The Road to Kingsbridge: Daniel Nimham and the Stockbridge Indian Company in the American Revolution
The Redcoats took their revenge in a well-planned bloody ambush. Their targets were soldiers of the Stockbridge Mohican community, British allies in previous wars but now effective raiders for George Washington’s Continental Army, in a standoff just north of New York City. By the end of the intense fighting on Aug. 31, 1778, the Stockbridge Indian Company had taken heavy casualties. Its leaders, the sachem Daniel Nimham and his son Abraham, were dead. The Indian refugees in the praying town of Stockbridge, Mass., were so weakened that within a generation they were forced on their long trek west. What became known as the Battle of Kingsbridge was more than an episode in the American Revolution; it was a turning point in the struggle of the Hudson River Indians to preserve their rights amidst a flood of European settlement.