On this day in 1813, a short, bloody skirmish was fought on what is now the outskirts of the picturesque town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. The Battle of Ball's Farm etched the psyche of the American army that had established its foothold in Niagara. American soldiers feared the Mohawk warriors -- and with good reason.
n American officer who arrived on the scene after the fighting would later report that nothing could have prepared him for "a scene of wanton and revolting barbarity. [The warriors] had left on the ground nearly half of the detachment, most of them dead, but some of them still breathing, though scarcely sensible. Every body was utterly stripped, and scalped, and mangled and maimed in a way that looked as if there had been a sort of sportive butchery among the dying and the dead. [One man had] more than a dozen of these gashes and lacerations. [His head was] denuded from the eye-brows to the back of the neck [but he] was still breathing and sensible when our party reached him."
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