Captain Walter Butler (the son of Colonel John Butler) led two companies to Butler's Rangers along with about 500 Indians led by Joseph Brant in the destruction of the town. The Fort, actually a pallisade around the village meeting house could not be taken but the town was destroyed.
Scalping of women and children angered the colonists and this massacre and the one at Wyoming Valley were the provocation for the Sullivan Expedition into the Iroquois homelands of central and western New York to neutralize the threat of future incursions.