Cherry Valley

Background

The upstate New York theater of the Revolutionary War shifted into frontier warfare once British General John Burgoyne's push toward the Hudson collapsed following the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777. Rich farmland and abundant harvests made the Mohawk Valley a prime target, since local farmers were feeding Patriot forces from that same soil. From their position in the Province of Quebec, British officials armed and provisioned Loyalist fighters and their Native American allies. Joseph Brant, along with other Natives aligned with the British, spent the winter of 1777-78 plotting strikes against settlements scattered across New York and Pennsylvania's frontier. By February 1778, Brant had set up a base at Onaquaga, the site of modern Windsor, New York, drawing together a force of Haudenosaunee warriors and Loyalist recruits that swelled to somewhere between 200 and 300 men before his campaign launched that May. Securing food supplies, both for his own men and for John Butler's planned operations along the Susquehanna, ranked among his chief goals.

Brant's offensive opened with a raid on Cobleskill in late May, and he continued striking frontier settlements as the summer wore on. Continental Army detachments and local militia proved unable to stop him, since his raiders consistently slipped away before any substantial defense could be mounted. When Brant, joined by some of Butler's Rangers, struck German Flatts in September, Americans responded by mounting a retaliatory campaign that leveled the settlements of Unadilla and Onaquaga in early October.

Even as Brant operated in the Mohawk region, Butler led a sizable combined force south into Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley, raiding it in early July. This episode grew thornier when Senecas within Butler's ranks were accused of slaughtering civilians there, and afterward some Patriot militiamen broke their parole terms to join a retaliatory strike against Tioga. Sensationalized accounts of the alleged Seneca atrocities stoked deep anger among the Seneca themselves, compounded by the razing of Unadilla, Onaquaga, and Tioga. Though Brant himself had no hand in the Wyoming Valley raid, it nonetheless cemented his reputation among adversaries as an especially savage foe.

Afterward, Brant united with Captain Walter Butler, John Butler's son, who commanded two companies of Butler's Rangers under Captains John McDonell and William Caldwell, in preparing an assault on Cherry Valley, a significant settlement along Schoharie Creek. Butler's combined force numbered some 300 Senecas, likely under Cornplanter or Sayenqueraghta, alongside a contingent of Cayuga warriors led by Fish Carrier and 50 British regulars from the 8th Regiment of Foot. But friction developed between Butler and Brant as they advanced, centered on Brant's success in drawing Loyalists into his ranks. Resentful of this, Butler threatened to cut off supplies to the Loyalist volunteers Brant had gathered, prompting ninety of them to abandon the expedition altogether. Brant himself nearly walked away as well, staying only after his Indigenous allies persuaded him otherwise. This falling out troubled the Indigenous contingent and likely weakened whatever fragile command Butler still held over them.

Massacre

The village of Cherry Valley possessed a stockaded fort, built in the aftermath of Brant's raid on Cobleskill, enclosing the meeting house at its center. Three hundred men of the 7th Massachusetts Regiment held the position under Colonel Ichabod Alden. By November 8, Oneida informants had already warned Alden and his officers that Butler and Brant were bringing their combined force toward the settlement. Despite this warning, Alden neglected basic caution, keeping his headquarters at the home of a settler named Wells, roughly 400 yards (370 m) away from the fort itself.

The Butler expedition reached the vicinity of Cherry Valley on the night of November 10, setting up camp without fires so as to remain hidden. Scouts who examined the town noted how exposed Alden's dispositions were, prompting the raiders to split into two groups, one aimed at the headquarters and another at the fort proper. During a council that same evening, Butler obtained assurances from the warriors present that civilians would be spared harm.

Dawn on November 11 brought the assault, though its element of surprise was undone when impatient warriors opened fire on nearby settlers gathering wood. One of these settlers managed to flee and sound the alarm. Little Beard directed a portion of the Seneca fighters to encircle the Wells residence, while the rest of the force closed in around the fort. In the fighting that followed, at least sixteen soldiers and officers of the guard lost their lives, Alden among them; he was struck down while fleeing from the Wells house toward the fort. According to most versions of events, he had nearly reached the gates when he paused to fire at his pursuer, possibly Joseph Brant himself. His pistol, soaked and useless, failed to discharge, and he died from a tomahawk thrown into his forehead. Lieutenant Colonel William Stacy, Alden's second-in-command who was also billeted at the Wells house, fell into enemy hands as a captive. Stacy's son Benjamin, together with his cousin Rufus Stacy, dashed through gunfire to reach the safety of the fort, while Stacy's brother-in-law Gideon Day did not survive the attempt. The warriors besieging the Wells house eventually broke inside, where the struggle continued at close quarters. Once the soldiers stationed there had been overcome, the Senecas turned on every member of the Wells family, killing all twelve.

Meanwhile, the assault against the fort itself faltered, since the attackers had no artillery capable of breaching its walls. Loyalist troops took up positions to watch over the fort afterward, freeing the native warriors to spread destruction through the remainder of the settlement. Every dwelling in Cherry Valley was destroyed, and the Senecas, driven by a desire for vengeance, are said to have killed indiscriminately wherever they went. Although Butler and Brant both tried to halt the violence, their efforts came to nothing. Brant felt particular distress upon discovering that several families he knew personally and had considered friendly to him, the Wells, Campbell, Dunlop, and Clyde households among them, had suffered the worst of the Seneca violence.

In his journal, Lieutenant William McKendry, serving as quartermaster under Alden, recorded his own account of the fighting: a force of 442 warriors from the Five Nations together with 200 Loyalists under Colonel Butler and Captain Brant descended upon the headquarters, killing Alden and capturing Stacy, then turned on Fort Alden itself, withdrawing after three hours without having taken it.

McKendry's tally of the dead included Colonel Alden, thirteen additional soldiers, and thirty civilians, with the majority of the military casualties having occurred at the Wells property.

Regarding Stacy's capture, various accounts hold that he faced imminent death until Brant stepped in to save him. One version states that Brant preserved Stacy's life after his capture following Alden's death, noting that Stacy, said to be a freemason, appealed to Brant on that basis and was consequently spared.

Aftermath

Following morning's light saw Butler dispatch Brant along with a party of rangers back to the settlement to finish leveling it. Seventy people fell into captivity during the raid, a great many of them women and children. Roughly 40 secured release through Butler's intervention, while the remainder were sent to live among various villages belonging to their captors, remaining there until formal exchange took place. Among the prisoners was Lt. Col. Stacy, transported to Fort Niagara and held by the British.

Explaining what had happened, a Mohawk chief penned a letter to an American officer defending the assault. He stated that the burning of their houses had provoked both his people and their Seneca allies to such anger that they killed men, women, and children at Cherry Valley. The Seneca for their part insisted they would no longer tolerate false accusations, nor would they extend mercy to opponents in combat going forward, a statement suggesting no quarter would be given in future encounters. Butler himself claimed that despite every precaution and effort on his part to protect the women and children, some had nonetheless become tragic casualties of the warriors' rage. He maintained that his own attention had largely been consumed by defending the fort throughout the raid. Frederick Haldimand, governor of Quebec, was so troubled by Butler's failure to restrain his men that he declined to meet with him, remarking that such unchecked retaliation, even against a treacherous and brutal foe, served no purpose and reflected poorly on those responsible, running counter to the king's own principles regarding the conduct of the war. In subsequent accounts, Butler kept maintaining his innocence regarding that day's events.

The brutal fighting along the frontier during 1778 stirred demands that the Continental Army respond. Together with allegations of civilian killings at Wyoming, the events at Cherry Valley helped set in motion the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, ordered by commander-in-chief Major General Washington and commanded in the field by Major General John Sullivan. This campaign razed more than 40 Haudenosaunee settlements throughout their ancestral lands in central and western New York, forcing women and children to flee into refugee encampments near Fort Niagara. Despite this destruction, the expedition did not succeed in ending the conflict on the frontier, which flared up again with even greater intensity in 1780.