BUTLER, JOHN, army officer, office-holder, and Indian agent; baptized 28 April 1728 at New London, Connecticut, son of Walter Butler and Deborah Ely, née Dennison; m. Catalyntje Bradt (Catharine Bratt) about 1752, and they had four sons and one daughter who survived infancy; d. 13 May 1796 at Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.).

Virtually nothing is known of John Butler’s youth. It seems clear, though, that he began his association with the frontier and the Six Nations at an early age. His father, a captain in the British army, brought his family to the Mohawk valley of New York about 1742, and three years later John was at Oswego (Chouaguen) with him. Walter Butler was apparently on close terms with William Johnson and it is quite possible that John received some of his early training in dealing with the Indians from him. Certainly Johnson became impressed with Butler’s abilities in Indian languages and diplomacy. In May 1755 he brought him as an interpreter to the great council at Mount Johnson (near Amsterdam, N.Y.); the same year, when Johnson was given command of the colonial expedition against Fort Saint-Frédéric (near Crown Point, N.Y.), he appointed Butler a lieutenant over the Indians, a loosely defined position which involved some nominal leadership. Butler continued to serve in this capacity throughout the Seven Years’ War, reaching the rank of captain. He was with James Abercromby at the attack on Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga, N.Y.) and with John Bradstreet at the capture of Fort Frontenac (Kingston, Ont.) in 1758. The next year he was second in command of the Indians when Johnson took Fort Niagara (near Youngstown, N.Y.), and in 1760 he held the same post in Amherst’s force advancing on Montreal.

After the war Butler continued to work under Johnson in the Indian department, appearing as an interpreter at councils with the Indians during the 1760s. He settled his family at Butlersbury (near Johnstown, N.Y.), the estate his father had left him, and was appointed a justice of the peace. In the early 1770s he apparently retired from the Indian department to devote himself to his growing properties. When Tryon County was established in 1772 he was appointed a justice of the Court of Quarter Sessions and lieutenant-colonel of the militia regiment commanded by Guy Johnson. Sir William died in 1774 and Guy became Indian superintendent; Butler was again appointed an interpreter.

At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775 Butler, together with other Mohawk valley loyalists including his sons Thomas and Walter, and Guy Johnson, left to join the British forces in Canada. Butler’s wife and other children were interned by the rebels the following year and he did not see them again until an exchange was arranged in 1780. In Montreal, Johnson proposed to Governor Guy Carleton* that the Six Nations and the Indians of Canada be used to put down the rebellion in the “back settlements” of western New York and Pennsylvania. Carleton, however, refused to use them other than as scouts and in defence. Faced with this refusal, and aware of the arrival of Major John Campbell with a commission as agent for Indian affairs in Quebec, Johnson and Christian Daniel Claus decided to carry their case to Britain and left in November 1775. Butler remained as acting superintendent of the Six Nations and, with American forces threatening Canada, was sent to Fort Niagara. His instructions were to do all he could to keep the Six Nations out of the fighting but loyal to Britain, since the British considered the Iroquois to be allies. Although the inclination of the Indians, particularly those who were under the influence of Samuel Kirkland, a New Light missionary from Connecticut, was to sign pacts of neutrality with the rebels, Butler had considerable success in maintaining their alliance with Britain. During the following year and a half he established a network of agents among the tribes from the Mohawk River to the Mississippi, which became a valuable source of intelligence for the British and an aid to loyalists fleeing to Canada. In the early summer of 1776 Butler also raised and dispatched a party of loyalists and Indians to aid in the expulsion of the American forces from Canada.

In 1777 the British government decided that its Indian allies should be used offensively against the rebels, and in May Butler was ordered to collect as large a force as possible from among the Six Nations and to join Lieutenant-Colonel Barrimore Matthew St Leger’s expedition at Oswego for an attack against Fort Stanwix (Rome, N.Y.). Although Butler had only a month to accomplish this task, he succeeded in persuading 350 Indians, mostly Senecas, to accompany the expedition. By this time he had received a regular appointment as deputy superintendent of the Six Nations from Guy Johnson, who had arrived in New York in 1776.