While statesmen and politicians were arranging the machinery of government, the people were laying broad and deep the visible foundations of the state, in the establishment of material interests and the shaping of institutions consonant with the new order of things, and essential to social and political prosperity. They had already begun to comprehend the hidden resources and immense value of the vast country within the treaty limits of the United States westward of the Alleghany Mountains. They had already obtained prophetic glimpses of a future civilization that should flourish in the fertile regions watered by the streams whose springs are in those lofty hills that stretch, parallel with the Atlantic, from the Lakes almost to the Gulf, across fourteen degrees of latitude. Pioneers had gone over the grand hills and sent up the smoke of their cabin fires from many a fertile valley irrigated by the tributaries of the Ohio and Mississippi. Already they had learned to regard the Father of Waters as a great aqueous highway for an immense inland commerce soon to be created, and had begun to urge the supreme authority of the land to treat with Spain for its free navigation. Already peace and friendship with the savage tribes on the remote frontiers of civilization had been promised by treaties made upon principles of justice and not fashioned by the ethics of the sword. 1

By treaty with the chief tribes between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes, and the cession by Virginia 2 to the United States of all claims to lands in that region, the general government became absolute possessor of a vast country, out of which several flourishing states have since been formed. 3

While the National Convention was in session at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, the Continental Congress, sitting at New York, feeble and dying, with only eight states represented, took up and disposed of in a satisfactory manner a subject second only in importance to that under discussion in the capital of Pennsylvania. They adopted [July 13, 1787.], by unanimous vote, "An Ordinance for the government of the Territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio." 4 In anticipation of this action, extensive surveys had been made in the new territory. Soon after the passage of the ordinance above mentioned, a sale of five millions of acres, extending along the Ohio from the Muskingum to the Sciota, were sold to the "Ohio Company," which was composed of citizens of New England, many of whom had been officers of the Continental army. 5 A similar sale was made to John Cleve Symmes, of New Jersey, for two millions of acres, in the rich and beautiful region between the Great and Little Miami Rivers, including the site of Cincinnati.

These were the first steps taken toward the settlement of the Northwestern Territory, in which occurred so many of the important events of the War of 1812. Hitherto New England emigration had been chiefly to Vermont, Northern New Hampshire, and the Territory of Maine. Now it poured, in a vast and continuous stream, into the Ohio country. General Rufus Putnam, at the head of a colony from Massachusetts, founded a settlement 6 (the first, of Europeans, in all Ohio, if we except the Moravian missionary stations 7) at the mouth of the Muskingum River, and named it Marietta, in honor of Maria Antoinette, the queen of Louis the Sixteenth, of France.

A stockade fort, called Campus Martius, was immediately commenced, as a protection against the hostile Indians. 8 In the autumn of the same year a party of settlers seated themselves upon Symmes’s purchase, and founded Columbia, near the mouth of the Little Miami. Fort Washington was soon afterward built a short distance below, on the site of Cincinnati.

Soon after the organization of the Northwestern Territory, Major General Arthur St. Clair, 9 an officer in the old French War, and in the Continental army during the Revolution, was appointed its governor by the Congress, of which body he was then president. He accepted the position with reluctance. "The office of governor was in a great measure forced on me," he said, in a letter to a friend. 10 Yet, ever ready to go where duty to his country called him, he proceeded to the Territory in the summer of 1788, and took up his abode in Campus Martius [July, 1788.], with Winthrop Sargent as secretary or deputy, who acted as chief magistrate during the absence of the governor.

It soon became evident that all the tribes in the Territory, numbering full twenty thousand souls, were tampered with by British emissaries, sent out from the frontier forts, which had not been given up to the United States in compliance with treaty stipulations. Sir John Johnson (son of Sir William, of the Mohawk Valley, and the implacable enemy of the United States 11) was the Inspector General of Indian Affairs in America, and had great influence over the savages; and Lord Dorchester (formerly Sir Guy Carleton) was again governor general of those provinces, 12 and, by speeches at Quebec and Montreal, directly instigated the savages to war.

The Confederacy was but feebly prepared to meet hostilities on their northwestern frontier. The military force at the time the Territory was formed consisted of only about six hundred men, commanded by Brigadier General Harmar. 13 Of these there were two companies of artillery, formed of volunteers who enlisted to put down Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts. The frontier military stations were Pittsburg, at the forks of the Ohio, Fort M‘Intosh, on Beaver Creek, and Fort Franklin, on French Creek, near old Fort Venango, in Pennsylvania; Fort Harmar, at the mouth of the Muskingum River; Fort Steuben, on the Ohio River, now Jeffersonville, opposite Louisville; and Fort Vincennes, on the Wabash River.

Early in 1789 [January 9.], Governor St. Clair held a council at Fort Harmar 14 with chiefs and sachems of the Six Nations. He also held a council with the leading men of the Wyandots, Delawares, Ottawas, Chippewas, Pottawatomies, and Sacs. With all these representatives of thousands of Indians, scattered over the country from the Mohawk Valley to that of the Wabash, he made treaties, when old agreements were confirmed, and remunerations and boundaries were specified. The Six Nations (or, rather, five of the six nations, for the Mohawks, who were in Canada, were not represented) were faithful to the treaty; but the great body of the others, influenced by British emissaries and unscrupulous traders, refused to acknowledge the validity of the treaty made by their warriors and rulers. 15 Within a few weeks after the council at Fort Harmar, parties of them were out upon the war-path on the frontiers of Virginia and Kentucky.

Yet more threatening was the aspect of affairs on the Western frontier in the spring of 1790. Serious trouble was evidently brewing. Major Hamtramck, a small Canadian Frenchman, and a spirited officer in the United States army, was in command of the military post at Vincennes, an important point on the Wabash, 16 surrounded by French families, whose long residence made them influential among the Indians. Many of the latter spoke their language, and some had embraced the Roman Catholic religion. Taking advantage of this intimate relationship, Hamtramck sent out Antoine Gamelin, with speeches to the Wabash and Miami Indians from Governor St. Clair, offering them peace and friendship. In the course of his tour Gamelin obtained positive evidence of the influence of the British at Detroit over the savage mind in the West. He traversed the country from Post Vincennes along the Wabash, and eastward to the Miami village, where the conjunction of the St. Mary’s and St. Joseph’s Rivers forms the Maumee, or Miami of the Lakes, at the present city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. He made speeches himself, and offered them St. Clair’s; but he was every where met with the reply that they could do nothing definitely until they could hear from Detroit. "You invite us to stop our young men," said the Kickapoos. "It is impossible to do it, being constantly encouraged by the British." "We are all sensible of your speech, and pleased with it," said Blue Jacket, chief warrior of the Shawnoese; "but we can not give you an answer without hearing from our father at Detroit." "We can not give a definite answer without consulting the commandant at Detroit," said Le Gris, the great chief of the Miamis. "The English commandant at Detroit is our father since he threw down our French father," said the Shawnoese. 17 And so, on all occasions, they were unwilling to accept proffers of peace with the United States without first consulting the commandant at Detroit, with whom Johnson and Carleton were in constant communication. Instigated by these men, these Western tribes insisted on the establishment of the Ohio River as the boundary between the Indians and the United States, and would listen to no other terms. 18

The principal rendezvous of the marauders was near the mouth of the Scioto, on the north bank of the Ohio, and to that point two hundred and thirty Kentucky volunteers and one hundred regular troops were sent., under General Harmar. They assembled at Fort Washington, 19 then not quite completed, and marched from thence to the Scioto. The Indians fled on their approach, and the expedition returned without accomplishing any thing.

A more formidable expedition, to penetrate the Miami country, was determined upon, and, at the close of September [1790.], General Harmar left Fort Washington with over fourteen hundred troops, 20 and moved toward the heart of the hostile Indian country around the head waters of the Maumee. St. Clair, in obedience to instructions from President Washington, had previously sent a letter [September 19.] to the British commandant at Detroit, courteously informing him that the expedition had no designs upon any possessions of the crown. He added that he had every reason to expect, after such a candid explanation, that the commandant would neither countenance nor assist the tribes in their hostilities. Of course, this expectation was not realized.

Harmar moved about two miles to Chillicothe 21 and destroyed it; then, after being menaced by the Indians, he turned his face toward Fort Washington [October 21, 1790.]. That night was a starry one, and Hardin, who was full of fight, proposed to Harmar a surprise of the Indians at the head of the Maumee, where they had a village on one side of the river and an encampment of warriors on the other side. Harmar reluctantly complied, and four hundred men were detached for the purpose. 22 Sixty of them were regulars, under Major Wyllys. They marched in three columns (the regulars in the centre), and pushed forward as rapidly as possible, hoping to fall upon the Indians before dawn. But it was after sunrise before they reached the bank of the Maumee. A plan of attack was soon arranged. Major Hall, with a detachment of militia, was to pass around the village at the bend of the Maumee, cross the St. Mary’s and the St. Joseph’s, gain the rear of the Indian encampment unobserved, and await an attack by the main body of the troops in front. These, consisting of Major M‘Mullin’s battalion, Major Fontaine’s cavalry, and the regulars under Major Wyllys, were to cross the Maumee at and near the usual ford, and thus surround the savages.

The game was spoiled by the imprudence of Major Hall, who fired prematurely upon a solitary Indian and alarmed the encampment. The startled Miamis were instantly seen flying in different directions. The militia under M‘Mullin and the cavalry under Fontaine, who had crossed the river, started in pursuit, in disobedience of orders, leaving the regulars under Wyllys, who had also crossed the Maumee, unsupported. The latter were attacked by Little Turtle and the main body of the Indians, and driven back with great slaughter. Richardville, a half-blood and successor to Little Turtle, who was in the battle, and who died at Fort Wayne in 1840, often asserted that the bodies of the slain were so numerous in the river at the ford that he could have crossed over the stream upon them dryshod. 23

General Harmar was informed of the disaster by a horseman who had outstripped the rest. A detachment of militia was immediately ordered to the assistance of the retreating parties; but such mortal fear had taken possession of these raw recruits that only thirty, willing to go, could be found among them. On his arrival at camp Hardin urged Harmar to proceed with his whole force to the Maumee. The latter, having lost all confidence in the militia, refused; and, as soon as preparations could be made, the whole army took up its march [October 23.] for Fort Washington, which they reached on the 4th of November. 24

The land of the point between the St. Joseph’s and the Maumee, on which Little Turtle was encamped and the principal Miami village was situated, is a level bottom, and known as the Cole Farm. Much of it was covered with Indian corn of luxuriant growth; and I was told that there is evidence that a similar crop has been raised from it year after year for almost a century, and yet the soil was black, rich, and apparently inexhaustible. Here, it is said, was the place where the Miamis were accustomed to burn their prisoners. 25

About three hundred yards westward from Harmar’s Ford, on the site of the Indian camp, was a venerable apple-tree, full of fruit, its trunk measuring fifteen feet in circumference. Under this tree Chief Richardville, to whom allusion has been made, was born a little more than a hundred years ago. 26 It was a fruit-bearing tree then, and is supposed to have grown from a seed dropped by some French trader among these Twightwees, as the Miamis were called in early times. 27 In the sketch of the apple-tree the city of Fort Wayne is seen in the distance. The spires on the left are those of the Roman Catholic Cathedral.

We returned to Fort Wayne at twilight, and I spent the evening profitably with Mr. Hedges, one of the oldest and most intelligent of the inhabitants of that town 28 He was there in the spring of 1812, while the old stockade was yet standing, and before a garrison of United States troops from Harrison’s army arrived. He has seen the city bloom out into its present form and beauty from the folds of the dark forest, and its history and traditions are as familiar to him as those of his own biography. We chatted on the events of the past until a late hour, and parted with an agreement to visit the historic scenes together in the morning. The air toward midnight was as mild as early June, but a dappled sky prophesied a storm. At three o’clock in the morning I was aroused by heavy thunder-peals, and the dawning of the 28th was made dreary by a cold drizzle drifting upon a northeast wind. I went out alone, and made the sketches at the two fords and other drawings, and, after visiting the grave of Little Turtle, departed in the midday train for Indianapolis. Of Fort Wayne in 1812, and of Little Turtle and his grave, I shall hereafter write.

Although Harmar in his expedition had punished the Miamis and Shawnoese severely, and Hamtramck meanwhile had been up the Wabash to the mouth of the Vermilion River and destroyed some deserted villages, Indian hostilities in the Northwest were not even checked. The settlers along the Ohio were continually menaced and sometimes attacked by the savages, back of whom was distinctly heard the voice of the British commandant at Detroit. Western Virginia and Kentucky were threatened, and life and property on the frontiers were in jeopardy every hour. The Virginia Legislature adopted measures for the protection of the settlers, and the national government, awake to the importance of the subject, put forth all its available strength for the same purpose. General Knox, the Secretary of War, issued orders to proper authorities beyond the mountains "to impress the Indians with the power of the United States," and "to inflict that degree of punishment which justice may require." 29 Under these instructions, General Scott, of Kentucky, with eight hundred mounted men, crossed the Ohio [May 23, 1791.], and penetrated the Wabash country to the large village of Ouiatenon, situated about eight miles below the present village of Lafayette, Indiana, where several French families resided. There he found ample evidence of the Indians’ connection with and dependence on the British at Detroit. Scott destroyed the town, and several villages in the neighborhood, and desolated the country. He killed thirty-two Indians, "chiefly warriors of size and figure," and took fifty-eight prisoners, without losing any of his own men. 30

On the 1st of August Brigadier General James Wilkinson left Cincinnati (Fort Washington) with five hundred and twenty-five men, and penetrated the same region, by a different route, to the important Ouiatenon village of Ke-na-pa-com-a-qua, which the French called L’Anguille (The Eel), on the Eel River, about six miles from the present Logansport, Indiana. 31 He destroyed that village, desolated the country around as far as Tippecanoe, and then pushed forward to the great prairies that stretch away toward Lake Michigan. But deep morasses, into which he was sometimes plunged armpit deep, compelled him to return. He then destroyed another Kickapoo village of twenty houses, desolated all the crops, and, after a march of four hundred and fifty miles, reached the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville) on the 21st of August. 32

The misfortune that befell the Indians under the lash of Scott and Wilkinson did not quiet them. The British emissaries stimulated their courage to a point of desperation by assuring them that the grand object of the United States was to exterminate the tribes and take possession of their lands. 33 Thus two most powerful incentives to war were presented – self-preservation and patriotism. In defense of life and country they resolved to fight to the last. Little Turtle, of the Miamis, Blue Jacket, of the Shawnoese, and Buck-ong-a-helos, of the Delawares, put forth all their energies in the Summer of 1791, as Pontiac had done thirty years before, to confederate all the Western tribes in an effort to drive every European from the soil north of the Ohio. The protestations of St. Clair that peace, friendship, and justice, not war, subjugation, and robbery, were the desire of the people and government of the United States, were of no avail; and he was compelled, for the sake of the national life on the frontier, to attempt to convince them, by the stern argument of arms, that they were governed by bad counselors at Detroit.

It was determined to establish a strong military post in the heart of the Miami country, on the site of the present city of Fort Wayne. Congress authorized the raising of sufficient troops for the purpose, and during the spring and summer of 1791, St. Clair was putting forth strong efforts in that direction, but with indifferent success. Enlistments were slow, and it was not until the beginning of September that he had collected a sufficient force to attempt the enterprise with an appearance of safety. These had been collected in the vicinity of Cincinnati, and placed under the immediate command, in camp, of Major Hamtramck, who was remarkable as a tactician and disciplinarian. 34 St. Clair took the field as commander-in-chief. Major General Richard Butler, of Pennsylvania, was his second in command, and Winthrop Sargent, Secretary of the Territory, was appointed adjutant general.

They were near. Only a few miles distant the great Miami leader, Blue Jacket the Shawnoese chief; and Buck-ong-a-helos, the leader of the Delawares, with the cruel Girty and other white men in the British interest, were lying in wait, with two thousand fierce warriors at their beck. 35 These had been watching St. Clair’s movements for several days, and were waiting for the proper moment to fall upon him like a bolt from the cloud.

PLAN OF ST. CLAIR’S CAMP AND BATTLE. 36

The morning of the 4th dawned brilliantly. "Moderate northwest wind, serene atmosphere, and unclouded sky." 37 All night long the sentinels had been firing upon prowling Indians, and the men, by order of the commanding general, had slept upon their arms.

The troops had been early mustered and dismissed from parade. They were preparing for breakfast, when, half an hour before sunrise, a body of Indians, with yells that wakened horrid echoes miles away through the forest, fell suddenly upon the militia. The assailed camp was immediately broken up, and the frightened soldiers, most of whom had never been in battle, rushed wildly across the bottom and the creek into the lines of the regulars, producing alarm and confusion there. The Indians closely followed, and fell upon the regulars. The savages were several times repulsed, but soon rallied, and directed their most effective shots upon the artillery in the centre. Every officer there was prostrated, and the cannon were silenced. The carnage among the Americans was terrible, yet they withstood the enemy with great gallantry for almost three hours. Finally, when full one half of the army had fallen, St. Clair ordered a retreat to an old Indian road or trail. This was accomplished after a furious charge as if to turn the enemy’s flank. 38 The militia then led the van in the precipitate retreat, which soon became a flight. 39 The fugitive army was well covered by Major Clarke and his battalion; and the Indians, after following about four miles, turned back, wonderfully elated with their victory. Little Turtle was in chief command.

The fugitive army did not halt until safely within the palisades of Fort Jefferson. The panic was terrible, and the conduct of the army after quitting the ground was most disgraceful. Arms, ammunition, and accoutrements were almost all thrown away; and even officers, in some instances, threw away their arms, "thus setting an example for the most precipitate and ignominious flight." 40 They left the camp at nine o’clock in the morning, and at seven o’clock that evening they were in Fort Jefferson, twenty-nine miles distant. That evening Adjutant General Sargent wrote in his diary, "The troops have all been defeated; and though it is impossible, at this time, to ascertain our loss, yet there can be no manner of doubt that more than half the army are either killed or wounded." 41

Intelligence of St. Clair’s defeat produced the greatest alarm among all the settlers in the West, even as far eastward as Pittsburg. It cast a gloom over society in all parts of the Union, and checked for a short time the tide of emigration in the direction of the Ohio. 42

St. Clair was condemned in unmeasured terms by men of all classes and parties, and the indignation of President Washington was exceedingly hot. "Here," he said to Tobias Lear, his private secretary, "yes, HERE, on this very spot, I took leave of him. I wished him success and honor. You have your instructions, I said, from the Secretary of War. I had a strict eye to them, and will add but one word – beware of a surprise! I repeat it – BEWARE OF A SURPRISE! You know how the Indians fight us. He went off with that, as my last solemn warning, thrown into his ears. 43 And yet!! to suffer that army to be cut to pieces, hacked, butchered, tomahawked, by a surprise – the very thing I guarded him against!! O God, O God, he is worse than a murderer! How can he answer it to his country? The blood of the slain is upon him – the curse of widows and orphans – the curse of Heaven!"

"He was now," said Mr. Lear, "perfectly calm. Half an hour had gone by; the storm was over, and no sign of it was afterward seen in his conduct or heard in his conversation." 44

Washington was both generous and just, and St. Clair found in him a most faithful friend. "The first interview of the President with the unfortunate general after the fatal 4th of November," says the late Mr. Custis, who was present, "was nobly impressive. St. Clair, worn down by age, disease, and the hardships of a frontier campaign, assailed by the press, and with the current of popular opinion setting hard against him, repaired to his chief as to a shelter from the fury of so many elements. Washington extended his hand to one who appeared in no new character, for, during the whole of a long life, misfortune seemed ‘to have marked him for her own.’ Poor old St. Clair hobbled up to his chief; seized the offered hand in both of his, and gave vent to his feelings in an audible manner." 45

St. Clair’s case was investigated by a committee of the House of Representatives, and he was honorably acquitted. But public sentiment had set against him in a current too strong to be successfully resisted, and he resigned his commission. 46 General Anthony Wayne, whose impetuosity exhibited during the old war for independence had gained him the title of "Mad Anthony," was appointed to fill his place. Wayne was then in the prime of manhood, and Congress and the people had confidence in his intelligence, courage, and energy. Congress authorized an increase of the regular army to a little over five thousand men, and a competent part of this force, to be called the Legion of the United States, was to be assigned to Wayne for an expedition against the Indians in the Northwest. He took post at Pittsburg early in the following June [1792.], and appointed that place as the rendezvous of his invading army. It was soon perceived that it was easier to vote troops in the halls of Congress than to draw them out and muster them in the camp; and it was not until near the close of November that Wayne had collected a sufficient number to warrant his moving forward. He then went down the Ohio only about twenty miles, and there hutted his soldiers in a well-guarded camp, which he called Legionville. There he was joined by Lieutenant William Henry Harrison, afterward the distinguished general in the armies of the United States, and the ninth President of the republic. The young Virginian soon exhibited qualities which caused Wayne to make him a member of his military family as his aid-de-camp.

While the army was making these tardy movements, the government was using its best endeavors to effect a pacification of the tribes, and to establish a solid peace without more bloodshed. These efforts promised success at times. With the aid of the pious Heckewelder, the Moravian, General Putnam made a treaty of peace and friendship with the Wabash and Illinois tribes, at Vincennes, on the 27th of September, 1792. At about the same time great numbers of the tribes on the Miami, the Maumee (or Miami of the Lakes), and Sandusky Rivers, assembled at the Maumee Rapids to hold a grand council, at which Red Jacket, Cornplanter, Big Tree, the aged Guasutha, and other representatives of the Six Nations appeared, at the request of the Secretary of War. Simon Girty was the only white man present. The savages, on consultation, determined, in conformity with the advice of the British, not to acknowledge any claim of the United States to lands northwest of the Ohio River. 47

In the spring of 1793 a commission was sent by the President to treat with the hostile tribes. 48 Lieutenant Governor Simcoe, of Canada, professing to be friendly, and favorable to a pacification of the tribes, the commissioners went by the way of Niagara, a post yet held by the British. Simcoe received them courteously, and hospitably entertained them for five or six weeks, while the Indians were holding another grand council at the Rapids of the Maumee. While tarrying there, the commissioners were informed by a Mohawk Indian from the Grand River that Governor Simcoe had "advised the Indians to make peace, but not to give up any of their lands." 49 The commissioners called Simcoe’s attention to this. He did not deny the allegation, but replied, "It is of that nature that it can not be true," as the Indians had not "applied for his advice on the subject." 50 This subterfuge was well understood by the commissioners; and his admission that, "ever since the conquest of Canada," it had been "the principle of the British government to unite the American Indians," was ominous of ulterior designs.

We left Wayne and his army near Fort Jefferson, eighty miles from Fort Washington, on the 23d of October. He was then embarrassed by a lack of sufficient convoys for his stores. Already a party detailed for this purpose had been attacked and severely handled by a strong band of Indians under Little Turtle near Fort St. Clair. Lieutenant Lowry and fourteen of his companions were killed, 51 and all the horses attached to the wagons were carried off.

The season was now too far advanced to enter upon a campaign, so Wayne set his army to building a very strong fort on the spot where he was encamped. It was made impregnable against the Indians. There they went into winter-quarters. 52 Sufficient garrisons were placed in the forts at Vincennes, Cincinnati, and Marietta; and the return of spring was waited for with anxiety, for it was obvious that hostilities with the savages could not be long delayed.

Wayne was compelled to wait until late in the summer of 1794 before he felt strong enough to move forward. Meanwhile the Indians appeared in force. On the 30th of June, about a thousand of them, accompanied by a number of British soldiers and French Canadian volunteers, 53 made their appearance before Fort Recovery (mentioned in note 2 below), and during the day assailed the garrison several times. During these assaults the Americans lost fifty-seven men in killed, wounded, and missing, and two hundred and twenty-one horses. The Indians lost more, they said, than in their battle with St. Clair.

Twenty-five miles beyond Fort Recovery he built a stockade on the bank of the St. Mary’s, and called it Fort Adams. From this point he moved forward on the 4th of August, and at the end of four days encamped on a beautiful plain at the confluence of the Au Glaize and Maumee Rivers, on the site of the present village of Defiance. There he found a deserted Indian town, with at least a thousand acres of corn growing around it. 54 There, as elsewhere on his march, the alarmed savages fled at his approach. He tarried there a week, and built a strong fortification, which he called Fort Defiance. Of this fort, and the appearance of its remains when I visited it in the autumn of 1860, I shall hereafter write.

Wayne was now at the most important and commanding point in the Indian country. "We have gained the grand emporium of the hostile Indians of the West without loss of blood," he wrote to the Secretary of War [August 14, 1794.]. And there he gained full and positive information concerning the character, strength, and position of the British military post at the foot of the Maumee Rapids already alluded to. 55

This defiance was contrary to the advice of the sagacious Little Turtle, who counseled peace. 56 For this he was taunted with accusations of cowardice. The false charge enraged him, and he was foremost in the conflict that immediately ensued. That conflict was unavoidable. The vigilant Wayne perceived that nothing but a severe blow would break the spirit of the tribes and end the war, and he resolved to inflict it mercilessly. For this purpose his legion moved forward on the 15th of August, and on the 18th took post at Roche de Bout, at the head of the Rapids, near the present town of Waterville, and there established a magazine of supplies and baggage, with protecting military works, which they called Fort Deposit. There, on the 19th, Wayne called a council of war, and adopted a plan of march and of battle submitted by his young aid-de-camp, Lieutenant Harrison, who, nineteen years afterward, as a general-in-chief; performed gallant exploits in that portion of the Maumee Valley. 57

On the morning of the 20th, at eight o’clock, Wayne advanced with his whole army according to the adopted plan of march, having for his subordinate general officers Major General Scott, of the Kentucky volunteers, and Brigadier Generals Wilkinson, Todd, and Barber. They had proceeded about five miles when the advanced corps, under Major Price, were terribly smitten by heavy volleys from the concealed foe, and were compelled to fall back. The legion was immediately formed in two lines, principally in a dense wood on the borders of a wet prairie, where a tornado had prostrated a large number of trees, making the operations of cavalry very difficult. This fallen timber 58 afforded an admirable covert for the enemy, who, full two thousand strong, and composed of Indians and Canadian volunteers, 59 were posted in three lines, within supporting distance of each other. Wayne’s troops fell upon the foe with fearful energy, and made them flee toward Fort Miami like a herd of frightened deer to a covert. In the course of an hour the victory was complete. The mongrel horde were driven more than two miles through the thick woods, and left forty of their number dead in the pathway of their flight. By the side of each body lay a musket and bayonet from British armories. 60

On the site of the present Maumee City, near Fort Miami, Colonel M‘Kee, the British agent already mentioned, and chief instigator of the war, had extensive store-houses and dwellings, for he was carrying on a most lucrative trade with the Indians. These, with their contents, were committed to the flames, while every product of the field and garden above and below the British fort was utterly destroyed. 61 Wayne’s men sometimes approached within pistol-shot of Fort Miami, but its guns prudently kept silence. Major Campbell, the commandant, contented himself with scolding and threatening, while Wayne coolly defied him and retorted with vigor. Their correspondence was very spicy, but harmless in its effects.

Among the brave warriors in the battle who was the last to flee before Wayne’s legion, was Me-sa-sa, or Turkey-foot, an Ottawa chief, who lived on Blanchard’s Fork of the Au Glaize River. He was greatly beloved by his people. His courage was conspicuous. When he found the line of the dusky warriors giving way at the foot of Presque Isle Hill, he leaped upon a small boulder, and by voice and gesture endeavored to make them stand firm. He almost immediately fell, pierced by a musket ball, and expired by the side of the rock. Long years afterward, when any of his tribe passed along the Maumee trail, they would stop at that rock, and linger a long time with manifestations of sorrow. Peter Navarre, a native of that region, and one of General Harrison’s most trusted scouts during the War of 1812, who accompanied me to the spot in the autumn of 1860, told me that he had seen men, women, and children gather around that rock, place bits of dried beef; parched peas and corn, and sometimes some cheap trinket upon it, and, calling frequently upon the name of the beloved Ottawa, weep piteously. They carved many rude figures of a turkey’s foot on the stone, as a memorial of the English name of the lamented Me-sa-sa. The stone is still there, by the side of the highway at the foot of Presque Isle Hill, within a few rods of the swift-flowing Maumee. Many of the carvings are still quite deep and distinct, while others have been obliterated by the abrasion of the elements. 62 Of this locality, so famous in the chronicles of the War of 1812, I shall have more to say hereafter.

It was completed on the 22d of October, and was immediately garrisoned with infantry and artillery, under Colonel Hamtramck. 63 This accomplished, the remainder of the troops left, some for Fort Washington, to be discharged from the service, and the others for Fort Greenville, where Wayne made his head-quarters for the winter. Thither deputations from the various tribes with whom he had been at war came to Wayne, and agreed upon preliminary terms of peace. They well remembered his assurance that the British had neither the power nor the inclination to help them – an assurance verified by the silence of Fort Miami’s guns. They promised to meet him in council early in the ensuing summer, for the purpose of forming a definitive treaty of peace between the United States and the Indian tribes of the Northwest. Faithful to their promise, chiefs and sachems began to reach Fort Greenville early in June. A grand council was opened there on the 16th of that month, and was continued until the 10th of August. Almost eleven hundred Indians were present, representing twelve tribes. 64 A definitive and satisfactory treaty was signed by all parties on the 3d of August, and the pacification of the Indians of the Northwest was thereby made complete. 65 By the operations of a special treaty between the United States and Great Britain, the Western military posts were speedily evacuated by the British, and for fifteen years the most remote frontier settlements were safe from any annoyance by the Indians. This security gave an immense impetus to emigration to the Northwestern Territory, and the country was rapidly filled with a hardy population.

18 This curtailment of the boundaries of the United States, so as to prevent their control of the upper lakes and the valuable fur trade of the country around them, was a favorite scheme of British statesmen. It was even proposed as a sine qua non, at one time, by the British commissioners who negotiated the Treaty of Peace in 1814, that the Indians inhabiting a portion of the United States within the limits established by the Treaty of 1783 should be included as the allies of Great Britain in the projected pacification; and that definite boundaries should be settled for the Indian territory, upon a basis which would have operated to surrender to a number of Indians, not probably exceeding a few thousands, the rights of sovereignty as well as of soil, over nearly one third of the territorial dominions of the United States, inhabited by more than one hundred thousand of its citizens. *

25 We have mentioned Mr. Gamelin’s peace mission, on page 40. He was at this place, and only three days after he left (about the 1st of May, 1790), the savages, as if in derision of the United States authority, brought an American prisoner there and burned him. – See DILLON’S History of Indiana.

About seventy years ago a white man was bound to the stake at this place. The mother of Chief Richardville, mentioned in the next note, and a woman of great influence, had made fruitless attempts to save him. The torch was applied. Richardville, then quite young, had been designated as their future chief. She appealed to him, and, placing a knife in his hand, bade him assert his chieftainship and cut the cords that bound the prisoner. He obeyed, and the prisoner was released. The kind-hearted Miami woman secreted the prisoner and sent him down the Maumee in a canoe, covered with furs and peltries, in charge of some friendly Indians. Many years afterward Richardville stopped at a town in Ohio. A man came to him and threw his arms affectionately around his neck. It was the rescued prisoner. – Lecture before the Congregation of the First Presbyterian Church, Fort Wayne.

26 Pis-he-wa (Wildcat), or Jean Baptiste Richardville, was born in 1759. His father was Joseph Drouet de Richardville, a Frenchman, who traded at Ke-ki-on-ga * (Fort Wayne) from 1750 to 1770. He was elected chief of the Miamis, on the death of Little Turtle, in 1811. He was a large, fine-looking man, of quite light complexion, and spoke English well. Richardville left a fortune at his death in 1840. I was told by an old resident of Fort Wayne, who knew him well, that he had received large sums of money and immense tracts of land, from time to time, in consideration of his signing treaties; and that, at his death, he had $200,000 buried where no one but his daughter could find it. He was a temperate man, with acquisitiveness largely developed. He was buried in Fort Wayne.

41 MS. Journal, Friday, November 4, 1791. Mr. Sargent was slightly wounded. According to his report, afterward made out carefully, thirty-six officers were killed and thirty wounded; and 593 privates were killed and missing, and 214 wounded. He did not think many Indians were lost – probably not more than one hundred and fifty killed and wounded. Several pieces of cannon, and all the baggage, ammunition, and provisions were left on the field, and became spoil for the savage victors. The value of public property lost, according to the report of the Secretary of War toward the close of 1792, was $32,810.75. The signature of the Adjutant General, of which a fac-simile is given on page 38, was copied from his report. In Howe’s Historical Collections of Ohio may be found many particulars and anecdotes of this disastrous campaign.