The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1933-05-05
THE eUTLER.HoME AT eUTlERseURH, ~

the whittier and purer by painting the Tories and
their cause all the blacker and more Infamous
Unfortunately for Walter Butler they made
him the scapegoat for most of their Tory ha-
treds. No doubt the particular for this
was that the Buffers, father and son, were in
strumental in winning the Iroquois Indians to
the British side and became leaders of the par
tisan forces with which these Indians cooper
ated. So they were bitterly hated because they
enlisted red savages as their allies, loosed them
on the frontiers and encouraged their atrocities
by imitation and a horrible commerce in scalps
of men, women and children"
But the Indignation of the early historians
against the of the Indians by the British
and the Tories would be convincing if they
did not overlook ignore these facts: that these
same Patriots as English colonists during the
wars with the French, had been glad enough to
have the Iroquois allies against the French,
that early in the Revolution they had tried TO
win the warriors of the Long House to THEIR
side and that during the Revolution some of
the Continental commanders as well as the Brit
ish, did use Indians as allies.
Since Walter Butler was the apotheosis of the
worst type of enemy to the cause of Liberty
it would seem natural that our information about
him should be fairly complete. And yet. as the
author of War Out of Niagara" says: There
is absorbing mystery about his life and char
acter. The date of his birth is unknown.
There is physical description of him except
In fiction Letters about him in catalogues, even
of the Schuyler Papers, the Gates Papers, the
Library of Congress and many other papers are
mysterinusly marked missing Timothy Dwight,
the President of Yale university invented a
great myth about him that got into every Amer
lean history in the Nineteenth century. Lafay-
cite Is said TO have been his friend but there
is no authority for it. Haldimand British COM
mander in Canada) is said to have refused to
receive him after Cherry Valley and this book
contains original letter from Haldimand ap-
proving of his conduct that November day. He
appears plainly to have broken his parole as a
prisoner but with every horror of massacre and
rapine laid at his door, for some reason that
seems to have escaped notice. Brant. the In
dian, is portrayed as a noble paladin, Mortified
at Buffers excuses Yet Simms, the gossip of
the Revolution. In The Frontiersmen of New
York tiresome in the multiplicity of its detail,
never places Walter Butler at the scene of any
of the atrocities in the North. Thousands of
men are mentioned by name but young Butler
Is mentioned only at Cherry Valley"
But thanks TO the researches OF this histor-
an, some of the mystery Of Walter Butler is dis
solved and see him, not as the bloody mon
ster" painted by the early historians. Instead
there stands forth IAN amazing fgure-a young
man who could not have been twenty
eight when he was killed. TO the rejoicing of all
leader, eager, ambitious. tireless, offering to
cover Albany, Fort Pitt and Detroit for Haldi-
mand grasping early in the war the grand STRAIT
egy of the long Northwestern flank, impatient
of older men. defending his every action at Cher
~ Valley. scorning to make war women and
children. while pointing out the treatment of
his mother and sister held as hostages in Al
bany. he is condemned for his red allies and
was himself killed and scalped by an Indian ally
of the Continental army and the newspapers an
nouncing his death say The Oneida Indians be-
haved well in the action and deserve much
credit"
So in "War Out OF Niagara" see Walter
Butler boy at Butlersbury, seeing his IA
Their and Sir William Johnson returning in tri-
umph ar the head of Colonial troops from the
wars with the French. We see him busy at his
law studies in Albany and a rising young
lawyer at the outbreak of the Revolution Then
when the break comes in IT'S and those who