Walter Butler (Loyalist) - The Cherry Valley Massacre of November 11, 1778

The Cherry Valley Massacre of November 11, 1778

Captain Walter Butler was in command of the Loyalist Raiding party that attacked Cherry Valley on November 11, 1778. In a November 17, 1778 letter to his superiors in Canada, Butler blamed Joseph Brant and his Indians for the massacre of the inhabitants of Cherry Valley. Contrarily, some Americans on the Patriot side asserted that it was Butler who ordered the killing of the women and children at Cherry Valley, not Brant. The following letter from J. H. Livingston to his brother serving in the Continental Congress is presented here, in part, verbatim from the original preserved in the New York State Library in Albany, New York.

"Albany 23 Nov. 1778. Dear Brother . . . . . . the devastation at Cherry Valley are marked with Such scenes of Cruelty as surmount perlays any attempt of the kind during the War. the City Militia returned from Schohary (which they guarded while Col. Butler went with his men to meet the Enemy,) of last Saturday Evening Col Alden is killed, the Leut Col. a prisoner. between 30 & 40 Women & Children butchered in the most unheard of manner. there is an Anecdote of the famous Brant mentioned upon this occasion which deserves to be made public & if true reflects immortal infamy upon the Tory rabble who have fled among the Savages & upon every occasion prove themselves worse than the heathen. it is Said when this party Came out, their Orders were read by young Butler upon which Brant turned himself round & wept and then recovering himself told Butler; that he was going to make war against America but not to murder and Butcher; that he was an Enemy from principle but he would never have a hand in Massacring the Defenceless Inhabitants upon which the bloody department was committed a Seneca Indian whilst the noble Brant with another party attacked the fort. had the British leaders or the British King been actuated by Sentiments of this sort the American War wod not have been Stained with such unparalleled cruelty, nor the name of Briton so justly execrated throughout these States. the Savage Brant stands foremost in the List of Heroes where How, Burgoyne, Clinton, and even George are named. but the Clock Strikes & warns me to close by telling you that both of us Sincerely love you both. May he whose Love is Stronger than Death protect & Bless you. J H Livingston"

The fighting in upstate New York at times devolved into savage civil war between families and kin of whites who had lived in that region, with both sides in league with their own allies of native Amerindians. (Of the Iroquois Six Nations, the Oneida and many Tuscarora sided with the rebel forces; the Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga and Cayuga remained loyal to Great Britain.) John Brick, a twentieth-century native of the region and a career historical novelist, researched and wrote novels from both sides of the loyalists-rebels division. In his 1954 novel "The King's Rangers"—after extensive research in Canadian archives—Brick reported that the savagery at Cherry Valley was done under direction of two sub-chiefs of Joseph Brant, the Mohawk chief; and that Brant, by dint of negligence or worse, abandoned his promise to Walter Butler to control the Indians' fighting so as to prevent attacks on women and children, the defenseless and captured.