After this useful exploit, Colonel Willett returned to the fort and hoisted the captured British standards, while over them he raised an uncouth flag, intended to represent the American stars and stripes, which Congress had adopted in June as the national banner. This rude flag, hastily extemporized out of a white shirt, an old blue jacket, and some strips of red cloth from the petticoat of a soldier's wife, was the first American flag with stars and stripes that was ever hoisted, and it was first flung to the breeze on the memorable day of Oriskany, August 6, 1777. [Portrait: JOSEPH BRANT: THAYENDANEGEA] [Sidenote: Death of Herkimer] Of all the battles of the Revolution, this was perhaps the most obstinate and murderous. Each side seems to have lost not less than one third of its whole number; and of those lost, nearly all were killed, as it was largely a hand-to-hand struggle, like the battles of ancient times, and no quarter was given on either side. The number of surviving wounded, who were carried back to Oriskany, does not seem to have exceeded forty. Among these was the indomitable Herkimer, whose shattered leg was so unskilfully treated that he died a few days later, sitting in bed propped by pillows, calmly smoking his Dutch pipe and reading his Bible at the thirty-eighth Psalm. [Portrait: Marinus Willett] For some little time no one could tell exactly how the results of this fierce and disorderly day were to be regarded. Both sides claimed a victory, and St. Leger vainly tried to scare the garrison by the story that their comrades had been destroyed in the forest. But in its effects upon the campaign, Oriskany was for the Americans a success, though an incomplete one. St. Leger was not crushed, but he was badly crippled. The sacking of Johnson's camp injured his prestige in the neighbourhood, and the Indian allies, who had lost more than a hundred of their best warriors on that fatal morning, grew daily more sullen and refractory, until their strange behaviour came to be a fresh source of anxiety to the British commander. While he was pushing on the siege as well as he could, a force of 1,200 troops, under Arnold, was marching up the Mohawk valley to complete his discomfiture. [Illustration: HERKIMER'S HOUSE AT LITTLE FALLS] [Portrait: John Johnson] [Sidenote: Arnold arrives at Schuyler's camp] [Sidenote: and volunteers to relieve Fort Stanwix] [Sidenote: Yan Yost Cuyler] [Sidenote: Flight of St. Leger, Aug. 22]