Before the war was over, Iroquois’ homes lay in ruins, their crops and orchards burned, their people freezing and starving

snip...

Washington was mindful that the key to overall victory lay in the East, but he could no longer ignore the British/Indian threat in the West. Though he was reluctant to divert any regular units, Washington realized that after the depredations in Wyoming and Cherry valleys, a significant military campaign was a necessity. The first choice to command such an expedition was Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates, the reputed “Hero of Saratoga.” But Gates showed his characteristic reluctance to expose himself to combat and begged off on grounds of age and infirmity. Command of the expedition then settled upon Maj. Gen. John Sullivan, a truculent onetime New Hampshire lawyer whom Washington instructed in a detailed May 31, 1779, letter to move “against the hostile tribes of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents.” The immediate object of the campaign, Washington said, was “the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible.” Sullivan was told to carry out his mission “in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed.” The “total ruin” of the Indian settlements, Washington wrote, would guarantee America’s future security by inspiring the Indians with terror through “the severity of the chastisement they receive.” Washington added that should the Indians “show a disposition for peace, I would have you encourage it, on condition that they will give some decisive evidence of their sincerity by delivering up some of the principal instigators of their past hostilities”—namely Butler and Brant
 

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Here is this tale of tales...


Indian Prophecy

"I am chief and ruler over all my tribes. My influence extends to the waters of the Great Lakes, and to the far blue mountains. I have traveled a long and weary path that I might see the young warrior of the great battle. It was on the day when the white man's blood mixed with the streams of our forest that I first beheld this chief. I called to my young men and said, 'Mark yon tall and daring warrior? He is not of the redcoat tribe—he hath an Indian's wisdom, and his warriors fight as we do—himself alone is exposed. Quick, let your aim be certain, and he dies.' Our rifles were leveled—rifles which, but for him, knew not how to miss. Twas all in vain; a power far mightier than we shielded him from harm. He cannot die in battle. The Great Spirit protects that man, and guides his destinies. He will become chief of nations, and a people yet unborn will hail him the founder of a mighty nation" (Benjamin Hart, Faith & Freedom, 234).
 
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