Wyoming Massacre, The

DESCRIPTION: "Kind heaven assist the trembling muse While she attempts to tell Of poor Wyoming's overthrow By savage sons of hell." "One hundred whites in painted hue, Whom Butler there did lead..." offer terms of surrender to the defenders, then slaughter them
AUTHOR: Uriah Terry? (source: Miner)
EARLIEST DATE: 1845 (Miner), from a manuscript supposedly written 1785
KEYWORDS: Indians(Am.) war homicide trick lie
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
July 3-4, 1778 - The Wyoming Massacre
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 168-172, "Ballad of Wyoming Massacre" (1 text) (pp. 145-149 in the 1919 edition)
Burt-AmericanMurderBallads, pp. 129-131, "(A TRAGICAL ACCOUNT of the battle between the People of Wyoming and the Indians of Westmoreland in the year 1778, in which two hundred of the Americans were unhappily sacrificed to the savage barbarity of some treacherous Americans and cruel savages, in a Poem by a Person then resident near the field of battle)" (1 excerpted text)
ADDITIONAL: Charles Miner, _History of Wyoming In a Series of Letters from Charles Miner To His Son William Penn Miner, Esq._, J Crissy (Philadelphia), 1845 (available on Google Books), pp. 64-68, "Wyoming Massacre" (1 text)
Roud #14095
NOTES [856 words]: Jameson, p. 728, describes the Wyoming atrocity this way: "Wyoming Massacre, Pa. In 1776 two Continental companies had been placed in the Wyoming Valley for the protection of the settlers, chiefly Connecticut emigrants. Two years later Major John Butler, commanding a force 800 strong, of Indians, British and Tories, descended upon the valley. July 3, 230 Americans, in six companies, led by Colonel Zebulon Butler, attempted to oppose the British raids. Their unorganized lines fell upon the enemy about four o'clock in the afternoon. The continentals were utterly routed and a brutal massacre followed. Butler could not restrain his indians, who took 227 scalps. Women and children were, however, spared."
Note however that Jameson has the date wrong; it was in 1778, not 1776.
Stephenson, p. 195, has this to say: "The war [with the Indians, who had resolved to earn their own independence in 1776] was brutal, especially during 1778 Cherry Valley and Wyoming Valley campaigns. For example, Colonel John Butler's Loyalist Rangers and his pro-British Indian allies, mainly Seneca and Cayuga, lured the 450-strong garrison of Forty Fort out into the open and either killed or wounded 300 of them -- a number larger than the casualties of many of the 'big' battles of the war." (He goes on to point out that the pro-Independence fighter George Rogers Clark once randomly tomahawked five Indians to death to terrorize his enemies; the brutalities cut both ways.)
The area had been claimed by both Connecticut and Pennsylvania, a dispute not settled until after the Revolution (Stranahan, pp. 46-47); how much this affected the defense of the Wyoming area I don't know, but it can't have helped. The Connecticut settlers built a stronghold on the Susquehanna that they called "Forty Fort" (I'm not kidding -- you can still find "Forty Fort Borough" on Google Maps). They fled there when the British force under John Butler arrived.
John Butler (1728-1796) was born in New London, Connecticut, a Loyalist who lived in New York and worked as an Indian agent when the Revolution forced him to flee to Canada; he had been at the battle of Oriskany. It was after this that he was made major in charge of a battalion of Loyalists, they were known as "Butler's Rangers" and were intended to cooperate with Indian tribes (DAB-JB).
The Wyoming Massacre was perhaps the worst incident of savagery in the Revolutionary War, but was not really atypical. The British, trying to fight a war at the end of a very long supply line, naturally tried to rely on locals as much as possible, and that meant Indians. And the Indians weren't interested in anything in particular except loot, and the easiest way for the British to provide loot was to allow massacres. On the whole, the Indians probably did the British more harm than good -- they were unreliable and often deserted, and frequently proved ineffective in battle, as e.g. in the Saratoga campaign. And they blackened the British reputation among wavering colonials.
The Susquehanna settlers had called upon the government to send them support, but it did not arrive in time (DAB-ZB). John Butler called upon the forces at Forty Fort to surrender. Instead, Zebulon Butler (1731-1795), a soldier who had been a leader in leading the Connecticut settlers to the Susquehanna and was now home on leave, was given the command. DAB-ZB says that he had only about sixty soldiers and 300 militia, but the locals insisted he fight. So, against his better judgment, he brought his troops out -- and was heavily defeated. Butler fled the field; the other survivors fleeing to Forty Fort. On July 4, the fort surrendered.
Once the gates were opened, a massacre followed. Accounts of what happened next vary (as they always do in tales of atrocities), but at least two hundred people, and probably many more, died. Many accounts, including Thomas Campbell's well-known poem "Gertrude of Wyoming," blame the Loyalists, although DAB-JB says John Butler was not responsible.
Ultimately, though, both sides suffered. Stranahan, p. 46, reports that in later years a "group of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who lived north of Harris's Ferry and called themselves the Paxton Boys" took to attacking Indians; they had engaged in a massacre as early as 1763 (Stranahan, p. 47). They eventually wiped out the Indians responsible for the Wyoming Massacre (although I should add that Stranahan seems to give a different date for the Massacre).
It sounds to me as if the author of this poem didn't really know much about what happened. It mentions Forty Fort, but the only personal name given is "Butler" -- but, as we saw, a "Butler" commanded on both sides! (Not that there is any doubt about which one is meant, but it would be easier to remember that way.) Much of the poem is devoted to details of a couple of deaths, which an outsider would be unlikely to know. The only part that strikes me as being based on authentic knowledge is the sufferings of those in the area after the massacre.
I'm surprised the poem survived as well as it did; although the rhyme and meter are regular, it just doesn't flow very smoothly. - RBW
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