Richard Butler papers, 1754-1793. Original manuscripts by Butler (1743-1791), written mainly in the 1770s and 1780s as a Pennsylvania army officer and as United States Indian commissioner and superintendent of Indian affairs for the Northern District, almost entirely fill this volume. However, a few pre-Revolutionary papers have no obvious direct relationship to Butler; these include portions of a daybook, 1754-1755, kept by John Potter, high sheriff of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, to record writs issued; and an account book, 1756-1757, kept by a Cumberland merchant, tentatively identified as Robert Elliott. For use in Indian administration, in 1788 Butler copied the records of negotiations and a treaty made by John Bradstreet in August, 1764, and secured a manuscript copy of the treaty proceedings at Fort Stanwix between Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations in October-November 1768.

Forming the heart of the Butler papers are his pocket diaries spanning-but with many gaps-the period beginning in November 1777, to March 1786. Volumes for 1777-1778 record his military service under Nathanael Greene and Daniel Morgan and troop movements in New York and New Jersey. During the summer of 1781 Butler was in southeastern Virginia and recorded the siege of Yorktown and the British surrender. Fragments of his diary and copies of speeches by Lafayette and others pertain to Butler's participation in treaty negotiations at Fort Stanwix in October 1784. His series of journals from September 1785, through March 1786, appears to be virtually complete; these describe his journey from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to Fort Pitt and down the Ohio River to the mouth of the Great Miami, the subsequent treaty negotiations with the Delaware, Shawnee, and Wyandot tribes, and his return to Fort Pitt and Bedford, Pennsylvania. Supplementing these latter diaries are Alexander Campbell's minutes of negotiations by Butler and his fellow commissioners, George Rogers Clark and Samuel H. Parsons, and also copies of Butler's addresses to the Indians.

Among Butler's other papers are his commissions or appointments as a Pennsylvania lieutenant colonel and colonel (1777), brigadier general in the Army of the United States (1783), superintendent of Indian affairs for the Northern District (1786), Pennsylvania commissioner to purchase Indian lands (1788), and justice of the Court of Common Pleas in Allegheny County (1788); noteworthy signers included Charles Biddle, Elias Boudinot, Nathaniel Gorham, John Jay, Henry Laurens, Thomas Mifflin, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, and Charles Thomson. A few drafts or copies of Butler's letters include ones to William Grayson (1785), Henry Knox (1787), and George Washington (1788); in the latter Butler discussed Shawnee language, Indian history, and his theory of Indian origins. Other records include James Potter's field notes (1787-1786) of land surveys made for Timothy Pickering and Company, for Jared Ingersoll, and others; an incomplete biographical sketch about Butler; a contemporary account of his death during an Indian attack while he was second in command on Arthur St. Clair's expedition north of the Ohio River; and a letter (1793) by Thomas Smith requesting Congress to consider financial relief for Butler's impoverished widow and for dependents of other officers killed in Indian warfare.

The Butler papers were mounted and bound in random, haphazard order.