CHAPTER XVIII

RECOVERY OF THE WESTERN TERRITORY

T

O MAKE Detroit a more attractive place for British settlers the government subsidized the erection of a new sawmill and gristmill in 1784, toward which Gov. Haldimand contributed about $1,200.

Renewal of Indian atrocities in Ohio stirred Congress to action and Col. Josiah Harmar was authorized to concentrate a strong military force at Fort Pitt while he attempted peace negotiations with the western Indians. Harmar won the Wyandottes, Delawares, Chippewas and Ottawas to a policy of neutrality, but the Shawnees, Cherokees, Senecas of the West or Mingoes, and the Miamis adhered to the British cause. Although the war with Great Britain was over the war in the West continued and between 1783 and 1790 more than 1,500 American settlers were killed and scalped in the Ohio Valley.

Harmar attempted a campaign against the hostile Indians with an undisciplined force of 1,400 men. He penetrated their country as far as the present site of Fort Wayne, Ind. There he was surprised and routed and a large part of his command was destroyed in the fight. He retired to Fort Washington, on the site of Cincinnati, a disgraced commander.

Gen. George Washington then sent Gen. Arthur St. Clair with a force of 2,300 regulars, warning him that constant vigilance was necessary to prevent disaster such as Harmer had suffered. St. Clair was an able officer, but not an expert Indian fighter. Moreover he was a victim of severe attacks of gout, a very common ailment in those early days of heavy feeding and hard drinking. St. Clair led his army to the junction of the St. Joseph and St. Mary's rivers near the Ohio-Indiana border and there he permitted his camp to be surprised by a great force of Indians and Canadians, with the result that 593 men were killed and 38 officers and 242 privates wounded. The

campaign ended in another complete rout. Gen. Washington is said to have used some very strong language on hearing the story.

Another notable Indian chief had now come to the front. Little Turtle, chief of the Miamis, had proved himself a master strategist in turning back two successive invasions of the American Army. Washington now looked for a real Indian

fighter who could play the Indians' game of warfare. He picked Gen. Anthony Wayne, then commander-in-chief of the American Army, to end the horrors in the West and to recover by force the territory still held by the British. Wayne found that most of the experienced officers of the West had already been killed or disabled in the previous fights, while the men of the rank and file had become very "jumpy" in consequence of the wild and exaggerated stories which had gone abroad concerning the defeats of Harmar and St. Clair.

In May, 1793, he led his half-drilled men to Fort Washington (Cincinnati) and to put heart into these he enlisted a cônsiderable force of Kentucky Rangers, men who had fought

Indians from their boyhood, who understood Indian psychology and methods, and who were as expert woodsmen as the Indians themselves. It may be said in passing that Detroit owes a debt to the Kentucky pioneers which can never be sufficiently appreciated. But that will be a later story. The Kentuckians knew that retreat or surrender to Indian foes meant destruction, so they preferred to die on their feet and fighting, to the last man. The Indians held them in wholesome respect and termed them the "long-knives," because every Kentuckian carried a huge hunting knife which he could use with terrible effect in a handto-hand fight with any opponent.

On the Maumee River, then known as the “Miami of the Lakes," the British had in 1794 erected a fort which was their military headquarters for directing Indian operations in Ohio, and a place of refuge in case they should be driven back by superior numbers of Americans. This fort stood at the junction of the Maumee and the Au Glaize rivers where the city of Defiance now stands. Washington told Gen. Wayne that in spite of the peace between the two nations, if it should become necessary he should attack and destroy this fort, known as Fort Miami. The site was chosen by Gov. Simcoe of Canada. On July 10, Wayne advanced close to this fort and erected Fort Defiance, which afterward gave its name to the city built on its site.

The Indians and Canadians retired down the west bank of the Maumee with Wayne's forces following cautiously, their commander keeping his scouts well in advance and his flanks always covered. The British and Indians had already decided upon the place of best advantage where they would make their stand for a battle.

Presently, a short distance south of what is now the city of Toledo, the opposing forces came to a place where a tornado had torn up a considerable tract of heavy timber, leaving the trees piled in confused windrows and creating an ideal situation adapted to Indian warfare. Wayne's vigilance had baffled every attempt at a surprise and the Indians, respecting his manifest ability, styled him "the Blacksnake" because of the vigilant, swift and silent manner of his progress.

The battle was opened by Indian and British skirmishers firing from concealment in the brush and long grass while the Indians attempted to turn Wayne's left flank, his right being protected by the river. At the same time Wayne pushed forward men along the river front to attack his enemy's right flank because he would naturally consider that side safe from attack. The Indian attempt was broken up by a charge of mounted rangers, and when they retired into the tangled mass of fallen timber the rangers were sent around to their rear to cut off retreat.

Instead of allowing his men to stand in the open exchanging shots with an enemy behind natural defenses, Wayne sent his foot forces forward with orders to trail their guns and not to fire until they would be at close quarters. This steady and orderly advance without firing a shot awed the Indians, who fired and retreated.

The Americans pressed after them into the cover of fallen trees and when the Indians and their white allies attempted to break from the rear of the timber they found the rangers ready for them. A force of 2,000 Indians had fled before the charge of 900 because they had been awed by their unusual method, and when they broke from cover the memory of past disasters and the wanton murder of settlers made the Americans quite as savage as the Indians had been. The woods for several miles were soon strewn with the dead bodies of Indians and Canadians.

Wayne remained on the ground three days resting his men, caring for the wounded, burying his dead and burning the houses and crops about the British fort. Among the property destroyed were the house and store of Alexander McKee, the British Indian agent. Gen. Wayne himself suffered an attack of gout and on the morning of the battle his legs were so swollen that it was necessary to lift him to the back of his horse. Joseph Brant tried to make the Indians stand for another fight, but they were cowed and beaten by the systematic methods of "the Blacksnake."

This victory sealed the fate of Detroit, but the United States Government did not press matters because it wished to

keep peace with Great Britain and employ diplomacy instead of force and arms.

Wayne's victory led to the signing of the Treaty of Greenville with the Indians, who there made humble submission to the American Government. At the same time it opened the way to new negotiations with Great Britain, which ended in the signing of the Jay Treaty, by which Detroit, Niagara, Mackinac, Oswego and Miami on the Maumee, all fortified military posts, were formally surrendered without striking another blow.

In the meantime Congress had been busy shaping affairs for the new territory in advance of its actual possession. The region north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River, embracing the present states of Wisconsin, part of Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio was styled the Northwest Territory. A scheme of government must be arranged for this sparsely settled western wild and preparations must be made for its division into states when the population would warrant that procedure. A code of special ordinances, known as "the Ordinance of 1787," was drawn up by Rev. Manasseh Cutler, a Congregational minister, and Nathan Dane, an eminent lawyer of Massachusetts, and also a lay preacher of the same denomination. That ordinance was adopted July 13, 1787, while the Constitution of the United States was not completed in the draft until Sept. 17, 1787.

The Ordinance of 1787 contained a prohibition of slavery in the new territory, which was the first enactment of the kind in the new world. It declared that "religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged." It declared for civil and religious liberty and contained a law of contracts which is quite superior to the pronouncement in the Federal Constitution, which also ignored the issue of slavery.