The Battle of Oriskany, 1777: Neighbor Against Neighbor in the Mohawk Valley

For hundreds of years, central and western New York was home to the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. In colonial times the French, Dutch and British all wanted the region for its place on a major fur trade route, and the Mohawk Valley's rich farmland drew European settlers. By the Revolution, Dutch, German, Irish, Scottish and British settlers were prospering there from trade and farming.

The valley was also full of old grudges, between groups and between individuals. When war came, European Americans and American Indians fought one another for New York's political power, land and trade. Nothing shows that brutal civil war better than the Battle of Oriskany on August 6, 1777, when neighbors fighting neighbors turned a quiet ravine into a slaughterhouse.

Why New York mattered

From the start of fighting in 1775, New York was vital. Holding it would give the British control of trade between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes, split the colonies, and feed their troops from the Mohawk Valley, the Revolution's "bread basket."

In 1777 the British planned a three-pronged invasion meeting at Albany:

The plan depended on the armies coordinating and on New York's supposedly large Tory population rising to join them. Rebel leaders reinforced the Mohawk Valley.

Old hatreds, new sides

The valley's quarrels were old. The Swedish scientist Peter Kalm, traveling in 1749–1750, found the Dutch colonists of Albany hating the English with an intensity that had lasted since the English conquest. In 1757 the landholder Thomas Butler warned Sir William Johnson — great landholder and Superintendent of Indian Affairs — that talk between Dutch and English settlers could turn the Six Nations against the British. Johnson, whose family had long quarreled with the German Herkimer family, complained in 1758 that some Germans were selling large amounts of rum to the Iroquois.

After the French and Indian War, Britain's new taxes pushed rival groups into political camps. Rebels generally fought for self-government; Tories fought to keep the tie to the King, some of them simply preferring things as they were. Mixed with old grudges, the argument made New York a powder keg.

• Sir John Johnson inherited his father's 200,000-acre estate in 1774, later became Superintendent of Indian Affairs, stayed loyal, and raised the "King's Royal Regiment of New York." Disarmed by Rebel militia, he fled to Canada.
• Nicholas Herkimer, son of the German-American trader Johan Jost Herkimer, owner of 2,000 acres, sided with the Rebels and in 1776 became a brigadier general of the state militia. His brother Han Yost chose the Tories — one of many families split by the war.
• The Iroquois Confederacy, united for 500 years, had already been strained by settlement. A 1768 boundary meeting at Fort Stanwix, attended by as many as 3,000 Iroquois, Shawnee and Delaware delegates, divided it into factions instead of settling anything. When the Revolution came, the Onondaga, keepers of the Central Council Fire, urged unity and neutrality, but the six nations could not agree, and the fire was put out after disease killed sachems and chiefs. The Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca sided with Britain; by July 1777 the Oneida and Tuscarora, first neutral, backed the Rebels. Individuals from all six nations fought on both sides.
• Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), a British-educated Anglican Mohawk and a relative of Sir John Johnson — his sister Molly was Sir William Johnson's common-law wife — took the Tory side and a British captain's commission. On June 29 and 30, 1777, Herkimer met him and failed to persuade him to stay neutral.

Joseph Brant, painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1786.

Sir John Johnson. Like Brant, he raised troops for the British and died in exile in Canada.

The ambush

The Rebels had rebuilt the ruined Fort Stanwix, renamed Fort Schuyler, and in spring 1777 Colonel Peter Gansevoort held it with about 700 New York and Massachusetts infantry. St. Leger left Oswego on July 26 with 700 to 800 British regulars, Canadians, Mohawk Valley Tories under Sir John Johnson and Colonel John Butler, and Hanau (German) mercenaries, joined by approximately 800 American Indian allies, mostly Mohawk and Seneca, under Brant. Judging the fort too strong to storm, and refused its surrender on August 3, he laid siege.

Herkimer gathered approximately 800 Tryon County militia and some Oneida scouts and left Fort Dayton, 30 miles east, on August 4. On August 5 Molly Brant sent word to St. Leger that the relief column was 10 to 12 miles from the fort. He sent Brant's warriors, Butler's Rangers and part of Johnson's Royal Greens to intercept it.

They chose a ravine 6 miles east of the fort, near the Oneida village of Oriska, where an old military road dropped through dense forest to cross marshy Oriska Creek. Rangers and Greens would strike the head of the column while the Indians hit its flanks and rear, closing it in a U-shaped trap.

The Oriskany battlefield today: the ravine, the creek and the battle monument. U.S. Geological Survey topographic map.

Herkimer had meant to wait for three cannon shots from the fort, the signal for a joint attack. His junior officers pushed him to go at once, some calling him a Tory for waiting, and on the morning of August 6 he marched. The Oneida scouts found no enemy. Herkimer led 600 men into the ravine, followed by fifteen supply wagons and a 200-man rearguard. At approximately 10:00 a.m., as he finished crossing, the Seneca attacked — slightly early, before the rearguard had entered.

The first volley came from every side. Herkimer was shot through the right leg and his horse killed. The fighting turned hand to hand, with knives, hatchets, clubs and spears. The rearguard fled and was chased by Brant and other Mohawks. The Seneca war chief Blacksnake, describing the battle years later, said he had never seen so many dead, and that the blood ran down the sloping ground in a stream.

Wounded, Herkimer formed his men into a rough circle. About 45 minutes in, a violent thunderstorm stopped the fighting, and the Rebels fought their way to higher ground. Propped on his saddle under a tree, Herkimer set his men in pairs, one covering while the other reloaded. Between 2 and 4 p.m., Colonel Marinus Willett led a sortie from the fort that raided the Indian and Tory camps, carrying off wagonloads of goods and some prisoners. Hearing of it, the Indian allies began leaving the field, and without them the Tories withdrew. At about 4 p.m., after six hours, the battle was over.

Who won

Only about 150 of the 800 Rebels came out without serious injury. The survivors carried off their wounded, left the dead unburied and returned to Fort Dayton. Herkimer died 11 days later after his leg was amputated. Tory losses were much lighter, and fell mostly on the Indian allies, especially the Seneca.

Major General Benedict Arnold was already on his way from Saratoga. As he approached, St. Leger's Indian allies, discouraged by the failing siege, left him; he lifted the siege early on August 22 and retreated to Canada. Both sides claimed Oriskany: Herkimer never relieved the fort, but St. Leger's expedition failed.

Burgoyne surrendered his whole army at Saratoga on October 17, 1777, and Howe went for Philadelphia instead of up the Hudson. New York's civil war went on regardless. Johnson and Brant raided the valley again and again; the Rebels answered, most notably with General Sullivan's march through western New York. Neutral Onondaga villages were destroyed along with Tory ones, though the Oneida asked for them to be spared. Oriska itself was destroyed, and Molly Brant's home was looted and given to the Oneida chief Hon Yerry, who had fought at Oriskany alongside his wife.

The Treaty of Paris ended the war with Britain in 1783; the 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix ended it with the Iroquois. The Oneida and Tuscarora kept their ancestral lands under federal protection; the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca were confined to a small reservation. Many Tories, Indian and European alike, left — most for land in Canada — and descendants of the Confederacy's nations have worked for years to restore their unity and relight the Central Council Fire.

Sources

Rewritten from the National Park Service's Teaching with Historic Places lesson "The Battle of Oriskany: 'Blood Shed a Stream Running Down'" (Fort Stanwix National Monument; public domain), using the full lesson text; its questions and activities are left out. The map and portraits come from the lesson's PDF; its painting of the battle and its regional maps, credited to others, are left out. The lesson spells Brant's Mohawk name "Thayendanega"; the page uses Thayendanegea.