On this date in 1779, American Revolution patriots hanged Henry Hare as a spy at Canajoharie in upstate New York. In the first years of the revolution, this district was plagued (from the revolutionists’ standpoint) by raids of Tory loyalists and their allied indigenous Six Nations confederation: the latter had sided with the British against the land-hungry colonists in hopes of better retaining their rights against settlers. An irritating situation became an intolerable one when loyalists and Mohawks descended on the village of Cherry Valley November 11, 1778, and massacred not only its defenders but about 30 non-combatants......