Map of the Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne Campaigns.Drawing by HeatonMap of the Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne Campaigns.ToList
Drawing by Heaton
Map of the Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne Campaigns.ToList
Reluctant as was the government of the United States to engage in war with the Wabash Indians, no doubt now remained of their warlike intentions. Every savage town from the Vermilion Piankeshaws to ancient Kekionga, was under British control. On the first of May, 1790, Governor Arthur St. Clair transmitted to the war department a part of the report of Antoine Gamelin, written from Tippecanoe, and observed as follows: "By this letter, you will perceive that everything seems to be referred to the Miamis, which does not promise a peaceable issue. The confidence they have in their situation, the vicinity of many other nations not very well disposed, and the pernicious counsels of the English traders, joinedto the immense booty obtained by the depredations upon the Ohio, will most probably prevent them from listening to any reasonable terms of accommodation, so that it is to be feared the United States must prepare effectually to chastise them." Shortly afterwards, St. Clair hastened to Fort Washington at Cincinnati, and there held a military conference with General Josiah Harmar. Being empowered to call upon Virginia, then including Kentucky, for one thousand militia, and upon the State of Pennsylvania for five hundred more, it was resolved to concentrate three hundred of the Kentucky troops at Fort Steuben (Clarksville), to march from that place to Post Vincennes. From thence an expedition under Major John F. Hamtramck was to be directed against the villages on the lower Wabash, so as to prevent them from aiding the Miamis higher up. The remaining twelve hundred militiamen were to join the regulars at Fort Washington and strike directly across the country to the principal Miami village at Kekionga. No permanent military post was to be established, however, at the forks of the Maumee. Secretary of War Knox was fearful of results. While admitting that the Miami village presented itself "as superior to any other position," for the purpose of fixing a garrison to overawe the Indians at the west end of Lake Erie, on the Wabash and the Illinois, still, he was apprehensive that the establishment of a post at this place would be so opposed to the inclinations of the Indians generally as to bring on a war of some duration, and at the same time render the British garrisons "so uneasy with such a force impending over them, as notonly to occasion a considerable reinforcement of their upper posts, but to occasion their fomenting, secretly, at least, the opposition of the Indians." How any official of the government with the report of Antoine Gamelin in his hands, could hope to soften the animosity of the tribes by the taking of half measures, or to propitiate the British by a display of timidity, is hard to conceive. Four months later the hesitating secretary changed his course.
The army with which General Harmar marched out of Fort Washington in the latter days of September, 1790, to strike the Indian towns, was a motley array. Pennsylvania had only partly filled her quota. She had sent forth substitutes, old and infirm men, and boys. The troops from Kentucky had seemingly brought into camp every old musket and rifle in the district to be repaired. There was a scarcity of camp kettles and axes. The commissariat was miserably deficient. To add to the confusion, the Kentucky militia were divided in their allegiance between a certain Colonel William Trotter and Colonel John Hardin. Hardin was fearless, but extremely rash; Trotter was wholly incompetent. In two or three days the Kentuckians were formed into three battalions, under Majors Hall, McMullen, and Ray, with Trotter at their head. Harmar, an old army officer of the revolution, who felt a contempt for all militia, was in sore dismay, for the hasty muster was totally lacking in discipline, and impatient of restraint.
In numbers, as Colonel Roosevelt observes, this army was amply sufficient to do its work. It consisted of three battalions of Kentucky militia, one battalion ofPennsylvania militia, one battalion of light troops, mounted, and two battalions of the regular army under Major John Plasgrave Wyllys, and Major John Doughty; in all, fourteen hundred and fifty-three men. There was also a small company of artillery, with three small brass field pieces, under Captain William Ferguson. But to fight the hardy and experienced warriors of the wilderness in their native woods, required something more than hasty levies, loose discipline, and inexperienced Indian fighters. Harmar was not a Wayne. The expedition was doomed to failure from the very beginning.
The details of the march along Harmar's trace to the site of the present city of Fort Wayne it is not necessary to give. The army moved slowly, and gave the British agents under Alexander McKee plenty of time to furnish the redskins with arms and ammunition. The star of the Little Turtle was in the ascendant. He was now thirty-eight years of age, and while not a hereditary chieftain of the Miamis, his prowess and cunning had given him fame. The Indians never made a mistake in choosing a military leader. He watched the Americans from the very time of their leaving Fort Washington and purposed to destroy them at the Indian town.
On the fourteenth of October the army reached the River St. Marys, described by Captain John Armstrong as a pretty stream, and Hardin was sent forward with a company of regulars and six hundred militia to occupy Miamitown. He found the villages on both banks of the St. Joseph deserted by the foe. The English and French traders had fled from the main Indian town on what isnow known as the Lakeside shore of the St. Joseph, and had carried away most of their valuables. John Kinzie and Antoine Laselle were among the refugees. The savages had burned the houses in their main village to prevent their occupation by the Americans, and had buried vast quantities of corn and vegetables in Indian caches. One hundred and eighty-five houses of the Delawares, Shawnees and Miamis, were still left standing in the neighboring villages. All of these were destroyed by the torch after Harmar's arrival.
On Sunday the seventeenth, the main army crossed the Maumee river from the south and encamped on the point of land formed by the junction of the St. Joseph and the Maumee. It was a beautiful spot covered by the Indian corn fields and gardens. The Kentucky militia in parties of thirty and forty, throwing aside all discipline, wandered about in search of plunder. The Indians were wary. They lurked in the woods and thickets, biding the time when they might destroy the army in detail. Major McMullen now discovered the tracks of women and children in a pathway leading to the northwest. Harmar resolved to locate the Indian encampment and bring the savages to battle. On the morning of the eighteenth, Colonel Trotter was given the command of three hundred men, equipped with three days' provisions, and ordered to scour the country. The detachment after pursuing and killing two Indian horsemen, marched in various directions until nightfall, and returned to camp. Colonel Hardin was now given command of the expedition for the two remaining days.
An event now took place that at once exhibited both the wily strategy of the Little Turtle as a military leader, and the blundering bravado of Colonel John Hardin. On the morning of the nineteenth, Hardin moved forward over the Indian trail leading to the northwest. At a distance of some five or six miles from the main army, the detachment came upon an abandoned Indian camp. Here a halt was made, probably to examine the ground, when Hardin hurriedly ordered another advance, thinking he was close on the heels of fleeing red men. In the confusion attending this second movement, Captain Faulkner's company was left in the rear. Hardin now proceeded about three miles, and had routed two Indians out of the thicket, when he suddenly discovered that he had left Faulkner behind. He now dispatched Major James Fontaine with a part of the cavalry to locate that officer. About this time Captain John Armstrong, who was in command of a little company of thirty regulars marching with the militia, informed Hardin that a gun had been fired in front of them which he thought was an alarm gun, and that he had discovered the tracks of a horse that had come down the trail and had returned. Hardin with a dare-devil indifference paid no attention. He moved rapidly on without scouts and without flankers. Armstrong now warned Hardin a second time. He said that he had located the camp fires of the Indians and that they must be close at hand. Hardin rode on, swearing that the Indians would not fight.
All at once the army marched into the entrance of a narrow prairie, flanked on each side by heavy timber.At the far end of the prairie a fire had been kindled and some trinkets placed in the trail. The front columns came up to these baubles and halted—the whole detachment, save Faulkner's company, was in the defile. To the right and left of them, concealed in the underbrush, were three hundred Miamis, led by the Little Turtle. The Indians had divided and "back-tracked" the trail, and were now watching the Americans enter the trap. At the moment the army halted, a furious fire was opened, and all but nine of the militia at once fled, carrying Hardin along with them. The company of Faulkner, coming up in the rear, suddenly saw two horsemen approaching. Each of them had a wounded man behind him covered with blood. The fugitives were yelling: "For God's sake retreat! You will all be killed! There are Indians enough to eat you all up!" The regulars, however, true to tradition, stood their ground. All were stricken down in their tracks except five or six privates, and their captain and ensign. Captain Armstrong sank to his neck in a morass, and the savages did not find him. "The Indians remained on the field; and the ensuing night, held the dance of victory, over the dead and dying bodies of their enemies, exulting with frantic gestures, and savage yells, during the ceremony." The captain was a witness of it all. The scene of this conflict was at what is now known as Heller's Corners, eleven miles northwest of Fort Wayne, at the point where the Goshen road crosses the Eel river.
On the day of Hardin's defeat the main body of the army had moved down the north bank of the Maumeeabout two miles and had occupied the Shawnee village of Chillicothe. On the twentieth, Harmar ordered the burning and destruction of every house and wigwam in the town, and censured the "shameful cowardly conduct of the militia who ran away, and threw down their arms without firing scarcely a single gun." He was in a fury, and was now determined to march back to Fort Washington, and on the twenty-first of October the whole army moved back for a distance of seven miles and encamped at a point south and east of the present site of Fort Wayne.
Hardin was chagrined. He determined if possible to retrieve his own credit and that of the Kentucky militia. In the night he approached Harmar. He told the general that the Indians had probably returned to their towns as soon as the army had left them. Now was the time for a grand surprise. Harmar, after much importunity, gave his consent to a second expedition. Late in the night, three hundred and forty picked militiamen and sixty regulars started back for Kekionga. The detachment marched in three columns, the federal troops in the center with Captain Joseph Asheton, a brave officer and a good fighter at their head; the militia were on both flanks. Major John P. Wyllys and Colonel Hardin rode at the front.
The sun has risen, and the advance guards of the small army now ascend the wooded heights overlooking the Maumee. Beyond lie the brown woods, the meadows, and the Indian corn fields. A few savages appear, digging here and there for hidden treasures of corn. Allare seemingly unaware of hostile approach. Wyllys now halts the regulars, with the militia in the advance, and forms his plan of battle. Major Hall with his battalion is to swing around the bend of the Maumee, cross the St. Marys and come in on the western side of the Indian towns. There he is to wait for the main attack. Major McMullen's battalion, Major Fontaine's cavalry and Wyllys with his regulars are to cross the ford in front, encompass the savages on the south, east and north, and drive them into the St. Joseph. Hemmed in on all sides, exposed to a murderous crossfire, their escape will be impossible. Strict orders are given that the troops are on no account to separate, but the battalions are to support each other as the circumstances may require.
What a terrible fate awaits the regulars. The Little Turtle had observed that in Trotter's expedition on the morning of the eighteenth, the four field officers of the militia had left their commands to pursue a lone Indian on horseback. As the militia emerge on the northern bank of the Maumee a few warriors expose themselves, and the Kentuckians disregarding all orders, instantly give chase. The Indians fly in all directions, the militia after them, and the regulars are left alone. This is the opportune moment. As the regulars cross the ford and climb the opposite bank, the painted and terrible warriors of the Miami chief arise from their hiding places and fire at close range. Wyllys falls, his officers fall, all but a handful are remorselessly mowed down, scalped and mutilated, and the day is won. Thus for the second timehas the cunning Little Turtle completely outwitted his paleface antagonists.
The remaining details of this disordered conflict are soon told. The parties of militia under McMullen and Fontaine, sweeping up the east side of the St. Joseph, drove a party of Indians into the river near the point of the old French fort. Fontaine was hit by a dozen bullets and fell forward in his saddle. The Indians were now caught between Hall's battalion on the west and McMullen's riflemen and Fontaine's cavalry on the east. A brief massacre ensued, and Captain Asheton and two soldiers killed a number of the savages in the water with their bayonets. The red men finally charged on Hall's battalion—it gave way—and they made their escape.
Captain Joseph Asheton in commenting on this last battle at the Maumee, makes the following observation: "If Colonel (Major) Hall, who had gained his ground undiscovered, had not wantonly disobeyed his orders, by firing on a single Indian, the surprise must have been complete." The question of whether there was any surprise at all or not, remains in doubt. The Fort Wayne Manuscript, which possesses some historical value at least, says that about eight hundred Indians were present; three hundred Miamis under the Little Turtle, and a body of five hundred more savages, consisting of Shawnees, Delawares, Potawatomi, Chippewas and Ottawas. That the Shawnees were commanded by Blue Jacket, and the Ottawas and Chippewas by an Ottawa chief named Agaskawak. The battle itself, was skillfully planned on the part of the savages. They must have known that themilitiamen were in the vanguard and would cross the Maumee first. They rightly calculated that the impetuosity of the Kentuckians and their lack of discipline, would lead them at once into a headlong charge. This would make the destruction of the regulars comparatively easy and lead to the demoralization of the whole detachment. A plan so well designed as this, and so skillfully executed, is not formed on the instant. Besides, it is not probable that the Little Turtle remained out of touch with the American army while it was in the immediate vicinity of the Indian towns.
On November sixth, Governor St. Clair wrote to the secretary of war that the savages had received "a most terrible stroke." It is true that they had suffered a considerable damage in the burning of their cabins and the destruction of their corn, but the total loss of warriors was only about fifteen or twenty. The American army, on the other hand, had lost one hundred and eighty-three in killed, and thirty-one wounded. Among the slain were Major Wyllys and Lieutenant Ebenezer Frothingham, of the regular troops, and Major Fontaine, Captains Thorp, McMurtrey and Scott, Lieutenants Clark and Rogers, and Ensigns Bridges, Sweet, Higgins and Thielkeld, of the militia.
"The outcome of the campaign," says B. J. Griswold, the Fort Wayne historian, "considered from the most favorable angle, gave naught to the American government to increase its hopes of the pacification of the west." On the other hand, the savages, their spirit of revenge aroused to the white heat of the fiercest hatred, assembledat the site of their ruined villages, and there, led to renewed defiance of the Americans through the fiery speech of Simon Girty, set about the work of preparation to meet the next American force which might be sent against them. In a body, these savages, led by Little Turtle, LeGris and Blue Jacket, proceeded to Detroit, where they "paraded the streets, uttering their demoniac scalp yelps while bearing long poles strung with the scalps of many American soldiers."
Governor St. Clair expressed regret that a post had not been established; it would be the surest means of obliging the Indians to be at peace with the United States. On December second, 1790, Major John Hamtramck, writing from Vincennes, gave it as his opinion that "nothing can establish peace with the Indians as long as the British keep possession of the upper posts, for they are daily sowing the seed of discord betwixt the measures of our government and the Indians." He further summed up the situation as follows: "The Indians never can be subdued by just going to their towns and burning their houses and corn, and returning the next day, for it is no hardship for the Indians to live without; they make themselves perfectly comfortable on meat alone; and as for houses, they can build with as much facility as a bird does his nest." Speaking of this campaign and of its effects on the Miamis, Roosevelt says that "the blow was only severe enough to anger and unite them, not to cripple or crush them. All the other western tribes made common cause with them. They banded together and warred openly; and their vengeful forays on the frontierincreased in number, so that the suffering of the settlers was great. Along the Ohio people lived in dread of tomahawk and scalping knife; the attacks fell unceasingly on all the settlements from Marietta to Louisville."
The expedition of Hamtramck against the Kickapoo towns on the Vermilion river was a failure. He destroyed the Indian village at the site of the old Shelby farm, near Eugene, but the warriors being absent, he returned to Vincennes. Some local historian has written a bloodcurdling description of the merciless massacre of old men, women and children by Hamtramck's army, but this tale is an injustice both to the worthy Major and the soldiers under him. The only truthful part of this sketch is that "the adjoining terrace lands were filled with thousands of the greatest varieties of plum bushes and grape vines and it was known as the great plum patch." Since General Harrison's march to Tippecanoe the crossing at this river has been known as "the Army Ford."
—The Kentucky raids on the Miami country along the Wabash in 1791.
The effects of Harmar's campaign were soon apparent. In the closing months of 1790, the citizens of Ohio, Monongahela, Harrison, Randolph, Kanawha, Green-Briar, Montgomery, and Russel counties, in western Virginia, sent an appeal for immediate aid to the governor of that state, stating that their frontier on a line of nearly four hundred miles along the Ohio, was continually exposed to Indian attack; that the efforts of the government had hitherto been ineffectual; that the federal garrisons along the Ohio could afford them no protection; that they had every reason to believe that the late defeat of the army at the hands of the Indians, would lead to an increase of the savage invasions; that it was better for the government to support them where they were, no matter what the expense might be, than to compel them to quit the country after the expenditure of so much blood and treasure, when all were aware that a frontier must be supported somewhere. On the second of January, 1791, between "sunset and daylight-in," the Indians surprised the new settlements on the Muskingum, called the Big Bottom, forty miles above Marietta, killing eleven men, one woman, and two children. General Rufus Putnam,writing to President Washington, on the eighth of the same month, said that the little garrison at Fort Harmar, consisting of a little over twenty men, could afford no protection to the settlements. That the whole number of effective men in the Muskingum country would not exceed two hundred and eighty-seven, and that many of them were badly armed, and that unless the government speedily sent a body of troops for their protection, they were "a ruined people." Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, were all being sorely pressed by savage incursions.
It was a fortunate circumstance for the future welfare of the great west, that George Washington was president of the United States. Great numbers of the people in the Atlantic states, according to Secretary of War Knox, were opposed to the further prosecution of the Indian war. They considered that the sacrifice of blood and treasure in such a conflict would far exceed any advantages that might possibly be reaped by it. The result of Harmar's campaign had been very disheartening, and the government was in straitened circumstances, both as to men and means. But by strenuous efforts, President Washington induced Congress to pass an act, on the second day of March, 1791, for raising and adding another regiment to the military establishment of the United States, "and for making further provision for the protection of the frontiers." Governor Arthur St. Clair was appointed as the new commander-in-chief of the army of the northwest, and Colonel Richard Butler, of Pennsylvania, was promoted and placed second incommand. St. Clair was authorized to raise an army of three thousand men, but as there were only "two small regiments of regular infantry," the remainder of the force was to be raised by special levies of six months' men, and by requisitions of militia. In the meantime, the government, owing to the pressing demands of the western people, had authorized the establishment of a local Board of War for the district of Kentucky. This Board was composed of Brigadier-General Charles Scott, leader of the Kentucky militia, Harry Innes, John Brown, Benjamin Logan and Isaac Shelby, and they were vested with discretionary powers "to provide for the defense of the settlements and the prosecution of the war." The government had now fully determined on a definite plan of action. First, a messenger was to be dispatched to the Wabash Indians with an offer of peace. This messenger was to be accompanied by the Cornplanter, of the Seneca Nation, and such other Iroquois chiefs as might be friendly to the United States. Second, in case this mission of peace should fail, expeditions were to be organized to strike the Wea, the Eel river and the Kickapoo towns, in order to prevent them from giving aid to the main Miami and Shawnee villages at the head of the Maumee. Third, a grand expedition under the command of St. Clair himself, was to capture Kekionga, establish a military post there, and check the activities of both the Indians and British in the valleys of the Wabash and the Maumee. The instructions of the secretary of war to General St. Clair with reference to Kekionga were specific. "You will commence your march for the Miami village, in order toestablish a strong and permanent military post at that place. In your advance, you will establish such posts of communication with Fort Washington, on the Ohio, as you may judge proper. The post at the Miami village is intended for the purpose of awing and curbing the Indians in that quarter, and as the only preventive of future hostilities. It ought, therefore, to be rendered secure against all attempts and insults by the Indians. The garrison which should be stationed there ought not only to be sufficient for the defense of the place, but always to afford a detachment of five or six hundred men, either to chastise any of the Wabash, or other hostile Indians, or to secure any convoy of provisions. The establishment of such a post is considered as an important object of the campaign, and is to take place in all events."
First as to the mission of peace. In December, 1790, the Cornplanter and other chiefs of the Seneca tribe, being in Philadelphia, "measures were taken to impress them with the moderation of the United States, as it respected the war with the western Indians; that the coercive measures against them had been the consequence of their refusal to listen to the invitations of peace, and a continuance of their depredations on the frontiers." The Cornplanter seemed to be favorably impressed. On the twelfth of March, Colonel Thomas Proctor, as the agent and representative of the United States government, was sent forward to the Seneca towns. His instructions from the secretary of war were, to induce the Cornplanter and as many of the other chiefs of the Senecas as possible, to go with him as messengers of peace to theMiami and Wabash Indians. They were first to repair to Sandusky on Lake Erie, and there hold a conference with the Delaware and Wyandot tribes who were inclined to be friendly. Later they were to go directly to the Miami village at Kekionga, there to assemble the Miami confederates, and induce them to go to Fort Washington at Cincinnati, and enter into a treaty of peace with General St. Clair.
On the twenty-seventh of April, Proctor arrived at Buffalo Creek, six miles from Fort Erie, situated on the north side of the lake, and twenty-five miles distant from Fort Niagara on the south shore of Lake Ontario. Both posts were held by the British. Here he found the Farmer's Brother, Red Jacket, and practically all of the Iroquois chieftains under the influence of the British officers. The Farmer's Brother, "was fully regimented as a colonel, red faced with blue, as belonging to some royal regiment, and equipped with a pair of the best epaulets." The Indians had practically given up hunting and were being directly fed and supported out of the English store-houses. From the very beginning, Red Jacket and the Farmer's Brother questioned his credentials. Proctor learned from a French trader, that about seven days prior to his arrival, Colonel Butler of the British Indian department and Joseph Brant had been in the village. They had told the Senecas to pay no attention to Proctor's talk, and to give him no aid in going to the Miamis, for they would all be killed.
In two or three days Proctor succeeded in getting the Indians into a council. He argued that it was the dutyof all men, red or white, to warn the Miamis to discontinue their thefts and murders, before a decisive blow should be "levelled at them" by the United States. The lives of hundreds of their fellow men might thus be saved. He invited them to bring forward any gentleman of veracity to examine his papers, or to hear his speeches. In answer to this, Red Jacket proposed that the council fire be removed to Fort Niagara, so that all proceedings might take place under the eyes of the British counsellors. Proctor would not assent to this course, but indicated that he had no objection to the British officers being present. They were accordingly sent for, but in the meantime the Farmer's Brother and other British adherents were telling the Indians that Proctor proposed taking them to the "verge of the ocean" and that the treaty grounds were twelve months' journey away.
Shortly afterwards Colonel Butler with a staff of British army officers came into camp. Butler was bold, and told the Indians in Proctor's presence that Colonel Joseph Brant, of Grand River, and Alexander McKee, the British agent of Indian affairs at Detroit, were now preparing to go among the Indians at war with the Americans, "to know what their intentions were, whether for war or for peace;" that nothing must be done until their return, for should any embassy be undertaken, this would certainly bring down the wrath of war upon themselves, and result in the death of all, for the Miamis were angry with them already.
A strange event now happened. The Iroquois women suddenly appeared in the Indian councils and secondedthe pleas of the American peace commissioner. Seated with the Indian chiefs, they easily swung the scales, and carried the day. Red Jacket and other chiefs and warriors were appointed to accompany Proctor to the west. But the English now played their final trump card. On the fifth of May, Proctor had written to Colonel Gordon, the British commandant at Niagara, to obtain permission to freight one of the schooners on Lake Erie, to transport the American envoy and such Indian chiefs as might accompany him, to Sandusky. He now received a cold and insolent answer that at once blasted all his hopes. Gordon refused to regard Proctor "in any other light than a private agent," and peremptorily refused to let him charter any of the craft upon the lake. This made the contemplated mission impossible.
Let us now see what Alexander McKee and Joseph Brant were doing in the west. Shortly before Proctor's arrival at Buffalo Creek, Brant had received private instructions from British headquarters to set out for the Grand River, and to go from thence to Detroit. It appears that shortly after Harmar's defeat, the confederated nations of the Chippewas, Potawatomi, Hurons, Shawnees, Delawares, Ottawas, and Miamis, together with the Mohawks, had sent a deputation of their chiefs to the headquarters of Lord Dorchester at Quebec, to sound him on the proposition as to what aid or assistance they might expect in the event of a continuance of the war. They also demanded to know whether the British had, by the treaty of peace, given away any of their lands to the Americans. Dorchester, while hostile to the new republic,and firmly resolved to hold the posts, was not ready as yet to come out in the open. He informed the tribes that the line marked out in the treaty of peace, "implied no more than that beyond that line the King, their father, would not extend his interference;" that the king only retained possession of the posts until such time as all the differences between him and the United States should be settled; that in making peace, the king had not given away any of their lands, "inasmuch as the King never had any right to their lands, other than to such as had been fairly ceded by themselves, with their own free consent, by public convention and sale. * * * * In conclusion, he assured the deputation, that although the Indians had their friendship and good will, the Provincial Government, had no power to embark in a war with the United States, and could only defend themselves if attacked."
In strange contradiction to the Canadian governor's words, Alexander McKee came to the Rapids of the Miami in the month of April to hold a council with the Wabash confederates. Thither came Brant, summoned from Buffalo Creek. McKee waited three months for the gathering of the tribes, but about July first they were all assembled. "Not only the Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, Ottawas, Potawatomis and others," says Roosevelt, "who had openly taken the hatchet against the Americans, but also representatives of the Six Nations, and tribes of savages from lands so remote that they carried no guns; but warred with bows, spears, and tomahawks, and were clad in buffalo-robes instead of blankets. McKee in hisspeech to them did not incite them to war. On the contrary, he advised them, in guarded language, to make peace with the United States; but only upon terms consistent with their "honor and interest." He assured them that, whatever they did, he wished to know what they desired; and that the sole purpose of the British was to promote the welfare of the confederated Indians. Such very cautious advice was not of a kind to promote peace; and the goods furnished the savages at the council included not only cattle, corn and tobacco, but also quantities of powder and balls." England was determined that the Miami chieftains should command the valleys of the Wabash and the Maumee, and while breathing forth accents to deceive the credulous, were arming the red men with the instruments of war.
On the sixteenth of May, the American prisoner, Thomas Rhea, captured by a party of Delawares and "Munsees" arrives at Sandusky. An Indian captain is there with one hundred and fifty warriors. Parties are coming in daily with prisoners and scalps. Alarm comes in on the twenty-fourth of May that a large body of American troops in three columns are moving towards the Miami towns. The Indians burn their houses and move to Roche de Bout, on the Maumee. Here are Colonels Joseph Brant and Alexander McKee, with Captains Bunbury and Silvie, of the British troops. They are living in clever cabins built by the Potawatomi and other Indians, eighteen miles above Lake Erie. They have great stores of corn, pork, peas and other provisions, which, together with arms and ammunition, they are daily issuing to theIndians. Savages are coming in in parties of one, two, three, four and five hundred at a time, and receiving supplies from McKee, and going up the Maumee to the Miami villages. Pirogues, loaded with the munitions of war are being rowed up the same stream by French-Canadians. They are preparing for an American attack.
Rhea hears some things. While he is on the Maumee he tells Colonel McKee and other British officers that he has seen Colonel Thomas Proctor on his way to the Senecas and has talked with him. That Proctor told him he was on his way to Sandusky and the Miami villages, and that he expected the Cornplanter to accompany him and bring about peace; that he (Proctor), expected to get shipping at Fort Erie, The British officers who hear these things, say that if they were at Lake Erie, Proctor would get no shipping. The Mohawks and other Indians declare that if Proctor, or any other Yankee messenger, arrives, he will not carry back any message. Simon Girty and one Pat Hill assert, that Proctor should never return, even if he had a hundred Senecas with him.
On the ninth of March, 1791, the secretary of war issued orders to General Charles Scott of Kentucky, to lead an expedition against the Wea or Ouiatenon towns on the Wabash. The expedition was not to proceed until the tenth day of May, as hopes were entertained that Proctor might negotiate a peace. The force to be employed was to consist of seven hundred and fifty mounted volunteers, including officers. All Indians who ceased to resist were to be spared. Women and children, and as manywarriors as possible, were to be taken prisoners, but treated with humanity.
The tenth day of May arrived, but Proctor was not heard from. The hostility of the savages was daily increasing. Scott was delayed a few days longer in the hope that intelligence might arrive, but on the twenty-third of May he crossed the Ohio at the mouth of the Kentucky and plunged into the wilderness. Before him lay one hundred and fifty-five miles of forest, swamp and stream. The rain fell in torrents and every river was beyond its banks. His horses were soon worn down and his provisions spoiled, but he pressed on. On the morning of the first of June, he was entering the prairies south of the Wea plain and approaching the hills of High Gap. He now saw a lone Indian horseman to his right and tried to intercept him, but failed. He pushed on rapidly to the Indian towns.
On the morning of June first, 1791, the landscape of the Wea is a thing of beauty. To the north lies the long range of the Indian Hills, crowned with forest trees, and scarped with many a sharp ravine. At the southern edge of these hills flows the Wabash, winding in and out with graceful curves, and marked in its courses by a narrow fringe of woodland. To the east lies Wea creek, jutting out into the plain with a sharp turn, and then gliding on again to the river. Within this enclosure of wood and stream lie the meadows of the Ouiatenons, dotted here and there with pleasant groves, and filled with the aroma of countless blossoms.
"Awake from dreams! The scene changes. The morning breath of the first day of summer has kissed the grass and flowers, but it brings no evil omen to the Kickapoo villages on this shore, nor to the five Wea towns on the adjacent plain. High noon has come, but still birds and grass and flowers bask in the meridian splendor of a June sunshine, unconscious of danger or the trampling of hostile feet. One o'clock! And over High Gap hostile horsemen are galloping. They separate; one division wheels to the left led by the relentless Colonel Hardin, still smarting from the defeat of the last year by the great Miami, Little Turtle. But the main division, led by the noble Colonel Scott, afterward the distinguished soldier and governor of Kentucky, moves straight forward on to Ouiatenon."
Scott's advance since the morning has been swift and steady. He fears that the Indian horseman will give the alarm. At one o'clock he comes over High Gap, a high pass through the hills to the southwest of the present town of Shadeland. To the left he perceives two Indian villages. One is at a distance of two miles and the other at four. They were probably situated in the prairie groves. He now detaches Colonel John Hardin with sixty mounted infantry and a troop of light horse under Captain McCoy, and they swing to the left. Scott moves briskly forward with the main body for the villages of the Weas, at the mouth of Wea creek. The smoke of the camp fires is plainly discernible.
Map Showing the Wea Plains and the Line of Scott's March, Tippecanoe County, Indiana.Drawing by HeatonMap Showing the Wea Plains and the Line of Scott's March, Tippecanoe County, Indiana.ToList
Drawing by Heaton
Map Showing the Wea Plains and the Line of Scott's March, Tippecanoe County, Indiana.ToList
As he turns the point of timber fringing the Wea, and in the vicinity of what is now the Shadeland Farm,he sees a cabin to the right. Captain Price is ordered to assault it with forty men. Two warriors are killed. Scott now gains the summit of the eminence crowning the south bank of the Wabash. The Wea villages are below him and scattered along the river. All is in confusion and the Indians are trying to escape. On the opposite shore is a town of the Kickapoos. He instantly orders his lieutenant-commandant, James Wilkinson, to charge the Weas with the first battalion, and the eager Kentuckians rush to the river's edge, just as the last of five canoes loaded with warriors, has pushed from the shore. With deadly and terrible aim the riflemen empty the boats to the last man.
In the meantime, a brisk fire has been kept up from the Kickapoo camp. Scott now determines to cross the river and capture the town, but the recent rains have swelled the stream and he cannot ford it. He orders Wilkinson to cross at a ford two miles above, and detaches King's and Logsdon's companies, under conduct of Major Barbee, to cross the river below. Wilkinson fails, for the river is swift and very high. Barbee is more successful. Many of the hardy frontiersmen breast the stream, and others pass in a small canoe. But the instant the Kentuckians foot the opposite shore, the Indians discover them and flee.
About this time Scott hears from Colonel Hardin. The redoubtable old Indian fighter who was saved to die in the service of his country, has pushed on and captured the two villages observed from High Gap, and is encumbered with many prisoners. He now discovers a strongervillage farther to the left, and proceeds to attack. This latter village is probably in the neighborhood of the present site of Granville, and opposite the point where the Riviere De Bois Rouge, or Indian creek, enters the Wabash. Scott at once detaches Captain Brown and his company to support the Colonel, but nothing can stop the impetuous Kentuckian, and before Brown arrives, "the business is done," and Hardin joins the main body before sunset, having killed six warriors and taken fifty-two prisoners. "Captain Bull," says Scott, "the warrior who discovered me in the morning, had gained the main town, and given the alarm a short time before me; but the villages to my left were uninformed of my approach, and had no retreat."
The first day of fighting had been very encouraging. The next morning Scott determined to destroy Kethtipecanunck, or Tippecanoe, eighteen miles up the river. His knowledge of geography was poor, for he talks about Kethtipecanunck being at the mouth of the Eel river, but his fighting qualities were perfect. On examination, however, he discovers that his men and horses are greatly worn down and crippled by the long march and the fighting of the day before. Three hundred and sixty men are at last selected to make the march on foot. At half after five in the evening they start out under the command of lieutenant-commandant Wilkinson and at one o'clock the next day they have returned, having completely burned and destroyed what Scott denominated as "the most important settlement of the enemy in that quarter of the federal territory." Wilkinson's detachment had reachedthe village near daybreak. The advance columns of the Kentuckians charged impetuously into the town just as the Indians were crossing the Wabash, and a brief skirmish ensued from the opposite shores, during which several Indian warriors were killed and two Americans wounded. Many of the inhabitants of Kethtipecanunck were French traders and lived in a state of semi-civilization. "By the books, letters, and other documents found there," says Scott, "it is evident that place was in close connection with, and dependent upon, Detroit; a large quantity of corn, a variety of household goods, peltry, and other articles, were burned with this village, which consisted of about seventy houses, many of them well furnished." Scott lamented that the condition of his troops prevented him from sweeping to the head of the Wabash. He says he had the kind of men to do it, but he lacked fresh horses and provisions and was forced to return to Kentucky. On the fourth of June, he released sixteen of the weakest and most infirm of his prisoners and gave them a written address of peace to the Wabash tribes. It was written in a firm, manly tone, but without grandiloquence. He now destroyed the villages at Ouiatenon, the growing corn and pulse, and on the same day of the fourth, set out for Kentucky. The grand old man, who was to fight with Wayne at Fallen Timbers, had done well. Without the loss of a single man, and having only five wounded, he had killed thirty-two warriors "of size and figure," and taken fifty-eight prisoners. He took a receipt from Captain Joseph Asheton of the First United States Regiment at Fort Steuben, for forty-one prisoners.
On the twenty-fifth of June, governor St. Clair wrote to the Kentucky Board of War to send a second expedition against the Wabash towns. On the fifth day of July the Board appointed James Wilkinson as the commander. The troops were ordered to rendezvous at Fort Washington, by the twentieth of July, "well mounted on horseback, well armed, and provided with thirty days' provisions." In certain instructions from Governor St. Clair to General Wilkinson, of date July thirty-first, Wilkinson's attention is called to a Kickapoo town "in the prairie, northward and westward of L'Anguille," about sixty miles. This town will be mentioned later. Wilkinson was directed also to restrain his command from "scalping the dead." With a Kentuckian, the only good Indian was a dead one.
On the first day of August, Wilkinson rode out of Cincinnati with five hundred and twenty-five men. His destined point of attack was the Eel river towns, about six miles above the present city of Logansport. The country he had to pass through was mostly unknown, full of quagmires and marshes, and extremely hard on his horses. He made a feint for the Miami village at Kekionga, but on the morning of the fourth, he turned directly northwest and headed for Kenapacomaqua, or L'Anguille, as the Eel river towns were known. After some brief skirmishes, with small parties of warriors and much plunging and sinking in the bogs, he crossed the Wabash about four and one half miles above the mouth of the Eel river, and striking an Indian path, was soon in front of the Indian towns. He now dismounted and planned an attack. The second battalion was to cross the river, detour, and comein on the rear of the villages. The first battalion was to lie perdue until the maneuver was executed, when a simultaneous charge was to be made on all quarters of the town. Before the plan could be executed, however, the troops were discovered, whereupon an instant charge was made by plunging into the river and attacking the town on the front. Six warriors were killed, "and in the hurry and confusion of the charge, two squaws and a child."
Wilkinson found the towns of the Eel river tribes scattered along Eel river for a distance of three miles. These villages were separated by almost impassable bogs, and "impervious thickets of plum, hazel and black-jack." The head chief of the tribe, with his prisoners and a number of families were out digging a root, which the Indians substituted for the potato. A short time before Wilkinson arrived, most of the warriors had gone up the river to a French store to purchase ammunition. This ammunition had come from Kekionga on the same day. Several acres of green corn with the ears in the milk were about the town. All of this was destroyed. Thirty-four prisoners were taken and a captive released.
After encamping in the town for the night, Wilkinson started the next morning for the Kickapoo town "in the prairie." He considered his position as one of danger, for he says he was in the "bosom of the Ouiatenon country," one hundred and eighty miles from succor, and not more than one and a half days' forced march from the Potawatomi, Shawnees and Delawares. This was, of course, largely matter of conjecture.
The Kickapoo town that Wilkinson was headed for was in fact about sixty miles from Kenapacomaqua and in the prairie. But it was south and west of the Eel river villages instead of north and west. The imperfect geographical knowledge of the times led Wilkinson to believe it was on the Illinois river, but it was in fact on Big Pine creek, near the present town of Oxford, in Benton County, Indiana. Wilkinson was right in one regard, however, for he knew that the village he sought was on the great Potawatomi trail leading south from Lake Michigan. This trail passed down from the neighborhood of what is now Blue Island, in Chicago, south through Momence and Iroquois, Illinois, south and east again through Parish Grove, in Benton County, across Big Pine Creek and on to Ouiatenon and Kethtipecanunck, or Tippecanoe. It was a great fur trading route and of great commercial importance in that day. This Kickapoo village "in the prairie," was about twenty miles west of the present city of Lafayette, and about two and one-half miles from the present site of Oxford, at a place known in later years as "Indian Hill." It was well known to Gurdon S. Hubbard, who visited it in the early part of the last century and had an interesting talk with the Kickapoos there about the battle of Tippecanoe. Jesse S. Birch, of Oxford, an accurate local historian, has preserved an interesting account of this village as seen by the early settlers in the years from 1830 to 1840. The Kickapoos had, at that time, moved on to other places, but bands of the Potawatomi were still on the ground. "Pits," says Birch, "in which the Indians stored their corn, were to be seenuntil a few years ago. The burying grounds were about half a mile northwest of the village and only a short distance west of the Stembel gravel pit. The Potawatomi were peaceful, John Wattles, who describes their winter habitations, visited them often in his boyhood days. Pits, the sides of which were lined with furs, were dug four or five feet deep, and their tents, with holes at the top to permit the escape of smoke, were put over them. By keeping a fire on the ground in the center of the pit, they lived in comparative comfort, so far as heat and Indian luxuries were concerned, during the coldest weather. There are evidences of white men having camped near this village. Isaac W. Lewis found an English sovereign while at play on his father's farm, but a short distance from the site of the village. In the early 30's, his father and eldest brother, while plowing, found several pieces of English money." The glittering coins of "the great father," had easily found their way into savage hands.
But Wilkinson was not destined to strike this main Kickapoo town. He encamped the first night six miles from Kenapacomaqua, and the next day he marched west and then northwest passing between what are now the points of Royal Center and Logansport, and "launched into the boundless prairies of the west with the intention to pursue that course until I could strike a road which leads from the Potawatomi of Lake Michigan immediately to the town I sought." Here for eight hours he floundered about in an endless succession of sloughs and swamps, wearing out his horses and exhausting his men."A chain of thin groves extending in the direction of the Wabash at this time presented to my left." Wilkinson now extricated himself from the swamps and gained the Tippecanoe trail, and camped at seven o'clock in the evening. He had marched a distance of about thirty miles, and several of his horses were completely broken down.