Death and Destruction at the Battle of Oriskany
While the Mohawk and Seneca Indians and British Loyalists were ambushing General Nicholas Herkimer and his Tryon County militiamen at The Battle of Oriskany on August 6, 1777, Lieutenant Colonel Marinus Willett and 250 Continentals were destroying the unprotected British camp outside Fort Stanwix. Once alerted to Willett’s presence, Native American and British forces abandoned the fight to protect their belongings. Willet’s men retreated into Fort Stanwix, but they had saved Herkimer’s militiamen from certain annihilation. In an indication of the ferocity of the battle, 385 of the 700 Tryon County militiamen, or an astonishing 55 percent, had been killed, an unparalleled percentage for an American force during the Revolutionary War.
Tom Hand, creator and publisher of Americana Corner, discusses the death and destruction enacted during the Battle of Oriskany, and why it still matters today.
Images courtesy of The New York Public Library, New York Historical Society Museum and Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Guard, Library of Congress, Wikipedia.
The Tryon County militia sent to relieve the siege of Fort Stanwix had been badly mauled at the Battle of Oriskany on August 6, 1777. The combined Loyalist and Indian contingent under British Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger, settled back into its work of reducing the fort or forcing the American garrison to surrender.