Part 6 (2/2)

The detachment after pursuing and killing two Indian hors.e.m.e.n, 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 hors.e.m.e.n approaching. Each of them had a wounded man behind him covered with blood. The fugitives were yelling: ”For G.o.d'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 mora.s.s, 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 h.e.l.ler'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 Maumee about 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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. All are 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, encompa.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 time has 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. .h.i.t 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 ma.s.sacre 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 Ma.n.u.script, 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 the militiamen 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, a.s.sembled at 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 hards.h.i.+p 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 frontier increased 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 ma.s.sacre 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.”

CHAPTER XII

SCOTT AND WILKINSON

--_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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 circ.u.mstance for the future welfare of the great west, that George Was.h.i.+ngton 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 circ.u.mstances, both as to men and means. But by strenuous efforts, President Was.h.i.+ngton induced Congress to pa.s.s 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 in command. 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 to establish a strong and permanent military post at that place. In your advance, you will establish such posts of communication with Fort Was.h.i.+ngton, 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.”

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