march of the army, a general order was issued, that in the event of an attack in front, the front was to stand fast, and the two right lines to wheel to the right, and the two left hand lines to the left, and form a complete line, while the artillery was to advance forwards to the centre of the line. In case of an attack on either of the flanks or side lines, these lines were to stand fast, and likewise the artillery, while the opposite lines wheeled and formed on the two extremes of those lines. In the event of an attack being made on the rear, similar order was to be observed as in an attack in front. In this manner the army moved on without encountering anything worthy of notice until they arrived at Chillicothe (situated on the little Miami river, in Greene county), about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, on the 6th day of August. They found the town not only abandoned, but most of the houses burnt down and burning, having been set on fire that morning. The army encamped on the ground that night, and on the following day cut down several hundred acres of corn; and about 4 o'clock in the evening took up their line of march for the Piqua towns, which were about twelve miles from Chillicothe (in Clark county). They had not marched more than a mile from Chillicothe, before there came on a very heavy rain, with thunder and lightning and considerable wind. Without tents or any other shelter from the rain, which fell in torrents, the men were as wet as if they had been plunged into the river, nor had they it in their power to keep their guns dry. It was nearly dark before the rain ceased, when they were ordered to encamp in a hollow square, with the baggage and horses in the centre, and as soon as fires could be made, to dry their clothes, etc. They were ordered to examine their guns, and, to be sure they were in good order, to discharge them in the following manner. One company was to fire, and time given to reload, when a company at the most remote part of the camp from that which had fired was to discharge theirs, and so on alternately, until all the guns were fired. On the morning of the 8th, the army marched by sunrise, and having a level, open way, arrived in sight of Piqua, situated on the west side of the Mad river, about 2 o'clock P. M. The Indian road from Chillicothe to Piqua, which the army followed, crossed the Mad river about a quarter of a mile below the town, and as soon as the advanced guard crossed into a prairie of high weeds, they were attacked by the Indians, who had concealed themselves in the weeds. The ground on which this attack, as well as the manner in which it was done, left no doubt but that a general engagement was intended. Col. Logan was therefore ordered, with about four hundred men, to file off to the right, and march up the river on the east side, and to continue to the upper end of the town, so as to prevent the Indians from escaping in that direction, while the remainder of the men, under Cols. Lynn, Floyd and Hariod, were ordered to cross the river and encompass the town on the west side, while Gen. Clark, with the troops under Col. Slaughter, and such as were attached to the artillery, marched directly towards the town. The prairie in which the Indians were concealed, who commenced the attack, was only about two hundred yards across to the timbered land, and the division of the army destined to encompass the town on the west side found it necessary to cross the prairie, to avoid the fire of a concealed enemy. The Indians evinced great military skill and judgment, and to prevent the western division from executing the duties assigned them, they made a powerful effort to turn their left wing. This was discovered by Floyd and Lynn, and to prevent being outflanked, extended the line of battle west, more than a mile from the town, and which continued warmly contested on both sides until about 5 o'clock, when the Indians disappeared everywhere unperceived, except a few in the town. The field piece, which had been_entirely useless before, was now brought to bear upon the houses, when a few shots dislodged the Indians which were in them. A nephew of Gen. Clark, who had been many years a prisoner among the Indians, and who attempted to come to the whites just before the close of the action, was supposed to be an Indian, and received a mortal wound but he lived several hours after he arrived among them. The morning after the battle a Frenchman, who had been taken by the Indians a short time before, on the Wabash, and who had stolen away from them during the action, was found in the loft of one of the Indian cabins. He gave the information, that the Indians did not expect that the Kentuckians would reach their town on that day, and if they did not, it was their intention to have attacked them in the night, in their camp, with the tomahawk and knife, and not to fire a gun. They had intended to have made an attack the night before, but were prevented by the rain, and also the vigilance evinced by the Kentuckians, in firing off their guns and reloading them, the reasons for which they comprehended, when they heard the firing. Another circumstance showed that the Indians were disappointed in the time of their arriving; they had not dined. When the men got into the town, they found a considerable quantity of provisions ready cooked, in large kettles and other vessels, almost untouched. The loss on each side was about equal-each having about 20 killed. The Piqua town was built in the manner of the French villages. It extended along the margin of the river for more than three miles; the houses, in many places, were more than twenty poles apart. Col. Logan, therefore, in order to surround the town on the east, as was his orders, marched fully three miles, while the Indians turned their whole force against those on the opposite side of the town; and Logan's party never saw an Indian during the whole action. The action was so severe a short time before the close, that Simon Girty, a white man, who had joined the Indians, and who was made a chief among the Mingoes, drew off three hundred of his men, declaring to them, it was folly in the extreme to continue the action against men who acted so much like madmen, as Gen. Clark's men, for they rushed in the extreme of danger, with a seeming disregard of the consequences. This opinion of Girty, and the withdrawal of the three hundred Mingoes, so disconcerted the rest, that the whole body soon after dispersed. It is a maxim among the Indians never to encounter a fool or a madman (in which terms they include a desperate man), for they say, with a man who has not sense enough to take a prudent care of his own life, the life of his antagonist is in much greater danger than with a prudent man. It was estimated that at the two Indian towns, Chillicothe and Piqua, more than five hundred acres of corn were destroyed, as well as every species of eatable vegetables. In consequence of this, the Indians were obliged, for the support of their women and children, to employ their whole time in hunt The late Abraham Thomas, of Miami Piqua. His reminiscences, published in interesting facts omitted in the preceding. other, and is probably the most accurate : In the summer of 1780 Gen. Clark was getting up an expedition, with the object of destroying some Indian villages on Mad river. One division of the expedition, under Col. Logan, was to approach the Ohio by the way of Licking river; the other, to which I was attached, ascended the Ohio from the falls in boats, with provisions and a six-pound cannon. The plan of the expedition was for the two divisions to meet at a point in the Indian country, opposite the mouth of Licking, and thence march in a body to the interior. In descending the Ohio Daniel Boone and myself acted as spies on the Kentucky side of the river, and a large party, on the Indian side, was on the same duty; the latter were surprised by the Indians, and several killed and wounded. It was then a toilsome task to get the boats up the river, under constant expectation of attacks from the savages, and we were much rejoiced in making our destination. Before the boats crossed over to the Indian side Boone and myself were taken into the foremost boat and landed above a small cut in the bank, opposite the mouth of Licking. We were desired to spy through the woods for Indian signs. I was much younger than Boone, ran up the bank in great glee, and cut into a beech tree with my tomahawk, which I verily believe was the first tree cut into by a white man on the present site of Cincinnati. We were soon joined by other rangers, and hunted over the other bottom; the forest everywhere was thick set with heavy beech and scattering underbrush of spice-wood and ing, which gave quiet to Kentucky for a considerable time. The day after the battle, the 9th, was occupied in cutting down the growing corn, and destroying the cabins and fort, etc., and collecting horses. On the 10th of August, the army began their march homeward, and encamped in Chillicothe that night, and on the 11th, cut a field of corn, which had been left for the benefit of the men and horses, on their return. At the mouth of the Licking, the army dispersed, and each individual made his best way home. Thus ended a campaign, in which most of the men had no other provisions for twentyfive days, than six quarts of Indian corn each, except the green corn and vegetables found at the Indian towns, and one gill of salt; and yet not a single complaint was heard to escape the lips of a solitary individual. All appeared to be impressed with the belief, that if this army should be defeated, that few would be able to escape, and that the Indians then would fall on the defenceless women and children in Kentucky, and destroy the whole. From this view of the subject, every man was determined to conquer or die. county, was in this campaign against 1839, in the Troy Times, give some It also differs in some respects from the pawpaw. We started several deer, but seeing no signs of Indians returned to the landing. By this time the men had all landed, and were busy in cutting timber for stockades and cabins. The division, under Col. Logan, shortly crossed over from the mouth of Licking, and after erecting a stockade, fort and cabin for a small garrison and stores the army started for Mad river. Our way lay over the uplands of an untracked, primitive forest, through which, with great labor, we cut and bridged a road for the accommodation of our pack horses and cannon. My duty, in the march, was to spy some two miles in advance of the main body. Our progress was slow, but the weather was pleasant, the country abounded in game; and we saw no Indians that I recollect until we approached the waters of the Mad river. In the campaigns of these days none but the officers thought of tents-each man had to provide for his own comfort. Our meat was cooked upon sticks set up before the fire; our beds were sought upon the ground, and he was the most fortunate man that could gather small branches, leaves and bark to shield him from the ground, in moist places. After the lapse of so many years it is difficult to recollect the details or dates, so as to mark the precise time or duration of our movements. But in gaining the open country of Mad river we came in sight of the Indian villages. We had been kept all the night before on the march, and pushed rapidly towards the points of attack, and surprised three hundred Indian warriors that had collected at the town, with the view of surprising and attacking us the next morning. At this place a stockade fort had been reared near the village on the side we were approaching it, but the Indians feared to enter it and took post in their houses. The village was situated on a low prairie bottom of Mad river, between the second bank and a bushy swamp piece of ground on the margin of the river; it could be approached only from three points-the one our troops occupied, and from up and down the river. Gen. Clark detached two divisions to secure the two last named points, while he extended his line to cover the first. By this arrangement the whole body of Indians would have been surrounded and captured, but Col. Logan, who had charge of the lower division, became entangled in the swamp, and did not reach his assigned position before the attack commenced. The party I had joined was about entering the town with great impetuosity, when Gen. Clark sent orders for us to stop, as the Indians were making port holes in their cabins and we should be in great danger, but added he would soon make port holes for us both; on that he brought his six-pounder to bear on the village, and a discharge of grape shot scattered the materials of their frail dwellings in every direction. The Indians poured out. of their cabins in great consternation, while our party, and those on the bank, rushed into the village, took possession of all the squaws and pappooses, and killed a great many warriors, but most of them at the lower part of the bottom. In this skirmish, a nephew of Gen. Clark, who had some time before run away from the Monongahela settlements, and joined the Indians, was severely wounded. He was a great reprobate, and, as said, was to have led the Indians in the next morning's attack; before he expired he asked forgiveness of his uncle and countrymen. During the day the village was burned, the growing corn cut down; and the next morning we took up the line of march for the Ohio. This was a bloodless victory to our expedition, and the return march was attended with no unpleasant occurrence, save a great scarcity of provisions. On reaching the fort, on the Ohio, a party of us immediately crossed the river for our homes, for which we felt an extreme anxiety. We depended chiefly on our rifles for sustenance; but game not being within reach, without giving to it more time than our anxiety and rapid progress permitted, we tried every expedient to hasten our journey without hunting, even to boiling green plums and nettles. These at first, under sharp appetites, were quite palatable, but soon became bitter and offensive. At last, in traversing the head waters of Licking, we espied several buffaloes directly in our track. We killed one, which supplied us bountifully with meat until we reached our homes. The view given was taken near the residence of Mr. John Keifer. The hill, shown on the left of the engraving, was the one upon which stood the fort, pre viously mentioned. About the year 1820, when the hill was first cleared and cultivated by Mr. Keifer, charred stumps were found around its edge, indicating the line of the stockade, which included a space of about two acres; the plow of Mr. Keifer brought up various relics, as skeletons, beads, gun-barrels, tomahawks, camp-kettles, etc. Other relics led to the supposition that there was a store of a French trader destroyed at the time of the action at the southwestern base of the hill. When the country was first settled there were two white oak trees in the village of Boston, which had been shot off some fifteen or twenty feet from the ground by the cannon balls of Clark; their tops show plainly the curved lines of the balls, around which they had sprouted bush-like; these trees were felled many years since by the Bostonians for fuel. There is a tradition here, that during the action the Indians secreted their squaws and children in "the cliffs" about a mile up the stream from the fort. The village of Boston, we will observe in digression, was once the competitor with Springfield for the county-seat; it never had but a few houses, and now has three or four only one of them is shown on the right of the view, beyond which, a few rods only, is Mad river. : We subjoin a sketch of the life of Tecumseh, derived from Drake's memoir of this celebrated chief. (The name Tecumseh signifies "Shooting Star.") Puckeshinwa, the father of Tecumseh, was a member of the Kiscopoke, and Methoataske, the mother, of the Turtle tribe of the Shawanoe nation; they removed from Florida to Ohio about the middle of last century. The father rose to the rank of a chief, and fell at the battle of Point Pleasant, in 1774. After his death his wife returned to the south, where she died at an advanced age. Tecumseh was born at Piqua about the year 1768, and like Napoleon, in his boyish pastimes, showed a passion for war; he was the acknowledged leader among his companions, by whom he was loved and respected, and over whom he exercised an unbounded influ ence; it is stated that the first battle in which he was occurred on the site of Dayton, between a party of Kentuckians under Col. Benjamin Logan and some Shawanoes. When about seventeen years of age he manifested signal prowess, in an attack on some boats on the Ohio near Limestone, Ky. The boats were all captured, and all in them killed, except one person, who was burnt alive. Tecumseh was a silent spectator, never having before witnessed the burning of a prisoner; after it was over he expressed his strong abhorrence of the act, and by his eloquence persuaded his party never to burn any more prisoners. From this time his reputation as a brave, and his influence over other, minds, increased, and he rose rapidly in popularity among his tribe; he was in several actions with the whites prior to Wayne's treaty, among which was the attack on Fort Recovery and the battle of the Fallen Timbers. In the summer of 1795 Tecumseh became a chief; from the spring of this year until that of 1796 he resided on Deer creek, near the site of Urbana, and from whence he removed to the vicinity of Piqua on the Great Miami. In 1798 he accepted the invitation of the Delawares, then residing in part on White river, Indiana, to remove to that neighborhood with his followers. He continued in that vicinity a number of years, and gradually extended his influence among the Indians. In 1805, through the influence of Laulewasikaw, the brother of Tecumseh, a large number of Shawnees established themselves at Greenville. Very soon after Laulewasikaw assumed the office of a prophet; and forthwith commenced that career of cunning and pretended sorcery, which enabled him to sway the Indian mind in a wonderful degree. Throughout the year 1806 the brothers remained at Greenville, and were visited by many Indians from different tribes, not a few of whom became their followers. The prophet dreamed many wonderful dreams, and claimed to have had many supernatural revelations made to him; the great eclipse of the sun which occurred in the summer of this year, a knowledge of which by some means he attained, enabled him to carry conviction to the minds of many of his ignorant followers, that he was really the earthly agent of the Great Spirit. He boldly announced to the unbelievers that on a certain day he would give them proof of his supernatural powers by bringing darkness over the sun; when the day and hour of the eclipse arrived, and the earth, even at mid-day, was shrouded in the gloom of twilight, the prophet, standing in the midst of his party, significantly pointed to the heavens and cried out, "Did I not prophecy truly? Behold! darkness has shrouded the sun!" It may readily be supposed that this striking phenomenon, thus adroitly used, produced a strong impression on the Indians, and greatly increased their belief in the sacred character of their prophet. The alarm caused by the assembling of the Indians still continuing, Governor Harrison, in the autumn of 1807, sent to the head chiefs of the Shawanoe tribe an address, in which he exhorted them to send away the people at Greenville, whose conduct was foreshadowing evil to the whites. To the appeal of the governor the prophet made a cunning and evasive answer; it made no change in the measures of this artful man, nor did it arrest the spread of fanaticism among the Indians, which his incantations had produced. In the spring of 1808 Tecumseh and the prophet removed to a tract of land on the Tippecanoe, a tributary of the Wabash, where the latter continued his efforts to induce the Indians to forsake their vicious habits, while Tecumseh was visiting the neighboring tribes and quietly strengthening his own and the prophet's influence over them. The events of the early part of the year 1810 were such as to leave but little doubt of the hostile intentions of the brothers; the prophet was apparently the most prominent actor, while Tecumseh was in reality the main spring of all the movements, backed, it is supposed, by the insidious influence of British agents, who supplied the Indians gratis with powder and ball, in anticipation, perhaps, of hostilities between the two countries, in which event a union of all the tribes against the Americans was desirable. By various acts the feelings of Tecumseh became more and more evident; in August, he having visited Vincennes to see the governor, a council was held, at which, and a subsequent interview. the real position of affairs was ascertained. Governor Harrison had made arrangements for holding the council on the portico of his own house, which had been fitted up with seats for the occasion. Here, on the morning of the fifteenth, he awaited the arrival of the chief, being attended by the Judges of the Supreme Court, some officers of the army, a sergeant and twelve men from Fort Knox, and a large number of citizens. At the appointed hour Tecumseh, supported by forty of his principal warriors, made his appearance, the remainder of his followers being encamped in the village and its environs. When the chief had approached within thirty or forty yards of the house he suddenly stopped, as if awaiting some advances from the governor. An interpreter was sent, requesting him and his followers to take seats on the portico. To this Tecumseh objected he did not think the place a suitable one for holding the conference, but preferred that it should take place in a grove of trees, to which he pointed, standing a short distance from the house. The governor said he had no objection to the grove, except that there were no seats in it for their accommodation. Tecumseh replied that constituted no objection to the grove, the earth being the most suitable place for the Indians, who loved to repose upon the bosom of their mother. The governor yielded the point, and the benches and chairs having been removed to the spot, the conference was begun, the Indians being seated on the grass. Tecumseh opened the meeting by stating at length his objections to the treaty of Fort Wayne, made by Governor Harrison in the previous year, and in the course of his speech boldly avowed the principle of his party to be that of resistance to every cession of land, unless made by all the tribes, who, he contended, formed but one nation. He admitted that he had threatened to kill the chiefs who signed the treaty of Fort Wayne, and that it was his fixed determination not to permit the village chiefs in future to manage their affairs, but to place the power with which they had been heretofore in vested in the hands of the war chiefs. The Americans, he said, had driven the Indians from the seacoast, and would soon push them into the lakes; and, while he disclaimed all intention of making war upon the United States, he declared it to be his unalterable resolution to take a stand and resolutely oppose the further intrusion of the whites upon the Indian lands. He concluded by making a brief but impassioned recital of the various wrongs and aggressions inflicted by the white men upon the Indians, from the commencement of the Revolutionary war down to the period of that council, all of which was calculated to arouse and inflame the minds of such of his followers as were present. The governor rose in reply, and in examining the right of Tecumseh and his party to make objections to the treaty of Fort Wayne, took occasion to say that the Indians were not one nation, having a common property in the lands. The Miamis, he contended, were the real owners of the tract on the Wabash, ceded by the late treaty, and the Shawanoes had no right to interfere in the case; that upon the arrival of the whites on this continent they had found the Miamis in possession of this land, the Shawanoes being then residents of Georgia, from which they had been driven by the Creeks, and that it was ridiculous to assert that the red men constituted but one nation; for, if such had been the intention of the Great Spirit, he would not have put different tongues in their heads, but have taught them all to speak the same language. The governor having taken his seat, the interpreter commenced explaining the speech to Tecumseh, who, after listening to a portion of it, sprung to his feet and began to speak with great vehemence of manner. The governor was surprised at his violent gestures, but as he did not understand him, thought he was making some explanation and suffered his attention to be drawn towards Winnemac, a friendly Indian lying on the grass before him, who was renewing the priming of his pistol, which he had kept concealed from the other Indians, but in full |