The American Revolution may have been won by a man named Silas Towne.

On the shores of Lake Ontario near the port city of Oswego, NY sits a tiny piece of land called Spy Island. Hidden among her grasses on July 24, 1777, Towne watched a contingent of Native American warriors, Hessians, and British soldiers led by Lt. Colonel Barry St. Leger convene to coordinate their assault up the Mohawk River, one prong of the three-two-prong Saratoga Campaign (*John Burgoyne designed the attack as a three-prong assault, with his main force advancing down Lake Champlain from Quebec, St. Leger's contingent coming up the Mohawk valley from the West, and General William Howe bringing a force north from New York City. Due to "miscommunications with London," Howe took his forces and occupied Philadelphia instead) aimed to divide the querulous New England colonies from the rest of the burgeoning rebels.

Towne ran the 50 miles to Fort Stanwix near modern-day Rome, NY, where his report was repeated by a trapper named Louis and Native Americans who knew the movements of their Five Six Nations former brothers. (*Another interesting note - this was the first battle in a civil war among the Six Nations of the Iroquois and saw participants on both sides.)

The ensuing Battle of Oriskany was one of the bloodiest of the war, and also boasted one of the highest participant counts who were native to North America (not British or French from overseas), but slowing Leger from joining Burgoyne (and stripping him of his Native American allies, something another little known fact, the Death of Jane McCrae, also helped spread) eventually allowed Benedict Arnold and others to win at Saratoga, leading to the surrender of "Gentleman" Johnnie Burgoyne, turning back the major British assault in the north, and convincing the French that maybe there was something to this United States thing after all...

(As for the click-bait title, the war was won by many men just like Silas Towne, most of them even more unknown than the relatively obscure trapper who became one of Washington's Spies...)