On July 3, 1814, the largest and best American army yet assembled on the Niagara Frontier crossed the Niagara River from Buffalo, led by Maj. Gen. Jacob Brown. Included in that force were 500 Iroquois, including Seneca, Onondaga, Tuscarora and Oneida warriors under the command of General Porter and Seneca war chief Red Jacket. The Americans quickly took possession of Fort Erie and then turned in the direction of Chippewa and Fort George.

Two days later, on July 5, opposing armies once again met, this time for probably the bloodiest battle of the campaign on the Niagara Frontier, the Battle of Chippewa. And it was there that Iroquois warriors found themselves facing brother Iroquois in a major battle for the first and last time.

The Americans made contact with the British army, under the command of Maj. Gen. Phineas Riall, early in the afternoon. What followed was an intense battle, with heavy losses on both sides. Riall had about 300 Indians under his command, 200 of them Iroquois warriors led by John Norton. Iroquois snipers were the first to engage the Americans, antagonizing them throughout the morning. At about 3 p.m., Norton led a brigade of warriors, British light infantry and militia into the woods below the village of Chippewa. Once in the woods they divided into three groups and began moving south through the forest for the purpose of engaging the Americans’ left flank.

Red Jacket’s Iroquois entered the woods south of the American position and out of their view. Their mission was to surround and eliminate the snipers on the British side. That move also put the American Iroquois on a collision course with the Canadian Iroquois. Red Jacket’s warriors soon located the snipers, at which point they spread out and approached within firing range.

“The Iroquois rushed forward with a deafening chorus of war cries and pursued the snipers,” Porter later recalled of the battle. “For more than a mile through scenes of indescribable horror, few only of the fugitives surrendering themselves as prisoners, while others believing that no quarter was to be given, suffered themselves to be overtaken and cut down with the tomahawk, or turned upon their pursuers and fought to the last.”

Red Jacket’s warriors chased the remaining snipers who were still able to flee, only to run straight into one of Norton’s lines of Grand River Iroquois and British light infantry. Red Jacket’s warriors, believing that they were outnumbered, then retreated toward the American lines.

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While pursuing the retreating American Iroquois, Norton and his men came upon dozens of their slaughtered kinsmen, but they were too late to take revenge as Red Jacket’s men were already scrambling across the fields to the American front. At that point, Norton and his men could only stay low and fire upon Winfield Scott’s 1st Brigade as it advanced to do battle with the British. Scott’s troops managed to gain the upper hand over General Riall’s British forces, and Riall called for a withdrawal, giving the field of battle to the Americans. Norton’s Iroquois and the light infantry were then called upon to cover the retreat of the British regulars. Behind them they left 87 dead tribesmen.

The Battle of Chippewa thus saw the heaviest Indian casualties of the entire war. Besides the 87 dead suffered by the Grand River Iroquois, the American Iroquois suffered 25 dead and many wounded.

One of the Iroquois fighting with the Americans who fell during the battle was the Oneida Chief Cornelius Doxtator. Ephraim Webster, an interpreter who was at the battle, recalled his death: “Doxtator was pursued by five or six mounted Wyandots (Huron). They passed near him, and knowing well the Indian rules of warfare, he stood erect and firm, looking them full in the face; they passed him unharmed. Doxtator was shot just as he leaped a fence near by, upon which the Wyandots wheeled and rode off.” In 1877 Chief Doxtator’s grandson told what happened next: “After Doxtator was shot a Chippewa ran up, tomahawked and scalped him; and with others, captured Doxtator’s two boys, Daniel and George, respectively 17 and 15, who were near their father. But some Oneidas shot the Chippewa as he was clambering a fence, tomahawked and scalped him, and recovered the prisoner boys.”

The sight of Iroquois killing other Iroquois devastated surviving warriors and the Indian communities on both sides of the border. According to An Account of Sa-G-Ye-Wat-Ha, or Red Jacket, and His People, 1750-1830, by John Niles Hubbard: “That the battle of Chippewa was particularly severe to the Indian forces engaged in it, may be inferred from the fact that the British Indians retreated not only beyond the Chippewa, but stayed [stopped] not until they had gone thirty miles further. The battle ground was strewed with many of their number who had been slain….The sight of slain warriors was far from being a pleasing object for Red Jacket to behold, and having ever been opposed to his people engaging in contests that did not really concern them, he proposed…that they should withdraw from a further participation in the war, in case they could prevail on their Canadian brethren to do the same….The Indians therefore after this retired to their villages, with the exception of a few young braves, with whom the love of war was a more potent influence than the counsels of the aged and more considerate of their nation.”

The fact that most of the Iroquois deaths were inflicted by brother Iroquois changed the Nations’ view of the war and thereafter they remained neutral.