End of a Trail

C’est un trou de verdure, où chante une rivière
Accrochant follement aux herbes des haillons
D’argent; où le soleil, de la montagne fière,
Luit: c’est un petit val qui mousse de rayons.

Arthur Rimbaud

October 30, 1781, Passage of Canada Creek, where the Oswegatchie trail forded West Canada Creek …

Captain Walter Butler was shot through his hat and the upper part of his head, perhaps when he «stopped to shout, wave his arms and thumb his nose» at the enemies across the stream, or as he was looking at the battle from behind an oak or a maple tree, and whilst dead or woefully wounded and dying, sitting near the oak or maple tree and wringing in dreadful suffering, perhaps crying for quarter, looking at his enemy full in the face, he was shot again through an eye by an Oneida Indian, then scalped by Oneida Indians, as it was told, and his body was left where it lay, face downward, on the west bank of the creek, unburied, to feed the wolves and the wild beasts, and some of his clothes and ornaments—maybe his buff leather belts crossed at the breast and held in place by a brass plate, his cartridge pouch plate, the knife on his waist belt, his haversack, his bedroll, his blanket coat—were soon sold …

According to an unconfirmed report, his body was discovered by loyalists still living in the Mohawk Valley and secretly buried in St. George’s Church, in Schenectady. An Indian tradition told that his scarlet-faced and scarlet-lined dark green coat, his black leather cap with a black cockade on the left side and a brass plate in front, and his broken sword, were given to Joseph Brant by Mississaugas, which «showed him the hole in the back of the hat where the bullet which had entered Walter’s eye had come out».

All were running ankle-deep among rustling & crackling fallen leaves…

Adventure Crossway

Sources

Alan Fitzpatrick, Wilderness War on the Ohio: The Untold Story of the Savage Battle for British and Indian Control of the Ohio Country durint the American Revolution, Benwood (WV), Fort Henry Publications, 2005, pp. 436, 437, 496.

Letters from a Revolution, 1775-1783: A Selection From the Bronck Family Papers At the Greene County Historical Society, edited by Raymond Beecher, Albany (NY), The NYS American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, 1973, pp. 38-39.

Account by James Younglove of Johnstown (Battle of Johnswtown, Revolutionary War, Johnswtown, New York)

Lieutnant Colonel Marinus Willet’s Journal (Walter Butler, Loyalist Leader)

Butler's Rangers :Uniforms, Accoutrements and Weapons

The two quotations are from:
Harvey Chalmers, West to the Setting Sun, Toronto, The Macmillan Company of Canad Limited, 1947, p. 342.

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