Remember Baker, meanwhile, had crossed the province line and landed on the east shore, five miles into Canada. The captain “sat down and sharpened his flint”—he was “a curious marksman” who “always kept his musket in the best order possible.” At this most unfortunate moment, the captain spied “a party of Indians . . . approaching the point of land where he was”—and they were in his own armed bateau! Baker ordered his four men to “be concealed and ready.”
Details of the fatal affair that followed come from a number of sources. General Schuyler provided the most detailed contemporary reports, undoubtedly informed by American survivors. Participants Claude de Lorimier and Uriah Cross wrote first-hand accounts many years after the fact. The most comprehensive version of the violent encounter came from Baker’s cousin Ira Allen in his 1798 History of Vermont. This second-hand narrative aligns with details in the various primary sources and offers additional context for the complicated but fleeting encounter:
when the Indians came near [, Baker] hailed them, and desired them to give up his boat in a friendly manner, there was no war between the Indians and the Americans . . . the Indians showed no signs of giving up the boat, whereupon Baker ordered them to return his boat, or he would fire upon them. An Indian in the boat was preparing to fire on Baker, who attempted to fire before hand with him, but his musket missed fire, owing to the sharpness of his flint, which hitched on the steel; he recover his piece, and levelled it at the Indian, at which Instant the Indian fired at him, one buck shot entered his brains and Baker fell dead on the spot. His men fired on the Indians and wounded some, but the boat was soon out of gun shot.
Baker’s spur-of-the-moment decision to fight for his lost boat was a direct contravention of Schuyler’s strategically deliberate orders to treat Indians and Canadians “with the greatest Kindness.”