CHERRY VALLEY MASSACRE was Ied by Lieut. Walter N. Butler, a Mohawk Valley Tory leader, son of the more famous Col. John Butler. He had been captured at German Flats in the summer of 1777, and sentenced to death as a but, spared on the intercession of friends, he es caped. Lafayette, seeing the exposed situation of Cherry Valley, had fortified it with a block house the preceding spring; and Col. Peter Gansevoort, an experienced officer of high reputation, solicited the command. For some reason, however, it was given to Col. Ichabod Alden, a Massachusetts officer, not used to In dian warfare. During the summer the in habitants lived in the fort and went warily; but by November they had returned to their dwellings. On the 8th, Colonel Alden received a message through a friendly Indian that at a great meeting of Tories and Indians at Tioga it was resolved to attack the place; and the people begged to be permitted to take refuge`. in the fort again. Alden pooh-poohed the report as an idle Indian rumor, assured them that he would guard against a surprise and sent out scouting parties. The party that should have beaten up Butler's went to sleep by a camp fire on the night of the 9th, and awoke as prisoners of the enemy. Butler obtaining a cotnpany of his father's rangers; induced Brant, the treat Mohawk chief, to join him with a few hundred of his Indians, picked up a band of Senecas and other straggling Indians and Tories as he went on, and with about 700 men approached Cherry Valley. Securing from the
prisoners, under.threat of torture, all infOrma tion as to the conditions there—as that the officers of the garrison lodged with families near the fort, instead of in it — the expedition camped about a mile southwest of the village on the night of the 10th. It snowed in the night, turning to rain in the morning. As the enemy approached under cover of the thick mist, an Indian fired on a stray settler and wounded him, but he escaped and warned the colonel, who thought the assailant only a straggling Indian, and paid no attention to the matter. The rangers stopped near the village to examine their guns, and the Indians sprang forward, the ferocious Senecas in advance, under their chief, Sayenqueraghta. In the massacre that ensued, 32 settlers, mostly women and children, the colonel and 15 soldiers, were slain; 30 to 40 prisoners were taken, also nearly all women and children; and the village was reduced to ashes. Most of the prisoners were released the next day, and sent back to effect an exchange for Butler's mother and younger brothers and sisters, in the power of the Americans.