n
Montcalm can be blamed for their excesses at Fort William
Henry. It was unfortunate that the military opinion of
that day regarded the use of savages as necessary, and
no one deplored this use more than men like Haldimand
and Carleton; but Washington and the Continental Congress
were as ready to receive the aid of the Indians as were
the British. The difficulty of the Americans was that
most of the Indians were on the other side.

That there were, however, atrocities committed by the
Loyalists cannot be doubted. Sir John Johnson himself
told the revolutionists that 'their Tory neighbours, and
not himself, were blameable for those acts.' There are
well-authenticated cases of atrocities committed by
Alexander Macdonell: in 1781 he ordered his men to shoot
down a prisoner taken near Johnstown, and when the men
bungled their task, Macdonell cut the prisoner down with
his broadsword. When Colonel Butler returned from Cherry
Valley, Sir Frederick Haldimand refused to see him, and
wrote to him that '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 disposition and maxims of their King
whose cause they are fighting.'

But rumour exaggerated whatever atrocities there were.
For many years the Americans believed that the Tories
had lifted scalps like the Indians; and later, when the
Americans captured York in 1813, they found what they
regarded as a signal proof of this barbarous practice
among the Loyalists, in the speaker's wig, which was
hanging beside the chair in the legislative chamber!
There may have been members of Butler's Rangers who
borrowed from the Indians this hideous custom, just as
there were American frontiersmen who were guilty of it;
but it must not be imagined that it was a common practice
on either side. Except at Cherry Valley, there is no
proof that any violence was done by the Loyalists to
women and children. On his return from Wyoming, Colonel
Butler reported: 'I can with truth inform you that in
the destruction of this settlement not a single person
has been hurt of the inhabitants, but such as were armed;
to those indeed the Indians gave no quarter.'

In defence of the Loyalists, two considerations may be
urged. In the first place, it must be remembered that
they were men who had been evicted from their homes, and
whose property had been confiscated. They had been placed