Battle of Johnstown

The Battle of Johnstown on October 25, 1781 — occurring the same week as Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown — was the decisive engagement that finally ended the devastating Mohawk Valley raids. Sir John Johnson led the last major British and Loyalist raid into the valley with about 700 men including regular soldiers, Loyalists, and Iroquois warriors. Continental forces under Marinus Willett — the same officer who had conducted the bold sortie at Fort Stanwix in 1777 — pursued the raiders.

At Johnstown, Willett caught Johnson's rear guard and a sharp engagement developed. The battle was hard-fought, with both sides suffering casualties. Walter Butler — the feared Loyalist leader who had commanded at Wyoming and Cherry Valley — was killed in the fighting, shot by an Oneida warrior in the pursuit. Butler's death ended the career of one of the most feared Loyalist raiders of the war.

Johnson's force retreated northward to Canada. The Battle of Johnstown was the last significant military action in the Mohawk Valley. The valley's civilian population had been devastated by six years of raids and counter-raids, burning, and killing. Tens of thousands of acres of farmland had been abandoned. The recovery would take a generation.