[1] A mixed force of Loyalists, British soldiers, Senecas, and Mohawks descended on Cherry Valley, whose defenders, despite warnings, were unprepared for the attack.

[2] The Seneca were angered by accusations that they had committed atrocities at the Battle of Wyoming, and the colonists' recent destruction of their forward bases of operation at Unadilla, Onaquaga, and Tioga.

He was not present at Wyoming — although many thought he was — and he along with Captain Jacob (Scott) of the Saponi (Catawba) actively sought to minimize the atrocities that took place at Cherry Valley.

[3] The massacre contributed to calls for reprisals, leading to the 1779 Sullivan Expedition which saw the total military defeat of the British-allied Iroquois in Upstate New York.

British leaders in the Province of Quebec supported Loyalist and Native American partisan fighters with supplies and armaments.

[12] After Brant and some of Butler's Rangers attacked German Flatts in September, the Americans organized a punitive expedition that destroyed the villages of Unadilla and Onaquaga in early October.

[14] This action complicated affairs, for the Senecas in Butler's force were accused of massacring noncombatants, and a number of Patriot militia violated their parole not long afterward, participating in a reprisal expedition against Tioga.

[18] Cherry Valley had a palisaded fort (constructed after Brant's raid on Cobleskill) that surrounded the village meeting house.

However, he failed to take elementary precautions, continuing to occupy a headquarters (the house of a settler named Wells) some 400 yards (370 m) from the fort.

[21] Butler's force arrived near Cherry Valley late on November 10, and established a cold camp to avoid detection.

[21] The attackers killed at least sixteen officers and troops of the quarters guards, including Alden, who was cut down while he was running from the Wells house to the fort.

[26] Lt. William McKendry, a quartermaster in Colonel Alden's regiment, described the attack in his journal: Immediately came on 442 Indians from the Five Nations, 200 Tories under the command of one Col. Butler and Capt.

[31] A Mohawk chief, in justifying the action at Cherry Valley, wrote to an American officer that "you Burned our Houses, which makes us and our Brothers, the Seneca Indians angrey, so that we destroyed, men, women and Children at Chervalle.

[32] Butler reported that "notwithstanding my utmost Precaution and Endeavours to save the Women and Children, I could not prevent some of them falling unhappy Victims to the Fury of the Savages," but also that he spent most of his time guarding the fort during the raid.

[33] Quebec Governor Frederick Haldimand was so upset at Butler's inability to control his forces that he refused to see him, writing "such indiscriminate vengeance taken even upon the treacherous and cruel enemy they are engaged against is useless and disreputable to themselves, as it is contrary to the dispositions and maxims of the King whose cause they are fighting.

The expedition destroyed over 40 Iroquois villages in their homelands of central and western New York and drove the women and children into refugee camps at Fort Niagara.

Thus we shall leave this sacred spot better men and women, with a higher and nobler purpose of life than that which animated us when we entered this domain of the dead.