EXTRACT FROM THE WARRANT BOOKS OF THE PAYMASTER GENERAL Quebec 1 January 1780 Final Warrant to Captain Walter Butler being an allowance made to the Corps of Rangers under the command of Major John Butler for the year 1778 and is in consideration of the great fatigues and being subject from the nature of the service to many losses which the remoteness of their situation renders very expensive .................................................................................................................... £469 5 0 _________________________ British Library. Sloane and Additional Manuscripts, Add MSS 21754, Abstract of Warrants for the Extraordinary Service of the Army, 1778-1784; National Archives of Canada, Haldimand Collection, microfilm reel A-678. ************************* GENERAL FREDERICK HALDIMAND TO LORD GEORGE GERMAIN Quebec 26 January 1780 In the case of Colonel Johnson, I must assure Your Lordship that I have not the least reason, nor do I by any means wish to hurt him, yet I think it indispensably my duty to acquaint you that he is not possessed of either abilities, temper, or the necessary talents to conduct a department of such importance as he is at the head of, and if His Majesty should think proper to annex a high rank to that employment, Mr Johnson is in every respect, but particularly as an Officer, a very unfit person to be entrusted with the power it will give him. In some of his letters to me and by his declarations, I find he takes to himself a great share of the merit of the conduct which has been observed by the Five Nations in the present conduct, which in fact he has not the smallest claim to any part of, having left his duty in '75 (when the Province was invaded) instead of remaining in the Indian Country where his presence was at that period indispensably necessary. By which, his Department was thrown into the last confusion, from which it was secured by the unwearied attention, application and judicious conduct of Major Butler, his Deputy, who returned from Quebec to Niagara for that purpose and who so far from being in any shape assisted by Colonel Johnson, never heard from him until July '77. So to Major Butler, with the aid of the late Colonel Caldwell and the Officers who succeeded him in the command at Niagara, together with the activity of Joseph Brant, whatever has been accomplished with and by the Five Nations is entirely due. _________________________ National Archives of Canada. Colonial Office Records, Q 17-1. * Comment: Haldimand is referring to Colonel Guy Johnson, not Sir John Johnson. ********************* MAJOR GENERAL PHILIP SCHUYLER TO COLONEL GUY JOHNSON Albany 7 January 1780 Your dispatch of the 7th December last was delivered to me this morning. The address as far as it concerns myself I should have considered with perfect indifference to the sovereign authority of the United States whose offices I have the honour to be. It is disrespectful and nothing but the cause of humanity could have justified me in breaking the seal. The Indians who have made war on these States in violation of their most solemn treaties are very far from deserving the encomiums you hazard in their favour. They have not, it is true, destroyed or carried away all the inhabitants who have had the misfortune to fall into their hands, but that after the unexampled ravages and barbarities they have without provocation perpetrated an Officer in high confidence of what you are pleased to term a generous nation should speak of the clemency and tenderness of those Indians, is not a little surprising. You will pardon a reflection which you have drawn forth by awakening a sense of calamities never to be remembered without horrors. I do not mean to enter into altercation. On what principle it is that the Indians expect equivalent for any of the citizens of those States whom they did not carry into captivity, I am ignorant; and you have not been pleased to explain some of the unhappy sufferers at Cherry Valley were left there by the Commanding Officers of the party who burned that village and an equivalent was afterwards claimed for them by Captain Butler in your Service. Such a claim would not have been supported on any principle whatever unused to favour and clemency from an enemy. The Officer Commanding in this Department did not avail himself of the obvious objectives to their claim, but as I am informed, complied with it on the first application an equal number of persons residing here and whose relations had removed to Canada permission to retire thither. Many have availed themselves of the indulgence, and others who set out late in the season on their journey were retarded only by the severity of the weather. The Indians expect, nevertheless, that their people should be restored to them as a condition of their continuing humanity towards their prisoners which you seem to think they have generally exercised. You, Sir, will do well to put them in mind of the treatment the Mohawks received at our hands when they were seized near Lake George in the very act of joining what were once your Army. Let them also be reminded that the same lenity and forbearance have been experienced by such of the Senecas, Cayugas and Onondagas as were in our power, and that we have even permitted the Cayugas, to whom you particularly refer, to proceed as far as Oneida, in the prospect that the exchange I had proposed in my last letter to Colonel Butler would have been accomplished. This is a lesson which should have taught them for the honour of the Nation for whose generosity you are an advocate and for the sake of that humanity which you seem to approve. While they act under your superintendence, every private and national consideration calls upon you to inculcate principles of humanity and to restrain them from cruelties to prisoners. It is not from any dread of their poser that these suggestions are dictated. The barbarities they may commit upon individuals will be deplored and condemned by all mankind, and they accent proof that the just resentments of an injured people can reach the most corners of their wilderness. Mrs Butler will be permitted to proceed to Canada with her family whenever proper assurances are given that Mrs Campbell and hers will have the like indulgence. Two of Mrs Mcdonell's and Mrs Fraser have solicited to return to New York or Canada with their families. Their wishes will be complied with whenever I am advised that the families who have been carried into captivity from these States will be liberated. ______________________ United States. Papers of the Continental Congress, Microfilm Group M247, Roll 173:499-502. * Comment: This is also in the Haldimand Papers, Add MSS 21779, but the date given is 23 January 1780. ********************** CAPTAIN WALTER BUTLER TO CAPTAIN ROBERT MATHEWS Montreal 2 February 1780 I return you my thanks for your kind favour and must express my gratitude to His Excellency for his attention to the release of my father's family. Give me leave to add that as the General has expressed a desire to serve me, I must likewise acknowledge the obligation I am under to him, therefore, and will wait for his commands in anything he will please to point out for me. I mentioned Captain McDonell the distress of several men having families (whom I discharged last spring as having too large families) for the want of provisions; likewise that several men still in the Rangers as having families were sent down from Niagara in order to ease the garrison in the articles of provision. Flour is so high a price that they can't afford to purchase it. I have a man of the name of Pencil, who served formerly in the Royal Americans. He has an old mother who is upwards of seventy, who he is obliged to attend constantly. He says if he was allowed a little provision for her, he could make out to save as much from his pay would pay for some family taking charge of her; but otherwise he will be lost to the Service. He is a man of good character and very fit for the service he is in. Pray, when will the express go off for Niagara? If the General thinks proper, had not Captain Dame best be sent? He expresses a desire to go and for my part I think it would be the best thing he could do. I have paid a good deal of money for him, but must stop my hand for a while. I am with my respects to Captain Pearke. _________________________ British Library. Sloane and Additional Manuscripts, Add MSS 21765, Correspondence with Officers at Niagara, 1777-1784; National Archives of Canada, Haldimand Collection, microfilm reel number A-682. ************************* FREDERICK MACKENZIE, DEPUTY ADJUTANT GENERAL, TO SIR HENRY CLINTON New York 4 February 1780 General Tryon desires you will be so good as to order provisions to be issued to Mr Jacob Kemble of Colonel Butler's Rangers with other people of that Corps. _________________________ National Archives of Canada. American Manuscripts in the Royal Institute of Great Britain, British Headquarters Papers. Document 2556. EXTRACT: CAPTAIN ROBERT MATHEWS TO CAPTAIN MCALPIN Quebec 7 February 1780 Captain Butler, having represented to His Excellency the distress which several men late of Major Butler's Corps labour under for want of provisions, who were discharged and sent from Niagara to lessen the consumption of provisions at that place, having large families, who are now at Montreal, and likewise the case of one Pencil, a Ranger whose mother is helpless, upwards of seventy years old, not being able to abandon her, he requests she may be allowed a little provision, which would enable him to place her in some family where she might be taken care of, that he may return to his duty, His Excellency desires you will make enquiry into these matters and afford them such assistance as they stand in need of, upon the same footing as other Loyalists.