As St. Leger’s troops tightened their siege of Fort Stanwix in early August, a Patriot column made up of 800 New York militiamen under Brig. Gen. Nicholas Herkimer set out from nearby Fort Dayton to relieve the garrison. Herkimer’s troops did not realize, however, that they were walking into an ambush. Six miles from the fort, hundreds of Native warriors, Loyalist fighters, and British soldiers attacked the inexperienced militia on 6 August and trapped them in a ravine. While the resulting Battle of Oriskany either destroyed or scattered Herkimer’s relief column, it gave the defenders at Fort Stanwix an opportunity to raid St. Leger’s lightly guarded rear base. Low on supplies, the British commander chose to withdraw his forces back into Canada.
"We met the enemy at the place near a small creek. They had three cannons and we none. We had tomahawks and a few guns, but agreed to fight with tomahawks and scalping knives. During the fight, we waited for them to fire their guns and then we attacked them. It felt like no more than killing a Beast. We killed most of the men in the American army. Only a few escaped from us. We fought so close against one another that we could kill one another with a musket bayonet....It was here that I saw the most dead bodies than I have ever seen. The blood shed made a stream running down on the sloping ground."
Thaonawyuthe, a Seneca war chief allied with the Britishhttps://www.nps.gov/teachers/classrooms/upload/TwHP-Lessons_79oriskany.pdf Pg. 23.