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| Don Troiani, Ensign Downing's Escape, Wyoming, July 3, 1778 |
Early in the summer of 1778, a combined force of Butler's Rangers led by Major John Butler1 and Seneca2, led by Sayenqueragtha and Cornplanter3, descended the Susquehanna River to attack settlements in the Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania. The Rangers quickly captured two smaller forts but the demand for the surrender of Forty Fort near Wilkes-Barre was rebuked.
In the afternoon of July 3, a column of between 300 and 400 Patriots commanded by Colonel Zebulon Butler and Colonel Nathan Denison marched out of Forty Fort to engage the enemy a few miles away. After firing three unanswered volleys, the Patriots advanced to within 100 yards of Major Butler’s position, unaware that they were being flanked. After a devastating volley from the Seneca and Rangers, the Seneca broke cover and attacked the American left with tomahawk, maul and spear. An attempt to fall back and reform the Patriot line became a panicked rout. Many of the fleeing soldiers were overtaken, killed and scalped. Some were taken prisoner by the Seneca and later executed, and some were tortured to death. Fewer than 70 Patriots are believed to have survived the battle and its aftermath.
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| Forty Fort, Wyoming in 1778 |
Forty Fort surrendered without bloodshed on July 4. In the days that followed, houses and barns throughout the Wyoming Valley were plundered and burned by Major Butler’s “savage allies.” Mills were destroyed and livestock was driven off. The inhabitants of the valley fled, either east through the Great Swamp and the Pocono Mountains to Fort Penn (Stroudsburg) or by rafting down the Susquehanna to Fort Augusta (Sunbury).
In his report to the British commander at Fort Niagara, dated July 8, Major Butler wrote:
But what gives me the greatest satisfaction is that I can, with great truth, assure you that in the destruction of this settlement not a single person has been hurt of the inhabitants but such as were in arms. To those, indeed, the Indians gave no quarter.
The Shawnee war chief Cheeseekau is thought to have said, "When a white army battles Indians and wins, it is called a great victory, but if they lose it is called a massacre." In the American imagination the Battle of Wyoming quickly became the Wyoming Massacre, not because of the deaths of the fleeing soldiers, but because of fabricated claims of butchered women and children.
There was no massacre of women and children in the aftermath of the Battle of Wyoming. But despite the preponderance of evidence that supports this, some amateur historical writers continue to perpetuate the incendiary myth that such a slaughter occurred.
Two examples are an earlier Wikipedia article on the battle, and a biography of Captain Walter Butler that appeared in the Journal of the American Revolution.4 Until recently, the Wikipedia article cited a tertiary source that wrongly claimed, “360 American men, women, and children lost their lives, and many who escaped to the forests died of starvation or exposure.” The Butler biography uses a quote from an obscure source to assert that the Rangers and Seneca, “put to death all the inhabitants of both sexes and every age, some thousands in number, enclosing some in buildings which they set on fire, and roasting others alive.”5
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| Pennsylvania Packet, July 30, 1778 |
Holt included many other lurid details, alleging that Thomas Hill “with his own hands” slaughtered his mother, father-in-law, sisters, nephews and nieces; and that Partial Terry, “murdered his father, mother, brother and sisters, stripped off their scalps, and cut off his father’s head."6
Although Holt later issued a retraction, acknowledging that women and children had not been massacred, the genie had been let out of the bottle. Holt’s gruesome account fuelled the conviction among many Americans that independence from Britain was justified, and was undoubtedly a factor in George Washington’s decision to launch a genocidal campaign against the Haudenosaunee the following summer.
In the years following the Revolution, many writers treated Holt’s account as historical fact. William Gordon’s The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States, published in 1788, repeated Holt’s false assertions that the Patriots were vastly outnumbered, and that a request for terms was answered “with more than savage phlegm in two short words — the hatchet!” Gordon wrote that women and children were burned alive at Forty Fort and across the river at Wilkes-Barre, and that the two familicides had indeed occurred. Gordon also falsely asserted that the Mohawk war chief Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant), “of desperate courage, ferocious and cruel beyond example,” was present at Wyoming.
Mercy Otis Warren, in her History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, published in 1805, began by proclaiming the pre-war Wyoming Valley to be an idyllic paradise. She wrote that the surrender of Forty Fort was preceded by “the horrid display of a great number of scalps, just torn from the head, and yet warm with the blood, of their nearest friends and relations." According to Warren, Butler “had nothing human about him, except a rough, external figure of a man,” and that his men “enjoyed the infernal pleasure of seeing them [women and children] perish promiscuously, in the flames lighted by their bloody hands,” while "others were cruelly and wantonly imbuing their hands in the blood of their parents." Warren avowed that she recorded these events “agreeably to most authentic accounts at the time."
That same year, the fourth volume of Chief Justice John Marshall’s influential Life of George Washington was published. Marshall attributed to John Butler “more than cannibal ferocity” as he repeated the hatchet myth and the claims of familicide. He wrote that at Wilkes-Barre, soldiers were “hacked to pieces” while women and children “shared the fate of their brethren” at Forty Fort and “perished in the flames.” Many years later Marshall admitted that he had been gravely misled by Gordon’s History.
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| George Romney, Joseph Brant, 1776, National Galley of Canada |
The notion that Thayendanegea and the Mohawk were present is one of the more persistent myths of the Wyoming Massacre. Despite being debunked by William Leete Stone in his Life of Joseph Brant, published in 1838, it is still possible to find references to Mohawk participation in recently published work. For example, an online article published in 20107 and cited by the Wikipedia article, includes statements such as “hundreds of Mohawk warriors came storming out of the nearby woods” and “the slaughtering was done exclusively by the Mohawks.” While Thayendanegea is not named, neither are the Seneca, so it is possible that the author was mistakenly using Mohawk as a synonym for “Indians.”
While Isaac Chapman’s Sketch of the History of Wyoming, published posthumously in 1830, reduced the size of Butler’s forces to a more reasonable 800, he repeated the claim that Brant was present. According to Chapman, Forty Fort’s garrison of precisely 368 men left the fort at dawn on the third. In the battle and subsequent massacre 300 men were killed including a militiaman murdered by his “Tory” brother. Chapman states that “all kinds of barbarities” were committed after the capitulation with many women and children taken into captivity.
Early American textbooks also propagated the false narrative that women and children were massacred. In his History of the United States, published in 1836 “for the use of schools and academies” John Frost wrote that Butler’s forces “massacred a great part of the inhabitants,” and “to save themselves the trouble of murdering individually their vanquished enemies, with the women and children, shut them all up in the houses and barracks, set fire to the buildings, and with savage exultation, saw them all perish in the flames.” Subsequent editions of his history omitted the horrid details and only maintained that inhabitants were massacred.
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| Massacre of Wyoming from John Frost's Thrilling Incidents of the Wars of the United States |
Ten years later, Frost published A Pictorial History of the United States, followed by Thrilling Incidents of the Wars of the United States in 1848. A Pictorial History repeated Holt’s claim that John Butler, a “kinsman” of Zebulon Butler, had 1600 men with him, and that Butler, “inhumanly massacred all of the poor inhabitants, men, women, and children.” Frost also made the outrageous assertion that the total number of deaths among the inhabitants was 3000.
In Thrilling Incidents, Frost reduced the size of Butler’s forces to 1100 and gave precise but inaccurate number for those who marched into battle and for those who escaped. While he no longer maintained that a massacre followed the capitulation, the accompanying illustration still showed Seneca warriors slaughtering settlers among the burning buildings of Wilkes-Barre.
Missing from these earlier “histories” are references to primary sources apart from Holt’s flawed account. The Library of Congress defines primary sources as “the raw materials of history — original documents and objects that were created at the time under study.” It took decades before historical writers such as Stone and Charles Miner interviewed survivors and sought out letters and journals as well as the “official” reports written by Nathan Denison, Zebulon Butler and John Butler.
In 1841, Stone published The Poetry and History of Wyoming. Stone was unequivocal in asserting that Thayendanegea was not present and that “no lives were taken by the Indians after the surrender.” A few years earlier Stone had visited the Seneca elder Gaondowauna who had fought at Wyoming and affirmed the absence of Thayendanegea and the Mohawk.
But while Stone refuted Brant's presence, he wrongly contended that a detachment of the “Royal Greens” participated in the battle.8 He included Chapman’s story of the fratricide and gave his readers an account of an indigenous woman executing prisoners. A marker erected at “The Bloody Rock” by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in 1962 tells the story:
On the night of July 3, 1778, after the Battle of Wyoming, fourteen or more captive American soldiers were murdered here by a maul wielded by a revengeful Indian woman, traditionally but not certainly identified as "Queen Esther."
Charles Miner in his History of Wyoming, published in 1845, clearly refuted the idea that women and children were massacred. He described Marshall’s account as “exceedingly erroneous,” and referred to other early accounts as “black with cruelty, and crimsoned with blood.” He described the fratricide and expanded upon the story of "Queen Esther and the Bloody Rock." Miner, however, still clung to the possibility that Thayendanegea was at Wyoming, and claimed no more than 160 Patriot deaths, and no fewer than 40 deaths for the “Tories” and “Indians.”
Miner based his work on the oral histories which he collected from survivors. Sarah Bidlack née Gore was at Forty Fort when it surrendered, and lost several family members in the battle. She reported that the Seneca treated them kindly but plundered “everything but the clothes they had on.” Martha Myers née Bennett noted how the Indians “robbed, plundered, burned and destroyed” but did not physically harm anyone. Both said that Major Butler “exerted himself to restrain the savages.”
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| James Charles Armytage, The Fratricide at Wyoming, 1860, The Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington |
Drawing on Stone and Miner was George Peck’s Wyoming; Its History, Stirring Incidents, and Romantic Adventures, published in 1858. Peck’s approach was to tell the stories of individuals who were there. The account of Lieutenant Matthias Hollenback, as told by his daughter-in-law, describes how he escaped death by swimming the river. Martha Bennett’s story is retold while Deborah Sutton related that her family built a raft and floated down the Susquehanna to safety. Joseph Marcy boasted how his mother managed to fight off a Seneca warrior who was trying to steal a loaf of bread. Sylvia Stevens, who was at Forty Fort when it surrendered, provided the anecdote of a Seneca warrior who poisoned himself by drinking a bottle of camphor oil.
According to Peck, the execution of prisoners by Queen Esther was “undoubted historical fact” and referred to her as the “priestess of the hellish orgies of Bloody Rock.” In his chapter “The Fratricide,” Peck wrote that “according to reliable evidence,” John Pencil fled to Canada after the murder of his brother Henry and was forced to live in the wilderness until he was eaten by wolves.9
Peck also provided transcriptions of John Butler’s report dated July 8, and Zebulon Butler’s report dated two days later. Peck extensively footnotes the former and called it “a perfectly bald caricature of the famous expedition of its author.” Meanwhile, he accepted Zebulon Butler’s report without question. To his credit, Peck recognized that the account of the Battle of Wyoming in Gordon and Marshall were “not mere exaggerations, but downright falsehoods.”
In his letter to the Board of War, Zebulon Butler reported 200 Patriots killed and an “uncertain... but considerable” number of enemy casualties. He wrote:
“I have heard from men that came from the place since the people gave up that the Indians have killed no persons since, but have burned most of the buildings, and are collecting all the horses they can, and are moving up the river. They likewise say the enemy were eight hundred, one half white men.”Colonel Butler’s report is collaborated by a letter written a few weeks later by Denison to Governor Jonathan Turnbull of Connecticut: “The number of enemy that came against us did not exceed seven or eight hundred at the most by the best information I can get.” He added, “the number killed on our side can not be certainly known. but I believe not far from two hundred. He makes no mention of the execution or torture of prisoners, and collaborates Butler’s statement that after the surrender of Forty Fort, “no person was hurt by the enemy.”
Other first-hand accounts accompanied the Petition of the Sufferers of Wyoming sent to Congress in 1839. Catharine Kennedy, who was twelve at the time, related that her family travelled through the wilderness with a large group of refugees and that a child was born on the three-day trek. A similar account was provided by Eleazer Blackman, while Jose Rogers reported that his grandmother had died soon after his family had travelled downriver to Fort Augusta.
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| Denman Fink, The Flight of the Survivors, 1902, Scribner's Magazine |
These testimonies do not support claims that hundreds of refugees died as they fled through the wilderness. While Stone wrote that “numbers of women and children perished in the dismal swamp on the Pokono range of mountains,” later “authorities” popularized the idea that many refugees had succumbed to exposure and hunger. The accounts, however, do not speak of women and children forced to flee "barefoot and almost naked" or becoming lost in the mire of the Great Swamp. For the most part, the refugees that followed the paths east through the Poconos arrived at Fort Penn exhausted and hungry but otherwise healthy.
The accounts also contradict claims of a sudden mass exodus. While Anderson Dana’s family left on the fourth, Sarah Gore reported that her family “stayed almost two weeks before they were obliged to flee.” Bertha Jenkins’s family left three days after the battle. Martha Bennett left the valley by canoe on the fifth, but her father waited a week longer before leaving. Deborah Sutton’s family didn’t depart until after Major Butler’s forces had left the valley on the eighth.
Ishmael Bennett's statement provides evidence that the Seneca tortured their prisoners. He reported that his father, “could see naked white men running round the fires; could hear the cries of agony; could see the savages following with their spears, and hear their yells; it was a dreadful sight.”
Accounts of the Battle of Wyoming are also found in the journals kept by several of the participants in the 1779 Sullivan Expedition against the Haudenosaunee. Captain James Norris of the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment recorded that at Wyoming the “unhappy people... were attacked by a merciless band of savages, led on by a more savage Tory, the Unnatural monster Butler: their Houses were plundered and burnt, their cattle of effects convey'd away after they had capitulated; the poor helpless Women [and] children obliged to Sculk in the Mountains and perish or travel down to the Inhabitants, hungry, naked & unsupported.” Norris also related the story of John Pencil murdering and scalping his brother, calling it “a deeper Tragedy than has been acted since the Days of Cain.”
Colonel Henry Dearborn, commanding the 3rd New Hampshire, recorded that there were 200 Patriot deaths during the battle, and that the “Savages burnt & destroyed the whole country & drove off the cattle & horses & strip’ed the women & children of every comfort of life.”
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| Detail from William Scull's 1770 Map of Pennsylvania, Library of Congress |
The most detailed narrative, however, is that of Reverend William Rogers who was a brigade chaplain during the Sullivan expedition. Like Norris and Dearborn, Rogers described crossing the Great Swamp between the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers, and passing through the densely forested area known as the Shades of Death. Although many writers attributed the name to the alleged deaths among the Wyoming refugees, the toponym was in use well before the Battle of Wyoming and appears on William Scull’s 1770 map of Pennsylvania.
While the brigade was at Wyoming, Rogers visited the battlefield and was the told the tale of the fratricide by Colonel Zebulon Butler. Rogers was shown where the bones of “fourteen wretched creatures” were found lying in a circle several weeks after the battle, and wrote that Queen Esther “scalped and tomahawked with her own hands in cool blood eight or ten persons.”
Rogers reported between 70 and 80 “of the butchering foe” were killed. While he does not explicitly claim that women and children were massacred at Wyoming, he accused the British of encouraging “the savage tribes to kill and wretchedly torture to death, persons of each sex and of every age—the prattling infant, the blooming maid and persons of venerable years.”
Accounts of the Battle of Wyoming from a Loyalist perspective were slow to appear. While George Peck included Major Butler’s report, he labelled it a “gross exaggeration.” Richard Cartwright’s Memorandum of Indian Operations, which he wrote in 1780, did not appear in print until 1878, while a transcription of Richard McGinnis's journal did not appear until 1972.
In Loyalists of America and Their Times, published in 1880, Egerton Ryerson reviewed the contradictory narratives of the “Massacre of Wyoming” contained in four published histories of the United States written by “accredited historians.” His conclusion was the Battle of Wyoming:
...has been the subject of more misrepresentation, more declamation, more descriptive and poetic exaggeration, and more denunciation against the English by American historians and orators than any other transaction of the American revolution.
Ernest Cruikshank’s The Story of Butler’s Rangers and the Settlement of Niagara, published in 1893, is still considered the definitive history of the regiment. His relatively brief but straightforward account of the battle refreshingly lacks the jingoism of earlier American narratives. Cruikshank does not tackle the alleged fratricide or the accusation that an indigenous woman executed prisoners, but he does attribute the myth of a wholesale slaughter to the Wyoming refugees themselves rather than the fertile imagination of early historical writers:
Those who fled from the valley told a far different story of death and desolation, which their fears prompted them to embellish with blood-curdling and wholly imaginary details. This tale of horror was eagerly circulated to throw odium upon the loyalists, and has been repeated with little variation down to the present day. Undoubtedly there was a “massacre” at Wyoming, but it was of strong men flying from a lost battle, and not of prisoners or helpless women and children as they represented.Richard McGinnis, a private in Butler’s Rangers, wrote in his journal that before leaving Fort Niagara, Major Butler convinced the Seneca to refrain from “Murdering the Woman and Innocent.” He recorded that the Seneca “Did Not Comit any thing of the Kind to My Certain Knowledge In Our Way through the Savage Country.” According to McGinnis, nine hundred head of cattle were driven back to Tioga, while of the two Rangers wounded in the battle, one later died of his wounds.
Richard Cartwright's Memorandum is perhaps the most accurate account from the British perspective. Cartwright, who was Major Butler's civilian secretary, described the battle as “a very warm engagement” after which “the rebels retreated with precipitation.” He recorded that in addition to the scalps taken by the Seneca, several Patriots drowned trying to escape across the Susquehanna. He wrote that houses were set afire and cattle driven off, and confirmed that the Seneca engaged in plunder but did physically harm any the inhabitants except for the prisoners taken by them during the battle:
All this was done without any acts of cruelty being committed by the savages; for the deliberate murder of prisoners after they are brought into their camp is not, it seems, reckoned among acts of cruelty by these barbarous wretches.
American author's estimates of the number under Major Butler’s command vary widely, Warren's outrageous claim of 2000 to Chapman's more reasonable 800. Many authors overestimated the number of “Tories” while underestimating the number of “savages” present. Although Miner tried to provide an accurate account of the battle based on primary sources, he still inflated the number to 1100 “Tories, Royal Greens, and Indians,” a number which also appears on the memorial plaque located near the site of the battle. It is as if those writing from the American perspective could not accept that their men-in-arms were annihilated by a force not much bigger than their own.
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| Journal of Richard McGinnes, Library and Archives Canada |
Those writing from the Loyalist perspective gave much smaller numbers. Major Butler stated he had 500 under his command. Cruikshank quoted Butler’s number and provided a breakdown of 200 Rangers and 300 Indians. McGinnis wrote that they set out from Niagara with 70 Rangers and 300 Indians. Perhaps the most accurate number, however, was recorded by Cartwright who claimed 110 Rangers and 474 Indians.
It can be deduced from the pay lists found in the Haldimand Papers that the total strength of Butler’s Rangers at the time of the battle was no more than 210 men. Not everyone listed, however, would have been at Wyoming. Walter Butler, for example, was at Quebec, having escaped from captivity in Albany a few months earlier.
Estimates of the number of Patriot casualties vary as well. Denison and Zebulon Butler claimed not more than 200 in their reports. John Butler reported that 227 scalps were taken and wrote that Denison, “assures me that they have lost one Colonel, two Majors, seven Captains, thirteen Lieutenants, eleven Ensigns, and two hundred and sixty eight privates.”
While Denison reported, “the numbr of the Enemy killed not far from Eighty,” Major Butler wrote, “On our side are killed one Indian; two Rangers and eight Indians wounded.” McGinnis noted, “The loss on our side was one Indian killed and two white men wounded. One of the white men, Willson by name, died of his wound, it having mortified.” Cartwright recorded “seven wounded, two of whom died of their wounds.” William Smy in An Annotated Nominal Roll of Butler’s Rangers identified the two who died as Francis Willson and John Carlock.
Williams College art historian Michael Lewis recently observed:
...the false account of the Indians driving the women and children into the fort and then setting it ablaze was too good a story not to repeat. It is one of those false but indestructible stories we have learned to call “urban legends.” And while, by 1845, the story had already been scrupulously corrected in Charles Miner’s History of Wyoming, authors and artists continued to dine out on the more exciting sham version.One such “sham version” was presented at the 1878 commemoration of the “Battle and Massacre of Wyoming.” Steuben Jenkins made a jingoistic speech about “the valour and patriotism of that little band of heroes who went forth to stay the march of the ruthless invaders.” He insisted Brant was present and falsely accused the British of paying for the scalps taken. Although he reluctantly admitted that there was no massacre of women and children after the surrender of Forty Fort, he regaled his audience with John Franklin Meginness’s hyperbolic account of an earlier “massacre” on the West Branch of the Susquehanna:
Children were murdered before their parents’ eyes; husbands were compelled to witness the horrid deaths of their wives—and in turn children were compelled to gaze upon the mangled bodies of their parents. Neither age, sex, nor condition was spared. The wails of helpless infants; the imploring cries of defenceless women, failed to awaken a chord of pity in adamantine bosom of the tawny savage—he laughed their pitiful appeals to scorn, and with a fiendish grin of pleasure, plied the knife, and tore the reeking scalp from their heads.According to Jenkins, Major Butler commanded British provincials, Tories, Royal Greens, and indigenous warriors “thirsting for conquest and blood.” While his account of the battle is fairly straightforward, his story of the ensuing massacre dwelt on the more gruesome details. He repeated the narrative of “Queen Esther’s Bloody Rock,” but surprisingly asserted that the story of the fratricide was untrue, before falsely claiming that the refugees who fled into the wilderness were persued:
Many were slain by the pursuing savages in their flight, some died of excitement and fatigue, others of hunger and exposure, while many were lost who never found their way out. Hundreds were never seen again after they turned their backs on Wyoming. By what sufferings and torture they died the world will never know.Oscar Jewell Harvey was able to draw on both American and Canadian sources for his two volume History of Wilkes-Barre, published in 1909. Harvey noted that unfamiliarity with the uniforms of provincial regiments had caused many writers to assume that the “Royal Greens” were there, and concluded that any “Tories” present were enlisted in Butler’s Rangers. Harvey traced how the Poughkeepsie account had been rehashed and repeated for decades until being thoroughly demolished by Stone and Miner.
Harvey accepted accounts of an indigenous woman killing Patriot prisoners but questioned whether Queen Esther was the culprit. He argued that the murder of John Pencil by his brother Henry was “more indisputably authenticated than many other incidents.” Perhaps Harvey’s only notable failure was clinging to the belief that many Wyoming refugees died in the Shades of Death.
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| Howard Pyle, Queen Esther, 1902, Scribner's Magazine |
In stark contrast to Harvey’s unbiased and fairly accurate account is Alfred Matthews’s A Story of Three States, published in 1902 and excerpted in Scribner’s Magazine. Matthews resurrected long discredited myths and invented others. He asserted that the Rangers under “Indian” Butler were accompanied by “Royal Greens,” a “rabble of Tories,” Seneca, Mohawk, and “a swarm of squaws.” He insisted that all the inhabitants were slaughtered except for a few children taken into captivity, and that Queen Esther was the overall leader.
What makes Matthews work notable is not the misinformation but the full-page illustrations that accompanied it. Denman Fink’s The Flight of the Survivors of the Wyoming Massacre shows a group of exhausted refugees trudging through the Shades of Death. Frederick Yost’s The Indians Departing after the Massacre of Wyoming shows the Seneca burden with plunder and mounted on stolen horses. Most remarkable, however, is Howard Pyle’s Queen Esther who is depicted wearing a flaming red skirt as she incites the indigenous warriors while Thayendanegea and Major Butler look on.
The most famous illustration of the Battle of Wyoming, however, is Alonzo Chappel’s 1858 Massacre of Wyoming.
At the centre of what Lewis calls a “turbulent scene” and “a senseless
chaotic maelstrom,” a solitary Seneca warrior scalps a wounded Patriot
while around him “Royal Greens” and Rangers attack the fleeing militia
with musket and tomahawk. Chappel’s illustration reflects the erroneous
belief that the “Tories” significantly outnumbered their Seneca allies and were largely responsible for the massacre.
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| Alonzo Chappel, Massacre of Wyoming, 1858, Chicago History Museum |
A far more accurate portrayal is Don Troiani’s 2012 Ensign’s Downing’s Escape which shows Daniel Downing watching helplessly from his hiding place as his compatriots are slaughtered on the banks of the Susquehanna.
Recent scholarship has focused on the willingness of a society to embrace historical myths such as the Wyoming Massacre. In Savage and Bloody Footsteps through the Valley, William Tharp examined how narratives where a slaughter of women and children took centre stage, and where John Butler was demonized, were displaced by a narrative where "a fury in the form of a woman" brutally executed prisoners. He concluded that the apocryphal story of Queen Esther was very much the product of the antebellum society in which it developed.
Lisa Francavilla demonstrated how contradictions in the stories of the Battle of Wyoming reinforced the need to “question the reliability not only of secondary sources but of the primary sources on which they depend.” She noted that while historians have traditionally tried to determine what actually happened, they have often neglected to ask why variations in accounts of historical events occur:
Yet, how a story is told is just as important as what it says, and why a story continues to be believed, despite its debatable or insupportable elements, reveals much about a society that clings to it and perpetuates it.
In 1710, the essayist and satirist Jonathan Swift wrote: “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late.” The persistence of the myths surrounding the Battle of Wyoming is clear proof of Swift’s wry observation.
It is difficult to understand why in the face of unequivocal evidence some historical writers still embrace the myths of the Wyoming Massacre. But they are in fact myths. Thayendanegea was miles away. Major Butler's forces numbered less than 600. There were no "Royal Greens" or Mohawk present. Hundreds of women and children did not perish from hunger or exposure in the Shades of Death. And the inhabitants of the Wyoming Valley were not massacred after the surrender of Forty Fort. To maintain otherwise is sheer folly.
Notes:
1 Many sources refer to John Bulter as a Lieutenant Colonel, however, at the time of the Battle of Wyoming he was Major Commandant of the provincial corps known as Butler’s Rangers. His commission as Lieutenant Colonel is dated February 14, 1780.
2 Small contingents of Cayuga, Onondaga and Munsee Delaware warriors were also present.
3 Sayenqueraghta (d. 1786) was known as Kaieñkwaahtoñ or Gayahgwaahdoh in the Seneca language, and was also known as Old Smoke. Cornplanter was known as Gaiänt'wakê or Kaiiontwa'kon in the Seneca language.
4 Werther, Richard. “Walter Butler—The Dastardly Loyalist,” Journal of the American Revolution, August 25, 2022. Captain Walter Butler (1752–1781) was the son of Major John Butler and a company commander in Butler’s Rangers, but was in Quebec when the battle occurred. https://allthingsliberty.com/2022/08/walter-butler-the-dastardly-loyalist/
5 This quote is from James Gordon’s The Historical and Geographic Memoir of the North American Colonies and Its Nations and Tribes, published in Dublin in 1820, and appears in Howard Swiggert’s War out of Niagara as an example of the gross exaggerations that appeared in print after the Revolutionary War.
6 Parshall Terry (1756-1808) was a Loyalist who served in Butler’s Rangers and later became a political figure in Upper Canada. He drowned in 1808 while crossing the Don River in York (Toronto). His father, Parshall Terry (1734-1811), was a patriot who served in the 24th Regiment of Connecticut Militia and who outlived his son by three years.
7 Fairchild, Michael. "Neighbor vs. Neighbor in the Wyoming Valley." Pennsylvania Centre for the Book. Pennsylvania State University, 2010. http://pabook2.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/BattleWyoming.html
8 “The Royal Greens” was the American name for the King’s Royal Regiment of New York, a British provincial unit raised in 1776 and commanded by Sir John Johnson. None of the regiment were present at the Battle of Wyoming. Captain William Caldwell, who Miner believed commanded the Greens at the battle, was a company commander in Butler’s Rangers.
9 The real John Pencil served with Butler’s Rangers until it was disbanded in 1784. He settled with other Loyalists in Fredericksburg Township in the Bay of Quinte region and was living there as late as 1797 when he successfully petitioned the government of Upper Canada for additional land.
Sources:
Butler, John. Letter to Lt. Col. Mason Bolton, July 8, 1778, Haldimand Papers, Library and Archives Canada, Add MSS 217610, Vol. B.100, pp. 38–43.
Butler, Zebulon. Letter to the Board of War, July 10, 1778. Wilkes University Archives, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. https://archivepublic.wilkes.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/13305
Cartwright, Richard. "Memorandum of Indian Operations from 1778 to 1780, Made at Niagara in 1780." in Cartwright, Conway Edward (ed.) Life and Letters of the late Hon. Richard Cartwright, member of Legislative Council in the first Parliament of Upper Canada. Toronto, 1876. https://archive.org/details/lifelettersoflat00cart/
Chapman, Isaac. A Sketch of the History of Wyoming. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 1830. https://archive.org/details/sketchofhistoryo00inchap
Cook, Frederick, editor. Journals of the Military Expedition of Major General John Sullivan against the Six Nations of Indians in 1779. Auburn, New York, 1887. https://archive.org/details/cu31924095654384
Cruikshank, Ernest. Butler's Rangers and the Settlement of Niagara. Welland, Ontario, 1893. https://archive.org/details/storyofbutlersra00cruiuoft
Denison, Nathan. “Letter to Jonathan Trumbull, July 28, 1778,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol III (Second Series), October 1887, pp. 342–4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25079665
Francavilla, Lisa A. The Wyoming Valley Battle and ‘Massacre’: Images of a Constructed American History. M.A. thesis, College of William and Mary, 2002. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626377
Frost, John. History of the United States: for the Use of Schools And Academies. Philadelphia, 1836. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008586749
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Frost, John. Thrilling Incidents of the Wars of the United States: Comprising the Most Striking And Remarkable Events of the Revolution, the French War, the Tripolitan War, the Indian War, the Second War With Great Britain, And the Mexican War. Philadelphia, 1848. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008650105
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