Cherry Valley Massacre - Definition

The Cherry Valley Massacre was an attack by British and Iroquois Indian forces on a fort and village in eastern New York on November 11, 1778 during the American Revolutionary War.

Captain Walter Butler (the son of Colonel John Butler) led two companies of Butler's Rangers along with about 500 Indians led by Joseph Brant in the destruction of the town. The Fort, actually a pallisade around the village meeting house could not be taken but the town was destroyed.

Scalping of women and children angered the colonists and this massacre and the one at Wyoming Valley were the provocation for the Sullivan Expedition into the Iroquois homelands of central and western New York to neutralize the threat of future incursions.

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