On August 6, 1777, Brigadier General Nicholas Herkimer was shot through the leg in a marshy ravine in upstate New York, then propped himself against a beech tree, lit his pipe, and kept directing the fight. This episode explores the Battle of Oriskany, a brutal neighbor-versus-neighbor clash during the Saratoga campaign, and the pressure that pushed Herkimer to march his Tryon County militia into an ambush.

We look at Barry St. Leger’s siege of Fort Stanwix, the warning from Molly Brant, the thunderstorm that paused the fighting, and the loyalist ruse of turned coats that failed when a Patriot captain recognized his neighbor. We also cover Marinus Willett’s raid on the empty siege camps, Benedict Arnold’s trick with Hon Yost Schuyler, and the battle’s lasting cost to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

• How Herkimer’s captains accused him of disloyalty because his brother served with the British
• The geography of the ravine that made it a perfect choke point for the ambush
• Herkimer’s tactic of pairing men behind trees so one weapon was always loaded
• Why the raid on the camps led Seneca warriors to leave the field and doomed St. Leger’s siege
• How Oriskany marked the first time nations of the Haudenosaunee fought and killed one another