ORISKANY, A BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTION
About halfway between old Fort Schuyler, or Utica, and Fort Stanwix,
which is now Rome, is the village of Oriskany. A mile or two west
of this small town, in a field south of the Mohawk river, stands a
monument raised in memory of a fierce battle fought on that slope in
the year following the Declaration of Independence. On the pedestal are
four tablets in bronze, one of which shows a wounded general sitting
on the ground in the woods, with his hand raised, giving orders to his
men. The time was 1777, the strife was the battle of Oriskany, and the
brave and suffering general was Nicholas Herkimer.
On another of the tablets is this inscription:
HERE WAS FOUGHT
THE BATTLE OF ORISKANY
ON THE 6TH DAY OF AUGUST, 1777.
HERE BRITISH INVASION WAS CHECKED AND THWARTED.
HERE GENERAL NICHOLAS HERKIMER,
INTREPID LEADER OF THE AMERICAN FORCES,
THOUGH MORTALLY WOUNDED KEPT HIS COMMAND OF THE FIGHT
TILL THE ENEMY HAD FLED.
THE LIFE BLOOD OF MORE THAN
TWO HUNDRED PATRIOT HEROES
MADE THIS BATTLE GROUND
SACRED FOREVER.
After the battle Herkimer was carried down the valley to his home,
where a few days later he died. On the field he had calmly lighted his
pipe and smoked it as he gave his orders, refusing to be carried to a
safe place and saying, “I will face the enemy.” If the battle has its
monument, so the hero that won it has his, and the traveler on the New
York Central Railway can see both, but thirty miles apart, the one at
Oriskany, the other a short distance down the valley from Little Falls.
[Illustration: FIG. 10. ORISKANY BATTLE MONUMENT, A FEW MILES WEST OF
UTICA]
Herkimer was not a trained soldier, but a plain farmer of the valley.
His letters and military orders show us that he could spell as poorly
as any of his neighbors, and that is saying a good deal. His army was
made up of these same simple neighbors, who, though they did not
know much about soldierly marching, were good shots and hard hitters,
fighting not for pay but to save their liberty and to protect their
homes from the cruel savages.
The names of many of these men are on the battle monument,--names
such as Groot, Petrie, Dunckel, Klock, Kraus, Sammons, Schnell, Van
Horn, and Zimmerman. We do not need to be told that these were not men
of English blood; indeed, many of them belonged to those same Dutch
families which we saw settling in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. And
some, like the last one, were not Dutch but German, and their ancestors
came not from Holland but from a land farther up the Rhine. They had
been driven out by the persecutions of one of the French kings and
had come to America. They had had a hard time, suffering much from
taskmasters, from poverty, and from the savages, until finally they
had gone farther west in the Mohawk valley and had received good
lands lying eastward from Utica. There they became comfortable and
prosperous. They answered promptly the brave Herkimer’s call to arms,
and many of them gave their lives for home and country at Oriskany.
We must now tell the other side of the story and see who the invaders
were and where they came from. In Revolutionary days nearly all the
people of New York were in its two great valleys. One could go up the
Hudson from New York, pass Albany and Fort Edward, and, without finding
high ground, enter the valley of lake Champlain and go down to Montreal
on the St. Lawrence. Here, then, was an easy valley road from the sea
at New York into Canada. Coming either way, one could turn off to the
west at Fort Orange or Albany and go up the Mohawk and down to Oswego
on lake Ontario. In these two valleys were all the farms, the towns,
and of course the forts. There were forts at Oswego and where Rome,
Utica, and Albany are; at Fort Edward, Fort Ann, Ticonderoga, and many
other places, making a chain of defenses in these valleys. West of
the Hudson and south of the Mohawk were the high, rough woods of the
Catskills; while west of lake Champlain and north of the Mohawk were
the rugged Adirondacks, without roads or clearings. And because the
roads, the homes, and the forts were in the valleys, we shall almost
always find the armies and the fighting there.
This will help us to understand the plan which the British made in
1777, by which they felt sure of crushing the rebellion. The year
before they had to leave Boston and had come around to New York. New
York was not so large as Philadelphia then, but it was an important
place, for it was the key to the Hudson valley. The British generals
decided to send one army up the Hudson to destroy the forts and beat
back the colonists. This army was under General Howe. Another army,
commanded by General Burgoyne, was to come from the St. Lawrence up
lake Champlain and through the woods by Fort Edward to Albany. Burgoyne
was a brave officer, but he was conceited, and he felt too sure that he
could do his part easily. He was confident that when he marched through
the country many colonists would run to place themselves under the
English flag. In a few weeks he learned that these backwoods Americans
were quite ready to meet and give battle to the combined forces of the
British regulars, the hired German soldiers, and the Indians with whom
they were in league.
[Illustration: FIG. 11. GENERAL NICHOLAS HERKIMER DIRECTING THE BATTLE
OF ORISKANY]
There was yet a third division in this campaign. A British force
under General St. Leger had come up the St. Lawrence and lake Ontario
to Oswego. St. Leger also had with him many Indians, and these were
commanded by Joseph Brant, a famous chief, who had had much to do with
white men and who was well educated. This third army was to go east,
over the Oneida Carrying Place and down the Mohawk to Albany. By this
pretty plan three armies, one from the south under Howe, one from the
north under Burgoyne, and one from the west under St. Leger, were
to meet in Albany. They would put British soldiers in every fort on
the way, capture and disarm the rebels, and have all New York under
their feet. More than this, they would thus shut off New England from
Pennsylvania and Virginia, cutting the unruly colonies into two parts
so that they could not help each other.
But the scheme, brilliant as it was, would not work. None of the
British armies reached Albany. Howe did not, perhaps because he did not
try. Burgoyne and St. Leger did not, because they could not: there was
altogether too much in the way. We shall now see how this happened.
St. Leger brought into the Mohawk valley from Oswego an army of
seventeen hundred men. Some were British, some were Hessians or hired
German soldiers, and the rest were Indians under Joseph Brant. They
thought that it would not be much trouble to take Fort Stanwix and
then go down the valley, burning and killing as they went, until they
should meet the other armies of the king at Albany. But the colonists
sent more soldiers to defend the fort, and Colonel Peter Gansevoort,
who was in command, had under him nearly a thousand men. Just before
the British came in sight a stock of provisions, brought on several
boats up the river, had been safely delivered within the defenses. This
was early in August, and only about seven weeks before Congress had
adopted the style of American flag which we know so well. There was no
flag at Fort Stanwix, so the garrison set about making one. They cut up
shirts to make the white. The blue came from a cloak captured not long
before in a battle, on the Hudson, by Colonel Marinus Willett, one of
the bravest commanders within the fort. The red is said to have been
taken from a petticoat. Certain it is that a patriot flag was made,
and some think that it was the first American flag ever raised over a
fortification.
While the British were besieging Fort Stanwix, General Herkimer had
called out the men of the valley, bidding all between the ages of
sixteen and sixty make ready for battle. The boys and old men were to
do their best to care for the families and to defend their homes. Eight
hundred men gathered under Herkimer and marched to help the garrison
of the fort. Hearing of this, part of the British army, including
the Indians, came down the valley to head off Herkimer. They met at
Oriskany. The farmer soldiers were hurrying up the valley without due
watching for sudden attack, while the enemy placed themselves in ambush
around a low field which was wooded and swampy. Through this field the
road ran, and when Herkimer’s men were well down into it the Indians
opened a hot fire, which threw the patriots into disorder. They soon
rallied and fought fiercely for five hours, until two hundred of them
had lost their lives. Early in the battle Herkimer was shot, but he
forgot his pain when he saw his men victorious. Much of the fighting
was of the Indian sort, from behind trees, for the Dutchmen well knew
the ways of the savages. They saw that when one man fired from behind
a tree an Indian would rush forward to tomahawk him before he could
load his gun for another shot. So they were ordered to stand by twos
and take turns in firing. Thus when the Indian ran forward with his
tomahawk he would receive a bullet from the other man’s gun.
[Illustration: FIG. 12. NICHOLAS HERKIMER’S MONUMENT
To the right is the old mansion in which he lived. Near Little Falls,
New York]
Under John Johnson, the son of Sir William Johnson, were many Tories
from the valley. They and the patriots often recognized each other as
former neighbors, and then the fight was more stubborn than ever, for
the soldiers of freedom were bitterly angry to find old friends in arms
against them. During the battle a terrific thunder-shower came up, and
both sides stopped fighting, having enough to do to keep their powder
and guns dry. The dark storm passed and the strife went on again. At
length the Indians grew tired and ran, leaving the field to Herkimer
and his little army. The importance of a conflict is not always in
proportion to the size of the armies engaged, and in what it did for
freedom Oriskany takes high place among the battles of modern times.
The enemy went back to the siege of Fort Stanwix, and soon a new force
of patriots under Benedict Arnold was sent up the valley to relieve
the fort. It was during this march that an ignorant but cunning fellow
named Han Yost Schuyler was caught, tried, and condemned to die as
a spy. Because his friends pleaded for his life Arnold finally told
him that he might live if he would go up to Fort Stanwix and make the
Indians and British believe that a great army was marching against
them. Meanwhile the man’s brother was held as a hostage, to be punished
if the promise was not fulfilled. Han Yost did his part so well
that St. Leger, taking fright, left the fort in great haste and his
expedition was entirely broken up. Why he did not have a gay march down
to Albany is now quite plain.
A few days after the battle of Oriskany a number of men drove some
cattle to Fort Stanwix as food for the soldiers. Several women went
with them on horseback to visit their husbands, who belonged to the
garrison. At the ford of the river, now the Genesee street crossing in
Utica, a big Dutchman, who did not wish to get wet, leaped uninvited
upon a horse behind one of the women. The horse did not like the double
load, and made great sport by throwing the Dutchman into the middle of
the stream, while he carried his mistress over in safety.
General Burgoyne came nearer Albany than did St. Leger. Indeed he
went to Albany, but not until he had lost his army. He had promptly
captured Ticonderoga on lake Champlain, and this success gave him high
hopes and sent rejoicing throughout Great Britain; but the patriots,
by felling trees and cutting away bridges, hindered his southward
march in every way. He sent a thousand of his German soldiers across
to Bennington, among the Green mountains, to capture stores which
he knew were there. But General Stark was there also, with a little
army from New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and the thousand Hessians
did not go back to help Burgoyne. He had left another thousand to
guard Ticonderoga, and so he was two thousand short. All this time
the patriot army was growing, for the men of the Hudson valley were
maddened when they saw the bloodthirsty Indians marching with the
English, and, to Burgoyne’s surprise, they had no mind to fight for the
king. Howe did not come, St. Leger did not come, and the provisions
were getting short. These could only come along the road from the
north, and the colonists were already marching in behind Burgoyne’s
army to cut his line of communications. He knew that he must fight or
starve. He chose to fight. The battle was fought on Bemis Heights, a
range of hills west of the Hudson, a short distance north of the little
village of Stillwater. The British general, after his defeat, withdrew
a few miles northward and surrendered his army near the present town
of Schuylerville. A tall monument marks the place. This was the battle
of Saratoga, fought in old Saratoga, which is several miles from the
famous resort of that name.
So it was that up and down these beautiful valleys went armies and
scouting bands, as well as peaceful emigrants with their oxen, their
stages, and their small freight boats. One cannot go far along the
Hudson or the Mohawk without finding the site of an Indian village, the
foundations of an old fort, the homestead of a Revolutionary hero, or
an ancient place of worship. When we see the great railways and swift
trains, the bundles of telegraph wires, the noisy cities and great
mills of to-day, we can remember Philip Schuyler, Sir William Johnson,
Marinus Willett, Peter Gansevoort, and Nicholas Herkimer. There were no
nobler patriots, even in Virginia and Massachusetts, than these men of
the Mohawk valley.