The boy's book of battle-lyrics a collection of verses illustrating some notable events in the history of the United States of America, from the Colonial period to the outbreak of the Sectional War |
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 | The boy's book of battle-lyrics |  |
DEATH OF WALTER BUTLER.
THE AFFAIR OF CHERRY VALLEY.
The massacre at Cherry Valley, New York, was notably cruel and bloody. In November, 1778, Walter Butler, with two hundred loyalists, and Joseph Brant, with five hundred Indians, swept down on the place, and commenced an indiscriminate slaughter. The very loyalists among the inhabitants were not spared. John Wells was well affected to the crown, yet he and his family, with the exception of his son John, who happened to be in Schenectady, were killed. Jane Wells was very much esteemed for her kindness and other good qualities. The elder Wells was a particular friend of Colonel John Butler, Walter's father, who said, when he heard of his death, “I would have gone miles on my hands and knees to have saved that family, and why my son did not do it God only knows.” One loyalist, Peter Smith, who had formerly been a servant in the family, tried to save Miss Jenny, but the Indian who had seized her struck her on the head with his tomahawk and killed her. One man by the name of Mitchell was at a distance, saw the savages approaching, and finding that he could not rejoin his family, escaped into the woods. On his return he found his house burning, and near it lay the bodies of his wife and four children. One of these, a little girl, was still living, when he saw a party approach. He dropped the child, and secreted himself behind a tree. One of the new-comers saw the child to be alive yet, and stooping, brained her with a hatchet. The wretch was not an Indian, but a white loyalist savage named Newbery, who was afterwards hanged as a spy by General James Clinton. Brant saved a number of prisoners, and would have spared the women and children, but Walter Butler denied all appeals for mercy.
Butler's time was to come. On the 22d of August, 1781, Colonel Willet attacked a force of five hundred loyalists and Indians at Johnstown, and defeated them. They were commanded by Major Ross and Walter Butler. The remnant of the enemy retreated all that night, and could not be overtaken. It was during that retreat that Butler was killed in the manner related in the ballad. Skenando, the Oneida chief, who is supposed to have been his slayer, was about seventy-four years old at the time. He lived many years after, dying at the age of one hundred and ten, on March 19, 1816. His burial was attended by a large number of citizens. A short time before his death he said to a visitor, who made some inquiries about his age, “I am an old hemlock. The winds of a hundred winters have whistled through my top. The generation to which I belonged has gone and left me. Pray to my Jesus that I may have patience to wait for my appointed time to die.”
I.
Gives of goodly weather sign;
From the milking to the meadows
Slowly go the lowing kine.
From the overburdened leaves;
Flit from bough to bough the peewees;
Hum the mud-wasps at the eaves.
Now are sweeping o'er the hills;
And the broad red sun is casting
Gold upon the lakes and rills.
Creep the forest trees between;
Here and there the shades of crimson
Speck the liquidambars' green.
From between the river's banks;
Dust is on the rider's garments,
Blood upon his horse's flanks.
Hard he draws the bridle-rein,
For a moment, feet in stirrup,
One refreshing draught to drain.
In a hushed and breathless group,
Gather round that jaded horseman
By the village-tavern stoop?
Bearing babes upon their arms;
Close behind them crowd the maidens,
Yet unscathed by love's alarms.
Sturdy, strong, and sun-embrowned;
And the curious village children,
Play suspending, stand around.
Mug in hand, has told his tale;
Then around there spreads a murmur
Like the warning of the gale.
Like the patter of the rain—
“Heaven at last has dealt its vengeance!
Walter Butler has been slain!”
II.
Of that dark November day,
When through startled Cherry Valley
Walter Butler took his way—
With the savage Brant in train,
Marking every rod of progress
By the bodies of the slain.
Lapping tongue in human gore;
Even Brant, the bloody Mohawk,
Had of truth and pity more.
From the tomahawk and ball,
Had not you with rage forbade him,
Saying, “Curse them! kill them all!”
Comrades of your later days,
Friends who, seeing not your vices,
Gave your scanty virtues praise—
On that long-remembered day;
For the stranger, friend or foeman,
Came one doom relentless—“Slay!”
Crashed into the quivering brain,
And the swarthy fiends in fury
Tore the scalp-skins from the slain.
Knew as friends in days of yore,
You had joy to see their corses
Welter in their oozing gore.
In their throes made deeper moans
As they saw the skulls of infants
Shattered on the ruthless stones.
Speechless children's pleading tears,
And the yelling of the savage,
Made sweet music to your ears.
Brain of fire and heart of stone,
Twenty deaths, could you endure them,
Would not for these deeds atone.
To the pleasant earth again—
Never hear the blessed tidings—
“Walter Butler has been slain!”
III.
Careless of the woe he caused,
Then, amid the smouldering ruins,
An Oneida came and paused.
Crowned his head with films of snow;
For the frosts of seventy winters
Thus had honored Skenando.
Which around its traces spread,
On the blood which stained the herbage,
On the pale and mangled dead.
“Forty years the white man's friend;
So have been to Walter Butler—
Would have proved so to the end.
Faithless, too, as this may show,
You shall rue the dreadful doing
Which creates in me a foe.
Proved them often in my need.
Great Monedo's curse be on you,
Walter Butler, for this deed.
By his scant and whitened hairs,
By the spirits of the fallen,
Thus the old Oneida swears:
He will hang upon your track,
Through the hurry of the foray,
Through the battle's awful rack,
Driven to your coward brain,
With its crashing voice shall utter,
‘Walter Butler has been slain!’”
IV.
Desolation long was seen,
Seated on the heaps of ashes
Where the home of man had been.
Brooding on the fearful past,
Crouching in the murky shadows
Of her sullen pinions vast.
Mingled with the earth and stones,
Hidden by the noxious herbage,
Were the weather-whitened bones.
Sat the houseless cocks, and crowed;
In the forest's dark recesses
Starveling watch-dogs made abode.
Herds of wild and savage swine;
And with yellow deer there wandered
What survived among the kine.
Crouched to spring upon his prey;
And the rattlesnake lay basking
Careless in the public way.
And the garden with its bees;
Where the house, with peakèd gable,
Peeped through groves of locust-trees;
Peered at sunrise through the pane,
But through which the murdered children
Nevermore may peer again;
Pail in hand, the fountain near,
Stopped to gossip with her neighbors,
And the village news to hear;
Sat at closing of the day,
Smoking pipes whose odors mingled
With the fragrance of the hay;
Answer to the milkmaid's cry;
And, with hens about him, proudly
Sultan Spurs came strutting by;
On the fence's topmost rail,
Crossed their necks and loudly whinnied,
Some tired traveller's horse to hail;
Raised their heads beneath the trees,
And the watch-dog bayed defiance
To the murmur of the breeze—
Would not melt in gentle rain;
They were waiting for the tidings—
“Walter Butler has been slain!”
V.
Through the mountain gorges flows,
Walter Butler found the mercy
He had dealt to hapless foes.
And the battle had been lost,
For our men the past remembered,
To the ruthless Tories' cost.
No one mercy would bestow;
From the wrath that swept around them,
Flight alone could save the foe.
On his charger tried and good,
Through the glen and o'er the valley,
Through the gap within the wood.
While a swart and angry pack
Of the hound-like, wild Oneidas
Yelped in anger on his track.
Tempest-swollen, from the hills,
Maddened with the furious urging
Of a hundred surging rills.
At the danger fear was lost.
In he spurred his panting charger,
And the foaming river crossed.
To the foes upon his track
Words and motions of defiance
Butler hurled, exulting, back.
Thus his words of scorning fell:
“He who rides with Walter Butler
Sits a steed that carries well.
Human blood shall fall like rain,
Ere you carry round the tidings—
‘Walter Butler has been slain!’”
VI.
Came the whizzing of the ball;
Loudly shouted the Oneidas
As they saw the braggart fall.
Flung his powder-horn aside,
And his rifle dropped, preparing
For a leap within the tide.
“Stay! the stream runs fierce and wild;
And your age will make you weaker
In its current than a child.
Ere he'd reach the farther shore,
From the raging of the waters,
And the rocks o'er which they pour.”
“Vengeance to the flood impels;
Hear you not the dying moaning
Of the murdered Jenny Wells?”
With his tomahawk in hand,
Swam the chief of the Oneidas,
Struggling till he reached the land—
Close beside the shaded wood,
O'er the sorely wounded Butler
With a purpose fierce he stood.
“Let my ransom save my head;
I can give you gold if living,
I am profitless if dead!”
I in Cherry Valley lay,
Where a white man nursed and healed me,
Clothed and sent me on my way.
She with you in childhood played;
Yet one day, when leaves had fallen,
By your orders died the maid.
Stands prepared to keep his vow;
Think of Jenny Wells and tremble!
Ah! you ask no mercy now.
Sank the Tory with a groan,
And the fierce and vengeful savage
Drove his hatchet through the bone.
Ere the setting of the sun;
And the scalp of Walter Butler
Dangled from the belt of one.
Who so well that day had fought,
And were now at ease reposing,
Pleasant was the news they brought.
How the hatchet clave the brain,
Oh, how joyous was the shouting—
“Walter Butler has been slain.”
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