The Battle of Oriskany, 1777: Ambush in the Ravine

On August 6, 1777, the Tryon County Militia of New York’s Mohawk Valley set out to relieve Fort Schuyler (Fort Stanwix), besieged by a British army under Barry St. Leger. Near the Oneida village of Oriska, it marched into one of the bloodiest ambushes of the American Revolution — a fight that set brother against brother and broke the long peace among the Six Nations.

The march

On July 30, General Nicholas Herkimer ordered his militia to gather at Fort Dayton. By August 4, around 800 men were ready — four regiments, mostly Palatine German immigrants and their descendants:

By the evening of August 5, the militia and its 15 supply wagons camped near Oriska, about 8 miles from the fort. Herkimer sent three messengers ahead to Col. Peter Gansevoort, the fort’s commander, perhaps also asking for a diversionary attack; the fort would fire three cannons as the signal to advance. Herkimer meant to wait for it.

His officers would not. At the morning meeting they demanded an immediate advance and accused Herkimer of cowardice and loyalist sympathies — one of his brothers was serving with St. Leger. Finally Herkimer lost his temper and ordered the march. A small party of Oneida warriors from Oriska joined the column.

The ambush

St. Leger had been warned. He sent around 700 men under Sir John Johnson — about 100 of Johnson’s King’s Royal Regiment of New York, roughly 100 Indian Department Rangers, and 500 Native warriors, mostly Mohawk and Seneca — to a deep ravine about six miles from the fort. Johnson’s troops would block the east end while warriors and rangers lined the sides; a force under Mohawk leader Joseph Brant would close the rear.

Around 10 a.m. the militia descended into the ravine. The main body halted at the bottom to wait for the wagons, and many men stopped to drink from a stream. Then some warriors, too impatient to wait for the signal, rose and attacked. They overran the advance guard but were thrown back by the main body with heavy losses. As fire came from every side, the militia scattered into the woods. At the far end of the ravine, most of the 3rd Regiment panicked and fled when Brant attacked, and many warriors chased them.

Herkimer, shot in the leg early on, had his saddle propped against a tree, sat on it and kept directing the fight. The battle broke into countless small, desperate fights — shooting at close range and hand-to-hand. Had it gone on that way, the whole militia might have been destroyed.

The storm and the turncoats

Then a violent thunderstorm broke, forcing both sides to take shelter. Herkimer used the pause to pull his men into a tight defensive circle. When the fighting resumed, Johnson sent part of his regiment in, and former friends and neighbors met in even more savage combat. A second detachment, thought to be led by John Butler, turned their coats inside out to pass as a relief column from the fort — but militiamen recognized their loyalist neighbors, and the trick failed. Even so, the loyalists broke into the militia’s circle.

At that moment the warriors began to withdraw toward the fort. Historians offer two reasons, perhaps both: the fort’s signal guns and gunfire from the British siege lines, raising fear of an attack from behind; and the shift from ambush to pitched battle, as mounting losses sapped the warriors’ will. A general retreat followed. The mauled militia gathered what wounded it could and fell back to Fort Dayton.

Aftermath

The militia was destroyed as a fighting force for the rest of the war, unable to protect its settlements from years of raids, and Herkimer died of the battle’s effects.

But the warriors, too, were shaken. They had lost many prominent chiefs and warriors who could not easily be replaced, and they had not joined St. Leger expecting to bear the brunt of the fighting. When the British again asked them to lead the fighting, their support for the siege cooled — and their departure forced St. Leger to abandon the siege and retreat to Canada.

Sources

Based on "The Battle at Oriska," National Park Service (Fort Stanwix National Monument), from its series The Military History of Fort Schuyler; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source’s “Fredrick Visscher” is spelled Frederick here.