Red Lodge daily news combined with Carbon County news., 1933-05-03

inN A1h AAh
as "a man of enterprising bold
ness, whose heart was a compound of ~feroclous
hate, Unsuitable cruelty and unappeasable re
venge."
But the novelists more than the historians
have made his name a word of loathing almost
as much as the name of Benedict Arnold. One
of them writes of CHERRY Valley, where, through
the wintry dawn, young Walter Butler damned
his soul for all eternity while men, women and
children, old and young, died horribly amid the
dripping knives and b~ayonets of his painted
fends, or fell under the butchering hatchets of
his S~enecas."
SO, after reading for so long that Walter But
Ter was a villain of the deepest dye, 1t Is all the
more amazing to pick up a book and read that
"Obvi0usly he was no scoundrel, and certainly
no murderer Of women and children as all the
books have said. He is the typical, proud, rest
less, unhappy, luckless figure OF romance, who
throws away his life for a lost causeH-obvi-
ously the stuff of which heroes are made. The
book Is war Out of Niagara-Walter Butler
and the Tory Rangers" published recently by
the Columbia University Press for the New York
State Historical association, and the man who has
painted a new portrait of the Infamous Walter
Butler is Howard S~wiggett. author of a care
fully-documented biography. based upon source
material hitherto untouched by the historians.
Why has the name OF Walter Butler for so
long been furnished with III fame7 There
are two reasons. closely associated. Even before
the outbreak of the Revolution there was en-
nifty between some of the 'half-feudal aristoc-
racy" of the Mohawk valley. notably the John.
sons and the Buffers, and the Dutch and Ger
man p~easantry of that region.
So when the conflict came and Walter Butler
cast his fortunes with the logical cause for
him TO espouse. II Is small wonder that these
commoners should refuse to credit him with be-
ing actuated by as much sincerity and high prin-
ciple as they were in making their choice. His
father, John Butler, was an assistant to the
great Sir William Johnson, the Kings superin-
tendent of Indian affairs In the Northern de-
p%artment and a lieutenant-colone In a Colonial
militia regiment. Brought up In the belief that
the greatest chance for honorable advancement
lay In "the Kings service" what more natural
than that this young arIstocrat should choose
the side OF His Majesty rather than that of the
"rebels"f
II must be remembered that the Revolution
was more than a conflict between a stubborn
foreign king and his rebellious subjects. 1t was
also a civil war In which one group of native
Americans. called Patriots, was pitted against
another group Of native Americans, called Tories
VI J0tAoA &h1AG . DV wal uVAG III man
civil war and no crime too black for one side
to charge against the other, when families are
divided among themselves and friend turns
against friend.
SO the legends of Tory lnfamy began growing
early among the Patriots and the first histori-
ans who gathered their material among the sur
vivors OF the Revolution and who do not seem to
have been animate by any descriptions re-
gard for accuracy. accepted most Of these leg
ends as facts. Then. too. they seem to have had
the MISUNDERSTANDING desire Ia desire still
In evidence among some Americans of today,
even though 1t Is not so understandable to try
to make the Patriots and their cause seem all
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 reason 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 use of the Indians by the British
and the Tories would be more convincing II they
did not overlook or Ignore these facts: that these
same Patriots. as English colonists during the
wars with the French, had been glad enough to
have the ~Iroquois as 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 wen as the Brit
ish, did use Indians as allies.