With Musket & Tomahawk Volume II

Book excerpt: This history of the 1777 Wilderness War in America’s fight for independence chronicles the Patriot defense against British and Iroquois attackers. Continuing his acclaimed history of the battles for New England during the Revolutionary War, Michael Logusz chronicles the British Army’s campaign from Lake Ontario down the Mohawk Valley. This campaign, led by Gen. Barry St. Leger, was perhaps the most terrifying of all, as it overran a sparsely populated wilderness where colonists had long needed to bear arms against the Iroquois Federation. Yet now, the British had made common cause with the Iroquois, forming an even more fearsome enemy. In upstate New York, the Patriot Fort Stanwix held fast, though surrounded by St. Leger’s forces and his Mohawk and Loyalist auxiliaries. Some eight hundred Patriots under militia leader Nicholas Herkimer attempted to relieve the fort, but were ambushed en route in the Battle of Oriskany, the basis for the movie Drums Along the Mohawk. In the end, Fort Stanwix was relieved only when Benedict Arnold marched his troops through and forced the British to give up their western onslaught. In With Musket and Tomahawk Volume II, Logusz captures the terrain, tactics, and terror of this multifaceted wilderness war.