The Warriors: “John Butler” (1728?-1796), by Henry Oakley
Butler was the most successful and the most feared of the Loyalist military leaders. The son of an officer in the British army, Butler was closely associated with the British Indian Department from early manhood. He served extensively in the Seven Years’ War, being second-in-command of the Indians when Sir William Johnson took Fort Niagara in 1759 and holding the same post in Amherst’s force advancing on Montreal. He was instrumental in winning the Iroquois to active participation in the Revolution on the British side; from 1777 he directed his own corps, Butler’s Rangers, in a devastating series of raids against the American frontier settlements. It has often been contended that Butler and his men were motivated by hatred and a desire for revenge. Their operations, however, had the important objectives of denying supplies to the Continental army and drawing off as many rebel troops as possible from operations further east. In these objectives Butler was enormously successful.
The entry of the Iroquois into the conflict seemed to come at a propitious moment. In the early years of the Revolutionary War, from 1775 to 1777, the British had attempted to strike first at rebellion in the north of the American colonies where resistance had been strongest. The rebels had had some early successes in forcing the British out of Boston and taking Fort Ticonderoga, the key to the passage of Lakes George and Champlain to Canada. When the Americans attacked Quebec City in December 1776, however, as we have seen, they were utterly defeated. The British pressed forward in the following year to take New York City and then pushed down towards Philadelphia, which they occupied in 1777.
The other major campaign the British undertook in 1777 was what they hoped would be a decisive blow against the rebel strongholds in the northern colonies. General John Burgoyne with a sizable army was to drive from Canada down Lake Champlain and the Hudson River to Albany, thus forcing a wedge between the solidly disaffected New England colonies and their more moderate sisters. An auxiliary force under Colonel Barry St. Leger and Sir John Johnson was to subdue the Mohawk Valley and then join Burgoyne on the Hudson for the main thrust. This second army, totalling 1,400 men, consisted mainly of Loyalists. It brought together for the first time the partisans who had been gathered by Johnson, Butler and Brant.
On August 3, St. Leger’s forces laid seige to Fort Stanwix, a rebel-held post near the head of the Mohawk Valley. When the American General Nicholas Herkimer attempted to relieve the garrison, he marched straight into an ambush carefully laid at Oriskany Creek by Butler and Brant. In savage hand-to-hand fighting during a torrential rainfall, both sides lost heavily. The rebels, although in possession of the field, were too weak to pursue the invaders. Despite their costly success at Oriskany, the Loyalist forces, equipped with insufficient artillery, were unable to crack the well-fortified Fort Stanwix. Disheartened by their own heavy losses, the besiegers had little stomach for holding on. False rumours of the approach of a massive American army led to the precipitous retreat of St. Leger’s little force. In revenge for Oriskany, Mohawk villages at Fort Stanwix and Fort Hunter were sacked by the Americans. Numbers of Mohawks fled behind the British lines.
Meanwhile, Burgoyne had advanced from Canada with an army of 7,000 regulars and German mercenaries accompanied by 680 Canadians and Loyalists and 500 Canadian Indians. Burgoyne’s Loyalist contingent consisted of a number of fledgling corps formed in 1777 – the Queen’s Loyal Rangers under John Peters, the Loyal Volunteers commanded by Francis Pfister and the King’s Loyal Americans under Ebenezer Jessup. In addition there were small groups under Captain Daniel McAlpin, Dr. Samuel Adams and Lieutenant Samuel McKay as well as a corps of bateaux men raised for the duration of the campaign. None of these units would survive in the form in which they existed in 1777 or grow to significant proportions.
Many of the Loyalists with the Burgoyne expedition were used in the hazardous tasks of maintaining supply lines, foraging, road and bridge repairs, and scouting. Some, notably the Queen’s Loyal Rangers, saw heavy fighting. The losses of the Loyalists were heavy and the rank and file of several units dwindled drastically. Burgoyne used the Indian warriors with his army to good effect, threatening to turn his braves loose on the frontier settlements. Panic-stricken, many colonists hastened to the British camp. Then a seemingly isolated incident nullified Burgoyne’s tactics. A small party of Indians escorting Jane McCrae, fiancée of a Tory officer, senselessly killed the girl. Horrified, Burgoyne demanded of his braves in the strongest terms that they abstain from indiscriminate warfare. This largely unjustified censure lost him the support of the bulk of the warriors, who deserted early in August. Most of Butler’s Senecas had returned home after the retreat from Fort Stanwix, but Brant’s party and others briefly joined Burgoyne. Finding he could do little to assist and being disgusted with what he considered the mismanagement of affairs, Brant returned to the Six Nations country. Others followed his lead.
The Warriors: “Colonel Guy Johnson” (ca. 1740-1788) by Benjamin West
Guy Johnson remained a rather peripheral figure in the Revolutionary War. A distant relation of Sir William Johnson, he married Sir William’s youngest daughter and was active in the Indian Department from 1759. He assumed the duties of superintendent in 1774 and the following year was one of the leaders of several hundred loyal residents who left the Mohawk Valley. Guy spent most of the war in London and New York, returning only in late 1779 to direct Indian affairs from Fort Niagara. He was replaced by his brother-in-law, Sir John Johnson, in 1783, because of his suspected involvement in a major provisioning scandal. In this magnificent portrait, Johnson is depicted in a combination of Indian and white garb which, although on a more modest scale, was typical of officers of the Indian Department. It has been stated that the Indian behind him is Joseph Brant.
For Burgoyne, things went from bad to worse. He did not receive the local support in New York that he had counted on. Dangerously handicapped by a slowness of movement and over-extended lines of supply and communications, Burgoyne’s army was finally surrounded and forced to surrender near Saratoga on October 17.
When the defeat of Burgoyne’s army was certain, some Loyalists began to fear for their safety, for they did not think they would be protected under the articles of capitulation in the same manner as the British regulars. With Burgoyne’s permission, large numbers of them slipped away and escaped to Canada. Along with those later paroled, they may have numbered as many as 560.
The surrender at Saratoga was a debacle of the first order for the royal cause. An entire army, which the British could ill afford, had been completely lost. No major offensive using regular troops would again be mounted from Canada in the course of the war. Without such heavy involvement from the regular army, the whole nature of the conflict on the Great Lakes frontier was dramatically altered. Despite their losses, the British still had the upper hand in the lakes region. Their hold on the forts along the northern edge of the colonies was never significantly challenged after 1776. These posts – Montreal, Oswegatchie (now Ogdensburg), Carleton Island (off Kingston), Oswego, Niagara, Detroit and Michilimackinac – provided excellent bases for the staging of raids into New York and Pennsylvania as well as into the Illinois and Ohio Country. Control of the Great Lakes allowed the royalist forces to provision their interior garrisons and the cause of the crown continued to attract an increasing number of frontier settlers and Indians who could be effectively used in an all-out guerilla war. South of the lakes, the rebel settlements were poorly protected. Few Continental troops were stationed there, while the local militias were incapable of undertaking decisive offensive operations and were hardly able to provide an adequate defence. Penetrating at will, small Loyalist bands by-passed the garrisoned forts and aimed crippling blows against the isolated settlements. Before the American militia could respond, they were gone. For five years the Loyalist corps pressed this grim frontier war. They could not hope to conquer and hold the rebel territories, but they could devastate them settlement by settlement. So the Tory raiders swept down from Canada, gathering