'The next morning, about nine
o'clock, the Americans poured out of the fort, about 340 in number; the
Indians fell back over a hill; the troops on both sides drew up in
battle array and soon commenced. After a few rounds fired, the American
colonel ordered his drum-major to beat a charge; the drum-major mistook
the order, and beat a retreat; the Americans became disordered
immediately, and ran helter-skelter; the moment the Indians saw them
running, they poured down upon them from their hiding-places, so that no
more than about forty survived out of 340.'"

"Rarely, indeed," adds Colonel Stone, "does it happen that history is
more at fault in regard to facts than in the case of Wyoming. The remark
may be applied to nearly every writer who has attempted to narrate the
events connected with the invasion of Colonel John Butler. Ramsay and
Gordon and Marshall--nay, the British historians themselves have written
gross exaggerations. Marshall, however, in his revised edition, has made
corrections, and explained how and by whom he was led into error. My
excellent friend, Charles Miner, Esq., long a resident of Wyoming, a
gentleman of letters and great accuracy, furnished the biographer of
Washington with a true narrative of the transactions which he made the
basis of the summary account contained in his revised edition. Other
writers, of greater or less note, have gravely recorded the same
fictions, adding, it is to be feared, enormities not even conveyed to
them by tradition. The grossest of these exaggerations are contained in
Thatcher's Military Journal and in Drake's Book of the Indians. The
account of the marching out of a large body of the Americans from one of
the forts to hold a parley, by agreement, and then being drawn into an
ambuscade and all put to death, is false; the account of seventy
continental soldiers being butchered after having surrendered, is
totally untrue. No regular troops surrendered, and all escaped who
survived the battle of the 3rd. Equally untrue is the story of the
burning of the houses, barracks, and forts, filled with women and
children."--_Ib._, p. 338, 339.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 85: "The aggressors on this occasion were a troop of wild
Indians, in conjunction with some Tory exiles. They were headed by
Colonel Butler, a partisan commander of note, and by Joseph Brant, a
half Indian by birth, a whole Indian in cruelty. Unhappily, at Wyoming,
the soil was claimed both by Connecticut and Pe