[Edward Manning Ruttenber (1872)] Colonel John Butler succeeded, in the spring of 1778, in organiz ing a force of five hundred Indians and six hundred tories, and with these made his appearance on the Susquehanna. At Win-termoot's fort, on the third of July, the colonial militia, in infe rior numbers, under Colonel Zebulon Butler, opposed his progress in a desperate conflict. Retreating from thence to Fort Forty, and unable to rally the flying inhabitants to its defense, terms of capitulation were agreed to by which the valley of Wyoming was surrendered to the mercy of savage white men and half-civilized Indians. Foremost in the frightful orgies which followed, was Catharine Montour, the Queen Esther of the Senecas, a half-breed,1 who assumed the office of execu tioner, and, using a maul and a tomahawk, passed around the 1 She was a native of Canada, and her nalized in the wars against the Catawbas. father one of the French governors, pro-He fell in battle, about the year 1730. bably Frontenac. She was made a captive Catharine had several children by him, during the wars between the Hurons and and remained a wjdow. Her superior the French and the Six Nations, and was mind gave her great ascendancy over the carried into the Seneca country, where Senecas, and she was a queen indeed