panied lieutenant Peter Johnson and lieutenant Walter Butler, with a few Mohawks, to attack the Americans at Isle au Noix, whom we defeated, taking a great many prisoners. During the engagement we lost two volunteers and three privates. In this action I received a wound in the head from the butt-end of a musket.[1]
I then joined the eighth regiment of foot, commanded
by captain Foster, to attack the Americans at the Cedars, whom we also defeated. The prisoners were left at Fort St. Vielle, or Prison Island, at the foot of the Falls, under a proper guard; and the remains of our small army, consisting of about one hundred and fifty men, went down to La Chine to engage another body of Americans; but finding them too strongly entrenched, we retreated to Point Clair, where we stayed till we received intelligence that general Arnold, with four thousand men were at Isle au Noix, and that major Gordon was killed in his way to St. John's, about two miles from the fort.[2]
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- ↑ General Richard Montgomery, the commander of the American forces at Isle aux Noix—an island in Richelieu River about ten miles from the head of Lake Champlain wrote September 12, 1775, concerning the skirmish here mentioned: "I went down the river the other day with 800 or 900 men, in order to cut off the communication between St. Johns and Montreal. The detachment marched off from the boats at night, and in less than half an hour, returned in the utmost confusion."- Biographical notes concerning General Richard Montgomery (Poughkeepsie, 1876), p. 11. Lieutenant Walter Butler was a New York Tory, son of Colonel John Butler, who led the Indians to the Wyoming Valley massacre. Walter Butler was with St. Leger in 1777, and was captured soon after the siege of Fort Schuyler. Escaping from prison at Albany, he led the Iroquois to the Cherry Valley massacre (1778). He seems to have been despised for his cruelty, even by his own associates. Brant said he was "more savage than the savages themselves." He was killed and scalped at Butler's Ford, in the retreat from Johnstown in 1781, by an Oneida, who called out as he fell, "Cherry Valley!"—Ed.
- ↑ Long was a member of the party of forty regulars detached from the 8th regiment under command of Captain Foster, with a large body of Indian auxiliaries led by Brant, which descended upon the American detachment at the Cedars, forty-three miles above Montreal, and captured the whole number
