The Oneida: Patriots Among the Six Nations

The Oneida Nation's decision to support the American cause was made deliberately and at great cost. At the Battle of Oriskany on August 6, 1777, Oneida warriors fought alongside American militia against a force that included their Mohawk brothers of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The Great League of Peace had fractured. The Continental Congress made promises in return for the Oneida alliance. The record of those promises, and of what followed, is in the Journals of the Continental Congress and in the Fort Stanwix treaty proceedings.

The Oneida decision was not unanimous and not without internal conflict. Missionary relationships with Presbyterian minister Samuel Kirkland had created strong connections between the Oneida community and colonial American settlers. Trade patterns, particular political grievances with the British Indian Department, and long-standing tensions within the Haudenosaunee Confederacy all contributed to the Oneida position.

Continental Congress commissioners worked actively to bring the Oneida and Tuscarora into the American alliance. The Journals of the Continental Congress for 1775 and 1776 record the resolutions authorizing Indian Affairs commissioners, the instructions given to them, and their reports on the state of relations with the Six Nations. The Oneida and Tuscarora position in favor of the American cause hardened as the rest of the Confederacy moved toward Britain.

The Battle of Oriskany on August 6, 1777 is one of the bloodiest engagements of the Revolutionary War. A Patriot militia relief column commanded by General Nicholas Herkimer was marching to relieve the besieged American garrison at Fort Stanwix when it was ambushed by a Loyalist force including Butler's Rangers, Mohawk warriors led by Joseph Brant, and other British-allied Haudenosaunee. The Oneida warriors who accompanied the American militia found themselves in direct combat against other members of their own Confederacy.

The battle lasted several hours and was fought at close quarters. Casualties were severe on both sides. Herkimer was mortally wounded. The Oneida war chief Han Yost Thahoswagwat, who had received a lieutenant's commission from Congress, fought in the engagement and was killed during the Sullivan Expedition two years later while scouting for Sullivan's forces. The Oneida paid a direct military price for their alliance with the Americans.

The Continental Congress acknowledged the Oneida and Tuscarora loyalty explicitly in post-war resolutions. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix, negotiated in 1784, included an article protecting Oneida and Tuscarora lands. The documentary record of the promise is clear. What followed was different. Subsequent treaties and state-level land transactions eroded Oneida territory steadily through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By 1846, the Oneida in New York held fewer than one hundred acres of their original territory.

The Six Nations council later refused to ratify the Fort Stanwix treaty, declaring it had been forced upon delegates who lacked authority to agree to its terms. The Americans proceeded regardless. The Oneida, who had fought for the American cause, found the land protections promised to them no more durable than the commitments made to those who had fought against it.