exchanged them for members of his own fam-
ily held at Albany.
Butler’s notorious success in New York
could not go unanswered, so in the summer
of 1779 a large punitive expedition was
launched from western Pennsylvania under
Gen. John Sullivan. Butler was on hand dur-
ing the Battle of Newtown, in which the Loy-
alists and Indians were defeated and the Mo-
hawk villages destroyed. Falling ill, he was
sent back to Montreal to recuperate and did
not return to Fort Niagara until the summer
of 1781. Another large-scale raid was then as-
sembling under Maj. John Ross, and Butler
took command of his Rangers, as usual. In
October 1781, they combed the much-rav-
aged Mohawk Valley again, destroying farms
and villages, but were finally stopped at John-
ston after a hard fight with militia under Col.
Marinus Willett. Outnumbered, Ross ordered
a withdrawal to be covered by Butler’s
Rangers. During the crossing, over West
Canada Creek on October 30, 1781, an Ameri-
can patrol fired upon the fleeing British, mor-
tally wounding Butler. An Oneida Indian
fighting for the Americans thereupon scalped
him as he lay. Thus perished one of the most
hated figures of the Revolutionary War. He re-
mains a figure much vilified in the annals of
American history, but in reality Butler was a
frontier officer of real ability who, like many
contemporaries, could not restrain the Indi-
ans under his command.See also
Arnold, Benedict; Brant, JosephBibliography
Butler, Walter. “Walter Butler’s Journal of an Expedition
Along the North Shore of Lake Ontario, 1779.” Cana-
dian Historical Review11 (1920): 381–391; Callahan,
North. Royal Raiders, the Tories of the American
Revolution.Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963; Cruik-
shank, Ernest A. “Memoir of Captain Walter Butler.”
Royal Canadian Institute Transactions4 (1892–
1893): 284–298; Cruikshank, Ernest A. The Story of
Butler’s Rangers and the Settlement of Niagara.
Welland, Ontario: Tribune, 1893; Graymount, Barbara.
The Iroquois in the American Revolution.Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, 1972; MacWethy, Lou
D. The Battle of Klock’s Field, October 19, 1780.St.
Johnsville, NY: Enterprise and News, 1930; Matthews,
Hazel C. The Mark of Honour.Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1965; Miller, Hanson O. Raiders of the
Mohawk: The Story of Butler’s Rangers.Toronto:
Macmillan, 1960; Swiggert, Howard. War Out of Nia-
gara: Walter Butler and the Tory Rangers.New York:
Columbia University Press, 1933; Watt, Gavin. The
Burning of the Valleys: Daring Raids from Canada
Against the New York Frontier in the Fall of 1780.
Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1997.CAMPBELL, ARCHIBALD
Campbell, Archibald
(August 24, 1739–March 31, 1791)
British Army Officer; Colonial Governor
T
he relatively inexperienced Campbell
was a brave soldier and a talented ad-
ministrator. His success in capturing Sa-
vannah, Georgia, was unexpected, and he
subsequently acquired a distinguished mili-
tary and civil reputation in the West Indies
and India.
Archibald Campbell was born in Inveraray,
Argyllshire, Scotland, on August 24, 1739, the
son of a probate judge. As a young man he
joined the Corps of Engineers, serving in such
far-ranging locales as Guadalupe, Dominica,
and Bengal. In 1768, the British East India
Company appointed him chief engineer, a