USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 37
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for £100,000 the rights of Gorham and Phelps to the lands sold by Massachusetts in western New York, and Washing- ton had already looked forward to trouble about the Indian title, and was not unprepared for Cornplanter's accusation of fraud. Indeed, as Washington said to Hamilton, " land-jobbing and the disorderly conduct of the borderers " were a constant source of irritation to the tribes ; and to these were added the complications which came of individual States interfering in matters which belonged to the general government. The Ken- tuckians raided of their own account the Wabash region ; the Tennesseeans encroached upon lands at the Muscle Shoals ; and New York had just in her Assembly voted to buy immu- nity from hostile depredations, thereby damaging the prestige of the federal authorities. So the evils which incited the sav- ages to hostilities were not unaccompanied by uncontrollable mischief to the Republic itself from similar sources.
On the British side the story was not altogether a satisfac- tory one to the tribes, who were slow in forgetting that the treaty of 1782 had been concluded by the English without any recognition of their rights to ancestral lands, and that the promises of aid, which had been implied perhaps rather than actually promised, had rarely been fulfilled.
While Dorchester, in his communications with the Americans, professed to desire peace, and the fur merchants deprecated war, neither contemplated with satisfaction any success for the Americans which would hazard the British possession of the posts, or lead to the establishment of other lake stations, which would admit the Americans to the navigation of the lakes and affect the profits of the older posts. In these conditions, the movements of the Indians were watched with anxiety, and the encouragement given to them to worry the Americans, by such intriguers as Girty and McKee, was likely at any time to compromise the public peaceful professions of those in unmistakable authority. Harmar's report indicated that if he had chanced to capture the traders at the villages which he destroyed, there might have been complications which would force Dorchester to retaliation, and bring on a war. Dorchester himself perceived this, and with some apprehension he asked Sir John Johnson to discover the terms on which peace could be arranged between the Indians and the Americans.
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HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
But, inopportunely, it was just upon the eve of political change in Canada, which was to bring a new character to bear upon the overstrained relations of the two countries. In Sep- tember, Dorchester was informed of the constitutional act of March, which had set up, as distinct from Lower Canada, the region west of the Ottawa, with ten thousand population, as a new government, grateful to the loyalists, and preserving such features of the Quebec Act as were not inconsistent, and placing in command John Graves Simcoe, whom the Americans had learned to hate in the Revolutionary War. He probably soon heard of the proposition of McKee to reestablish the disused fort at the foot of the Maumee rapids as a necessary outpost of Detroit, though he was not yet prepared to undertake it.
From early spring, St. Clair had been preparing for his own work, hoping to get at it before autumn. In April, 1791, he reached Pittsburg, and endeavored to prevail upon the Sene- cas to join his army. A few days later, at Fort Harmar, he warned the Delawares that they must abide the consequences, if they interposed themselves between him and the Miamis ; and it was probably about this time that he sent forward to the Miamis a speech which MeKee said was intended to distract their councils.
By the middle of May, St. Clair was at Fort Washington, where his little army was to gather. Symmes, who looked in on the raw levies arrived from the seaboard towns, wrote to Elias Bondinot that "men who are to be purchased from prisons, wheelbarrows, and brothels at two dollars per month will never answer for fighting Indians." Such a force was not an inspiring one for a man like St. Clair, no longer young, sub- ject to intervals of illness, and not as alert as he once was. If the men were poor and eame slowly to the rendezvous, the mate- rial for supplies had passed no adequate inspection in being sent forward. The powder was bad. The saddles did not fit the horses. The oxen were poor and insufficient in number. With such things to worry him, St. Clair waited from June to September.
In August, fearful lest the Wabash Indians might have re- covered from the effects of Seott's raid among them, and might gather with the other tribes athwart his route, which had been
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WILKINSON'S RAID.
too plainly indicated for the advance, he dispatched another force, as Knox had counseled, to repeat the blow. A body of mounted Kentuckians, five hundred and fifty strong, reported for this service at Fort Washington in July. Wilkinson, who had found Spanish intrigue getting tiresome, had sold his Frankfort property and accepted the command of these ardent volunteers. His enemies said it was a plan of the government to profit by his restless energy and divert it from mischievous action at home. On July 31, St. Clair gave him his instruc- tions, and the next day he led his clanking horsemen out into the wilderness. The direction which he took seemed towards the Miami towns, and on this course he traveled four days and sixty miles, and then turned to the northwest. Passing now a broken country full of swamps, he fell upon Quiatanon and other villages of Indians, with French traders among them, and devastated their cabins. His horses were badly used up, and but five days' provisions remained. He accordingly marched towards the Ohio rapids, as Scott had done, and reached them on August 21. Proceeding thence to Frankfort, three days later, he dispatched his report to St. Clair. When Washing- ton heard of the results he said that the " enterprise, intrepidity, and good condnet of the Kentuckians were entitled to peculiar commendation."
The tidings of Wilkinson's success found St. Clair in deep anxiety. Every messenger from the east had brought urgent appeals for his advancing before the season was past for success- ful campaigning. His want of supplies, however, still detained him. He had now two regiments of regulars and some Ken- tucky militia, whom he might reasonably trust ; but the boats from Pittsburg still brought him the wretched scourings of the eastern towns, towards completing the "two thousand levies for the term of six months " which Congress had ordered.
St. Clair's instructions, as often as he read them, gave him disquiet, in the presence of such recruits. He was to establish a "strong and permanent military post at the Miami village . . . for the purpose of awing and curbing the Indians, and as the only preventive of future hostilities," and he was to main- tain such a garrison in it that he could upon occasion detach five or six hundred men on special service. He was warned in his instructions that such a post was " an important object of the
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HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
campaign," and to be founded in any event, and to be supplied with a six months' stoek of provisions. It was left to his dis- cretion whether he should employ Indians. In making a treaty at last, he was told to insist on keeping the tribes beyond the Wabash and Maumee, and, if he could, to divert the line to the Mississippi from the Au Panse branch of the Wabash. This would give a good stretch of country along the Ohio to the Americans, and dispossess few Indians beyond the Kickapoos. If this was insisted on, he was warned to manage it " tenderly." Still more cautiously must he treat the English, and it was held to be improper at present to "make any naval arrange- ments upon Lake Erie."
All this was the expectation of the government and the not over-confident hope of St. Clair. The plan had required three thousand effectives to be ready at Fort Washington by July 10, 1791 : but the first regiment of two hundred and ninety- nine men did not arrive till the 15th. It was October before the general eould count two thousand men, exclusive of the militia and the garrisons of Forts Washington and Hamilton, - the latter stockade having been begun on September 17, on the Great Miami. From this point, on October 4, General Butler, whose appointment had not been wholly acceptable, started with the advanee, lumbering slowly on with his trains, five or six miles a day, through a bad country. On the 13th, the army stopped, and was occupied till the 24th in build- ing a stoekade, which he called Fort Jefferson, intended to shield his sick and hold his surplus supplies. The country about it was fertile, but it was too late in the year for his animals to get much refreshment out of it. When he started again, on the 28th, he soon discovered that the Indians were hanging on his flanks. There had been some desertions, and to check them he had executed one or two who had been re- taken ; but on October 31, a considerable body of militia slunk away, and St. Clair sent Major Hamtramek baek with one of his regiments of regulars to prevent their robbing his supply trains. St. Clair had days of almost physical incapacity for his task, and General Butler, who was next in command, was scarcely better in health. The discipline and steadiness of the march would have suffered irretrievably, but for the exertions of the adjutant-general, Winthrop Sargent. It was Washing-
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ST. CLAIR'S DEFEAT.
ton's criticism, when the miserable outcome was known, that there had been insufficient efforts to get information of the enemy, and that St. Clair's scouting system was inadequate. It is certain that the enemy was not long in discovering that St. Clair's scouts were not numerous, to say the least. He had been pointedly cautioned to be on his guard against surprise ; and yet when he went into his last camp on November 3, on a branch of the Wabash, with a benumbing wind sweeping over icy ground, he was in the immediate neighborhood of his enemy, and with no chance of suddenly forming his line in case of an unexpected irruption. So it was not to be wondered at that, early on the morning of the 4th, some militia which he had bivouacked in advance beyond the stream, and too remote for instant support, were broken in upon and thrown into a panic. They fell hastily back upon the rest of the army. While he was endeavoring to form his lines within his camp, which was three hundred and fifty yards in length, the enemy swung around it, and when St. Clair found that his position was completely en- veloped, he grew to a conception of the extent of the force which was opposed to him, though Armstrong, an old Indian fighter, was sure that five hundred savages, invisible as their habit was, could have produced all that St. Clair saw. The assail- ants from a thick cover poured a deadly fire upon the huddled and unprotected troops. St. Clair, with his gray hair stream- ing under his cocked hat, had horse after horse shot under him as he endeavored to make his force stand steady amid the frightful carnage. He had eight bullets pierce his garments, but not one grazed his skin. Butler was soon mortally wounded. The few guns of the Americans were rendered useless, when not a cannoneer could stand to them. The regulars lost every officer. The frenzied men, gaining manhood under the trial, tried to charge this way and that. The retreat of the Indians lured them on, when the wily savages would turn and surround them, party after party. Finally, there being no hope, the guns were spiked, and St. Clair gathered his men for a last charge to regain the road of retreat. He secured it; and for four miles the Indian fire blazed upon the flanks and in the rear. At last, over-eager for the spoils, dusky warriors drew off and began plundering what had been left behind. This saved the army from annihilation ; but it did not prevent the men
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HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
throwing away their muskets, and St. Clair, near the rear of the line, found the ground covered with these rejected weapons as he passed along. He complained that the horse he rode " could not be pricked out of a walk," so it was impossible for him to ride forward and stop the waste.
The action began a half hour before sunrise, and the re- treat was made at half-past nine. The estimates vary, but it is probable that St. Clair had in the fight not more than fourteen hundred men, and of these scarce half a hundred were unhurt. Very few beyond the killed and desperately wounded fell into the enemy's hands.
It is generally recognized that Little Turtle led the Indians. There was a small body of Mohawks present, but it is not probable that Brant was among them. Stone, his biographer, found a belief among the chief's descendants that he was in the fight ; but there is no evidence of a more trustworthy kind. The Delawares, who had been stigmatized as women for lack of courage in past years, wiped out the disgrace by valiant deeds.
It was near thirty miles from the battlefield to Fort Jeffer- son, and the remnant of the army reached that post before night. Here St. Clair found Hamtramck and his command, and left about seventy of his wounded.
On November 9, he sent from Fort Washington a messenger with a dispatch, but rumors had already reached the govern- ment ten or eleven days earlier, and thirty days after the disaster. About the same time the news of the Indian side, , traveling by the way of Vincennes, reached Frankfort, when it stirred Wilkinson's rampant energy, who was ready to strike the war-path on the Maumee or " perish in the attempt."
The Indian question had now become more serious than ever before, and there was great danger of the disaffection spreading among the Six Nations. Pickering, during the summer, had labored hard to propitiate them ; but he had encountered the adverse influence of Brant. The activity of this chief was sur- prising. No sooner was he heard of at the Maumee rapids, conferring with the tribes, than he was reported at Niagara, in council with the British commander. His messengers, in the interim, were plying back and forth. All the while, as the let- ters now published show, warnings were coming from England,
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JEFFERSON AND HAMMOND.
and passed on to the upper posts, to prevent an outbreak. Perhaps the cabinet in London little knew how renegade mis- chief-makers were assuming among the Miamis to represent British purposes to aid them in a war, and the Canadian officials were constantly apprehending an attack on the posts, though Beckwith was writing to them from Philadelphia that the federal government disclaimed any such intention.
Before the news of St. Clair's defeat had reached Philadel- phia, Jefferson and Hammond, the newly arrived British min- ister, had begun their bootless conferences. It was not long before it was apparent that Hammond had come merely to talk and keep watch. The two representatives were hopelessly at variance. They opposed each other on every aspect of the treaty of 1782. Hammond said that interest on the British debts constituted a part of the obligation. Jefferson denied it. Hammond represented and Jefferson disputed that the Ameri- cans had first broken the treaty. This kind of disputatious fence was going on, when the news of St. Clair's defeat put a stop to it, and the American cabinet gave itself to other mat- ters. Of course it was necessary to find a scapegoat for the ill luck at the west. The secretary of war was accused of neg- lect. The quartermaster had not done his duty. St. Clair had proved a failure. The news from the New England States showed that that section of the country at least was tired of the war. They believed with Pickering that pacifying the Indians cost less than killing them. The old problem of the respon- sibility of the British for aiding the savages came up again. Hammond promptly denied any complicity in his countrymen. It was a question whether a schedule of evidences, refnting Hammond's asseverations, should not be given to Thomas Pinckney, who was just starting for England. Certain acts were acknowledged by Hammond, but defended on the ground of charitable giving of food to famishing beings. Again, it was confessed guns and powder had been given, but it was a neces- sity of the Indian hunting season, while the Americans claimed that such gifts in times of peace were quite another thing when given in time of war, and they became a breach of neutrality. It did not make a bad matter better if, as the Americans con- tended, McKee scattered the munitions of war with his hands and talked peace as he did it. Nor was it less to be resented in
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HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
Sir John Johnson doing the same thing statedly at the mouth of the Niagara.
The fact was, it was extremely difficult for the British gov- ernment to treat the Indians as wards and administer to their needs, and not transgress the limits of neutrality as the Ameri- cans understood it. It was further, no doubt, true that friendly phrases uttered to the Indians by those wearing the British uniform were easily conceived to be a promise of help, by those anxious to receive it. As reports spread west, it was easy for the remoter tribes, especially if prompted to it, to imagine that to esponse the quarrel of the nearer people was the way to put off their own sacrifices to the whites. Rufus Putnam informed Knox that the Chippeways inclined to be neutral, but were played upon in this way till they embraced the cause of the Miamis.
When it came to the question of bounds between the Indians and the Americans, there is no doubt the English were pre- pared to do what could be done, without actually imperiling the peace, to advance the demands of the tribes, and even to demand larger sacrifices from the Republic. They talked much about the desirability of a territorial barrier to keep the reck- less Americans and the heedless Britons apart. Some of the maps issued in London assumed this barrier as a part of the political geography of North America. It was Jefferson's opin- ion, from what Hammond had said, that the British government , wanted a new line run, which should leave Lake Ontario by the Genesee, thence follow the Alleghany to Pittsburg, and so west in some way to the Mississippi. This would provide a barrier country and open the Mississippi to British access. If not this, their purpose was to gain that river by running the line from the Lake of the Woods to its sources, instead of due west to that river, which the treaty required, and which had proved a geographical impossibility. Perhaps a line even better for England could be secured, as Hammond sometimes claimed, by starting the westward line at Lake Superior instead. Some of the current maps of the English give this line as starting from the westernmost point of Lake Superior. Jefferson, on his side, claimed that the error of the treaty was remedied more simply by running the line due north from the sources
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THE INDIAN LINE.
of the Mississippi, and that the right of England to share in the navigation of the Mississippi was inserted in the treaty merely to meet the contingency of Spain's yielding west Florida to England, in the general treaty made seven weeks later. Thus broadly were the British scanning the possibilities of a rectification of the Republic's northern boundary.
The Indian demand gave the tribes all the country north of the Ohio and west of the Muskingum and the Cayahoga. They claimed on every occasion that they had never parted with an acre of this territory by any fair treaty. The Ameri- cans cited the treaty of Fort Harmar, insisted it was not a fraudulent compact, and, as lands had been granted under it, the grantees must be protected. The British said that in any event the Americans had, by the treaty of 1782, only the right of preemption to any lands south of the lakes which had not been bought of the tribes prior to 1782; and that the treaty gave the Indians the right to decline to sell, if they would. This view was a common one in the English maps, which ran the bounds of the United States along the Alleghanies. There is little doubt the Indians were taught sedulously this view of the treaty, for it protected the posts and perpetuated the British fur trade. It would seem that to sustain this view the new act creating Upper Canada had studiously avoided giving any bounds. This view also served the British in appeasing the savage discontent at the cruel way in which the interests of the Indians were abandoned by the British commissioners in negotiating the treaty. It is clear from the letters of Brant and Sir John Johnson that they understood the matter in the British way.
It was evident, then, that the combined interests of the Brit- ish and Indians, in such a line by the Ohio, must be overcome by composition or force, before the Republic could achieve the territorial independence which was thought to be assured to her by the treaty of 1782.
CHAPTER XX.
THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
1792-1794.
BEFORE the dazing effect of St. Clair's defeat was dispelled, Knox had planned a legionary reorganization of the western army, on the basis of five thousand men, with a supplemental force of militia and scouts. While there was a probable neces- sity for such military provision, it was deemed prudent to ascer- tain if the intercession of the Six Nations could not end the northwestern difficulty without a further resort to arms. Before the close of 1791, Cornplanter, the Seneca leader, had been invited to Philadelphia, and Kirkland, the missionary, was sought to use his influence with Brant and the Mohawks to induce them to join the council. So pressure was brought to bear upon the two extremes of the New York confederates, in the hopes to compass the acquiescence of the entire league. On January 3, 1792, Kirkland wrote to Brant, urging him to accept the invitation, and giving promise of protection, a guarantee not altogether unnecessary, for Brant's name was associated ,with some of the most fiendish acts of the Revolution, whose effects were not yet forgotten. A month later, Brant declined (February 3), and later still (February 25), Knox added a new appeal.
Meanwhile, St. Clair had arrived in New York, ready to face the charges against him for his failure. He desired first a court-martial, but there were not officers enough available of snitable rank. He asked to retain his military commission until such inquiry as Congress should institute was over. This, however, as he was told by Washington, who remained through- out kind and considerate, was not practicable, as the law al- lowed but a single major-general, and his successor was impera- tively needed to proceed to the northwest and take command. So, in April, St. Clair was induced to resign.
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DUER AND THE SCIOTO COMPANY.
In February, 1792, Congress was canvassing the chances of a new campaign, and there was little heart for it among the east- ern members, who never quite comprehended the western spirit. Oliver Wolcott was a good representative of those indifferent to the demands of the frontiers, and was quite willing to let them fight out their own salvation, and to run the risk of their making foreign alliances. "These western people," he said,/ " are a violent and unjust race in many respects, unrestrained by law and considerations of public policy." Washington was not quite so sweeping in his belief, but he felt that western urgency was very embarrassing. Among those who would make the western cause that of the country, there was a division of opinion between the desirability of fixed posts for awing the tribes, and the propriety of aggressive warfare. Washington was decidedly on the side of those who had no confidence in merely defensive measures.
The Indian department, in 1791, had spent $27,000 in sup- porting the St. Clair campaign, which was ten times what had ever been appropriated before, and there was not a little appre- hension in entering upon another year's warfare, likely to be more costly still, to find that in financial aspects the spring of 1792 was a discouraging one.
The speculative acts of Duer-and the enemies of Hamilton charged that that financial minister's funding policy had opened the way to stock-jobbing - had brought him to bankruptcy, to add still further to the blackness of the Gallipolis scandal. The magnate of the Scioto Company, and one of those eminently first people of the land whom Cutler rejoiced in, was now a prisoner for debt. For a result, as Pickering wrote, "New York was in an uproar, and all business at a stand." Jefferson, with a kind of satisfaction at the dilemma of the treasury, wrote, on March 16: "Duer, the king of the alley, is under a kind of check. The stock-sellers say he will rise again. The stoek- buyers count him out, and the credit and fate of the nation seem to hang on the desperate throws and plunges of gambling scoundrels." Jefferson further affected to believe that the miseries of the South Sea bubble and the Mississippi scheme were as nothing, proportionally, to the drop in securities which was now going on. In the midst of this financial crash, Rufus Putnam and Cutler appeared in Philadelphia, seeking from
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