Event record · battle
near Thorold, Upper Canada · Niagara
Battle of Beaver Dams
24 June 1813
Kahnawake and Grand River warriors surround and wear down an American column before its surrender to British authority.
Participants
- Kahnawake warriors under Dominique Ducharme
- Grand River warriors under William Johnson Kerr
- Charles Boerstler's American column
- James FitzGibbon
Outcome
After hours of fighting in wooded ground, Boerstler surrendered his surrounded column to FitzGibbon.
Why it matters
Indigenous forces, not a conventional British battle line, created the military result; Laura Secord's warning belongs to the approach, not the mechanism of victory.
Location evidence
43.116, -79.190 · regional precision
Coordinates locate the named site, city, or broad region; they do not reconstruct unit movements.
Where it sits in the story
This record belongs to a connected military, political, and human sequence. The chapter supplies causes, consequences, competing perspectives, and the limits of the surviving evidence.
Follow the evidence
Evidence behind this event
- The Documentary History of the Campaign upon the Niagara FrontierGoogle Books bibliographic record · documentary edition
Ernest A. Cruikshank's compilation of official correspondence, reports, and other records for the Niagara campaigns. Its editorial choices and nineteenth-century publication context require attention.
- Teyoninhokarawen (John Norton)Parks Canada · biographical and campaign study
Norton's leadership among Grand River Haudenosaunee forces from 1812 through the Niagara campaign of 1814.