Volume IV Part 2 (2/2)
Desperate Fighting Follows.
A furious battle followed. After the first onset the Indians fought in silence, no sound coming from them save the incessant rattle of their fire, as they crept from log to log, from tree to tree, ever closer and closer. The soldiers stood in close order, in the open; their musketry and artillery fire made a tremendous noise, but did little damage to a foe they could hardly see. Now and then, through the hanging smoke, terrible figures flitted, painted black and red, the feathers of the hawk and eagle braided in their long scalp-locks; but save for these glimpses, the soldiers knew the presence of their sombre enemy only from the fearful rapidity with which their comrades fell dead and wounded in the ranks. They never even knew the numbers or leaders of the Indians.
At the time it was supposed that they outnumbered the whites; but it is probable that the reverse was the case, and it may even be that they were not more than half as numerous. It is said that the chief who led them, both in council and battle, was Little Turtle, the Miami. At any rate, there were present all the chiefs and picked warriors of the Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots, and Miamis, and all the most reckless and adventurous young braves from among the Iroquois and the Indians of the Upper Lakes, as well as many of the ferocious whites and half-breeds who dwelt in the Indian villages.
Fury and Skill of the Indians.
The Indians fought with the utmost boldness and ferocity, and with the utmost skill and caution. Under cover of the smoke of the heavy but harmless fire from the army they came up so close that they shot the troops down as hunters slaughter a herd of standing buffalo. Watching their chance, they charged again and again with the tomahawk, gliding into close quarters while their bewildered foes were still blindly firing into the smoke-shrouded woods. The men saw no enemy as they stood in the ranks to load and shoot; in a moment, without warning, dark faces frowned through the haze, the war-axes gleamed, and on the frozen ground the weapons clattered as the soldiers fell. As the comrades of the fallen sprang forward to avenge them, the lithe warriors vanished as rapidly as they had appeared; and once more the soldiers saw before them only the dim forest and the s.h.i.+fting smoke wreaths, with vague half glimpses of the hidden foe, while the steady singing of the Indian bullets never ceased, and on every hand the bravest and steadiest fell one by one.
The Troops at First Fight Resolutely.
Bravery of the Officers in Command.
At first the army as a whole fought firmly; indeed there was no choice, for it was ringed by a wall of flame. The officers behaved very well, cheering and encouraging their men; but they were the special targets of the Indians, and fell rapidly. St. Clair and Butler by their cool fearlessness in the hour of extreme peril made some amends for their shortcomings as commanders. They walked up and down the lines from flank to flank, pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing one another; for the two lines of battle were facing outward, and each general was busy trying to keep his wing from falling back. St. Clair's clothes were pierced by eight bullets, but he was himself untouched. He wore a blanket coat with a hood; he had a long queue, and his thick gray hair flowed from under his three-cornered hat; a lock of his hair was carried off by a bullet.
[Footnote: McBride's ”Pioneer Biography,” I., 165. Narrative of Thomas Irwin, a packer, who was in the fight. There are of course discrepancies between the various accounts; in the confusion of such a battle even the most honest eye-witnesses could not see all things alike.] Several times he headed the charges, sword in hand. General Butler had his arm broken early in the fight, but he continued to walk to and fro along the line, his coat off and the wounded arm in a sling. Another bullet struck him in the side, inflicting a mortal wound; and he was carried to the middle of the camp, where he sat propped up by knapsacks. Men and horses were falling around him at every moment. St. Clair sent an aide, Lieutenant Ebenezer Denny, to ask how he was; he displayed no anxiety, and answered that he felt well. While speaking, a young cadet, who stood nearby, was. .h.i.t on the kneecap by a spent ball, and at the shock cried aloud; whereat the General laughed so that his wounded side shook. The aide left him; and there is no further certain record of his fate except that he was slain; but it is said that in one of the Indian rushes a warrior bounded towards him and sunk the tomahawk in his brain before any one could interfere.
The Indians Capture the Artillery.
Charges and Counter-Charges.
Instead of being awed by the bellowing artillery, the Indians made the gunners a special object of attack. Man after man was picked off, until every officer was killed but one, who was wounded; and most of the privates also were slain or disabled. The artillery was thus almost silenced, and the Indians, emboldened by success, swarmed forward and seized the guns, while at the same time a part of the left wing of the army began to shrink back. But the Indians were now on comparatively open ground, where the regulars could see them and get at them; and under St. Clair's own leaders.h.i.+p the troops rushed fiercely at the savages, with fixed bayonets, and drove them back to cover. By this time the confusion and disorder were great; while from every hollow and gra.s.s patch, from behind every stump and tree and fallen log, the Indians continued their fire. Again and again the officers led forward the troops in bayonet charges; and at first the men followed them with a will. Each charge seemed for a moment to be successful, the Indians rising in swarms and running in headlong flight from the bayonets. In one of the earliest, in which Colonel Darke led his battalion, the Indians were driven several hundred yards, across the branch of the Wabash; but when the Colonel halted and rallied his men, he found that the savages had closed in behind him, and he had to fight his way back, while the foe he had been driving at once turned and hara.s.sed his rear.
He was himself wounded, and lost most of his command. On re-entering camp he found the Indians again in possession of the artillery and baggage, from which they were again driven; they had already scalped the slain who lay about the guns. Major Thomas Butler had his thigh broken by a bullet; but he continued on horseback, in command of his battalion, until the end of the fight, and led his men in one of the momentarily successful bayonet charges. The only regular regiment present lost every officer, killed or wounded. The commander of the Kentucky militia, Colonel Oldham, was killed early in the action, while trying to rally his men and d.a.m.ning them for cowards.
Inferiority of the Troops to the Indians.
The charging troops could accomplish nothing permanent. The men were too clumsy and ill-trained in forest warfare to overtake their fleet, half-naked antagonists. The latter never received the shock; but though they fled they were nothing daunted, for they turned the instant the battalion did, and followed firing. They skipped out of reach of the bayonets, and came back as they pleased; and they were only visible when raised by a charge.
Feats of Some of the Packhors.e.m.e.n.
Among the packhors.e.m.e.n were some who were accustomed to the use of the rifle and to life in the woods; and these fought well. One, named Benjamin Van Cleve, kept a journal, in which he described what he saw of the fight. [Footnote: ”American Pioneer,” II., 150; Van Cleve's memoranda.] He had no gun, but five minutes after the firing began he saw a soldier near him with his arm swinging useless; and he borrowed the wounded man's musket and cartridges. The smoke had settled to within three feet of the ground, so he knelt, covering himself behind a tree, and only fired when he saw an Indian's head, or noticed one running from cover to cover. He fired away all his ammunition, and the bands of his musket flew off; he picked up another just as two levy officers ordered a charge, and followed the charging party at a run. By this time the battalions were broken, and only some thirty men followed the officers.
The Indians fled before the bayonets until they reached a ravine filled with down timber; whereupon they halted behind the impenetrable tangle of fallen logs. The soldiers also halted, and were speedily swept away by the fire of the Indians, whom they could not reach; but Van Cleve, showing his skill as a woodsman, covered himself behind a small tree, and gave back shot for shot until all his ammunition was gone. Before this happened his less skilful companions had been slain or driven off, and he ran at full speed back to camp. Here he found that the artillery had been taken and re-taken again and again. Stricken men lay in heaps everywhere, and the charging troops were once more driving the Indians across the creek in front of the camp. Van Cleve noticed that the dead officers and soldiers who were lying about the guns had all been scalped and that ”the Indians had not been in a hurry, for their hair was all skinned off.” Another of the packers who took part in the fight, one Thomas Irwin, was struck with the spectacle offered by the slaughtered artillerymen, and with grewsome homeliness compared the reeking heads to pumpkins in a December cornfield.
The Soldiers Lose Heart.
Panic Seizes the Army.
As the officers fell the soldiers, who at first stood up bravely enough, gradually grew disheartened. No words can paint the hopelessness and horror such a struggle as that in which they were engaged. They were hemmed in by foes who showed no mercy and whose blows they could in no way return. If they charged they could not overtake the Indians; and the instant the charge stopped the Indians came back. If they stood they were shot down by an unseen enemy; and there was no stronghold, no refuge to which to flee. The Indian attack was relentless, and could neither be avoided, parried, nor met by counter a.s.sault. For two hours or so the troops kept up a slowly lessening resistance; but by degrees their hearts failed. The wounded had been brought towards the middle of the lines, where the baggage and tents were, and an ever growing proportion of unwounded men joined them. In vain the officers tried, by encouragement, by jeers, by blows, to drive them back to the fight. They were unnerved. As in all cases where large bodies of men are put in imminent peril of death, whether by s.h.i.+pwreck, plague, fire, or violence, numbers were swayed by a mad panic of utterly selfish fear, and others became numbed and callous, or s.n.a.t.c.hed at any animal gratification during their last moments. Many soldiers crowded round the fires and stood stunned and confounded by the awful calamity; many broke into the officers' marquees and sought for drink, or devoured the food which the rightful owners had left when the drums beat to arms.
St. Clair Resolves on Retreat.
There was but one thing to do. If possible the remnant of the army must be saved, and it could only be saved by instant flight, even at the cost of abandoning the wounded. The broad road by which the army had advanced was the only line of retreat. The artillery had already been spiked and abandoned. Most of the horses had been killed, but a few were still left, and on one of these St. Clair mounted. He gathered together those fragments of the different battalions which contained the few men who still kept heart and head, and ordered them to charge and regain the road from which the savages had cut them off. Repeated orders were necessary before some of the men could be roused from their stupor sufficiently to follow the charging party; and they were only induced to move when told that it was to retreat.
The Troops Break through the Indian Ring.
Colonel Darke and a few officers placed themselves at the head of the column, the coolest and boldest men drew up behind them, and they fell on the Indians with such fury as to force them back well beyond the road. This made an opening through which, said Van Cleve the packer, the rest of the troops ”pressed like a drove of bullocks.” The Indians were surprised by the vigor of the charge, and puzzled as to its object. They opened out on both sides and half the men had gone through before they fired more than a chance shot or two. They then fell on the rear, and began a hot pursuit. St. Clair sent his aide, Denny, to the front to try to keep order, but neither he nor anyone else could check the flight.
Major Clark tried to rally his battalion to cover the retreat, but he was killed and the effort abandoned.
Wild Rout of the Army.
There never was a wilder rout. As soon as the men began to run, and realized that in flight there lay some hope of safety, they broke into a stampede which soon became uncontrollable. Horses, soldiers, and the few camp followers and women who had accompanied the army were all mixed together. Neither command nor example had the slightest weight; the men were abandoned to the terrible selfishness of utter fear. They threw away their weapons as they ran. They thought of nothing but escape, and fled in a huddle, the stronger and the few who had horses trampling their way to the front through the old, the weak, and the wounded; while behind them raged the Indian tomahawk. Fortunately the attraction of plundering the camp was so overpowering that the savages only followed the army about four miles; otherwise hardly a man would have escaped.
<script>