Walter Butler (1752 – October 30, 1781) was a British Loyalist officer during the American Revolution. He was born near Johnstown, New York, the son of John Butler, an Indian agent who worked for Sir William Johnson. Walter Butler studied law, and became a lawyer in Albany, New York. Military career At the start of the American Revolution, the women of the Butler family were taken captive in Albany while Walter was commissioned as an Ensign in the 8th (The King's) Regiment of Foot, with which he served at the Battle of Oriskany. When his father, John, formed Butler's Rangers, Walter Butler transferred to that company and was commissioned as a Captain. In late 1777, he was captured by Continental Army troops while trying to recruit Rangers at Shoemaker Tavern in German Flatts, New York. He was sentenced to death for spying by Lieutenant Colonel Marinus Willett and was imprisoned in Albany; but, after a few months, he escaped and returned to Canada. In 1778, he and Joseph Brant, a Mohawk chief, led a company of Tories and Indians in the raid that culminated in the Cherry Valley Massacre. He has been blamed for the deaths of the many women and children who were killed on that occasion. He fought in the Battle of Johnstown and was killed on October 30, 1781, while retreating back to Canada in a skirmish with rebel troops (2nd Albany County Militia Regiment) and the Tryon County militia under Marinus Willett in the Mohawk Valley. Cherry Valley massacre Captain Butler was in command of the Loyalist raiding party that attacked Cherry Valley on November 11, 1778. In a November 17, 1778 letter to his superiors in Canada, Butler blamed Joseph Brant and his Indians for the massacre of the inhabitants of Cherry Valley. Contrarily, some Americans on the Patriot side asserted that it was Butler who ordered the killing of the women and children at Cherry Valley, not Brant. The following letter from J. H. Livingston to his brother serving in the Continental Congress is presented here, in part, verbatim from the original preserved in the New York State Library in Albany, New York. The fighting in upstate New York at times devolved into savage civil war between families and kin of whites who had lived in that region, with both sides in league with their own allies of native Amerindians. (Of the Iroquois Six