USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 39
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On May 17, 1793, Randolph and Pickering reached Niagara, and Lincoln, who had been engaged in forwarding supplies, joined them eight days later. Here they learned of the decla- ration of war in England against France, and were well aware how it was going to embarrass the government's councils in Philadelphia, and might affect the situation on the Canadian bounds. To add to their anxieties, Brant had gone forward on May 5 to attend the preliminary council, before they had had a chance to confer with him. Just about this time we learn from Zeisberger that the Mohawk chief, with eight canoes, was passing through the Thames country, on his way to the Manmee.
It was understood that the commissioners were to await at Niagara a summons to the conference. Simcoe was gracious, and for a while their days passed pleasantly. When it became known that the Miamis had sent messengers to express their
448 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
inflexible purpose to insist upon the Ohio as the boundary, and the commissioners had revealed to their host a determi- nation as resolute to stand by the Fort Harmar treaty, the British commander saw that there was little chance of war being averted. Brant always held afterwards, with probably some knowledge of what the commissioners might on necessity yield, that, except for English interference, an accommodation might have been reached. We now know from Simcoe's letter that he profoundly distrusted the American purposes, and be- lieved that the commissioners were really aiming to alienate the Six Nations both from the English and from the western tribes.
Just as the Americans were to embark, on June 26, for San- dusky, some messengers from the Maumee arrived, complaining that Wayne was making hostile demonstrations while the ques- tion of peace or war was still undecided, and some days later the commissioners communicated a wish to the secretary of war that Wayne should be further cautioned. On embarking, the Americans found that Butler and McKee had been de- tailed to accompany them, as they had wished. They had only proceeded to Fort Erie, when they became wind-bound. On shore there was a stoekade inclosing a few rough buildings, and outside a blockhouse, used for the king's stores. Lying there on July 5, Brant and fifty chiefs arrived from the Mau- mee, and, desiring a conference, it was decided to return to Niagara for better accommodations, and to hold the interview , in Simcoe's house. The meeting was quickly over, and Sim- coe's letters tell us that, on July 7, Brant started with his mind nearly made up to recommend the yielding by the Indians of the settled lands north of the Ohio. A week later, the com- missioners followed, and landed, on July 21, on the Canada side of the mouth of the Detroit River. Here they found a depu- tation from the council, bearing a straight inquiry if the Americans would yield to the Ohio line, and the question was as pointedly answered in the negative. It was soon intimated, however, that if the Indians would confirm the Fort Harmar line, and yield up the territory granted to George Rogers Clark at the Ohio rapids, the commissioners would not ask for any
NOTE. - The view on the opposite page from Lake Ontario, looking into Niagara River, was taken by the wife of Governor Simcoe in 1794. Fort Niagara is on the left. It is from D. B Read's Life and Times of Simcoe, Toronto, 1890.
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right in the soil beyond these limits, but only the right of pre- emption. A Wyandot acted as spokesman, and stood firm for the Ohio.
The next day, the 22d, the commissioners notified the council that they were ready for a meeting. From what we know of the proceedings of the Indians when this message was received, it is apparent that the discussions were very angry. The Shaw- noes, Twightwees, and Delawares pronounced loudly for war. Brant tells us that all hope of diverting them from it was lost, when messengers arrived from the Creeks announcing re- newed encroachments of the whites on their lands. Simcoe later professed to believe that Brant, in his advocacy of mod- cration, was in reality striving to embroil England and the United States, and Brant in return charged the English with the responsibility, because they promised aid to the Indians if they would resist American encroachments to the last.
Instead of inviting the commissioners to the council, the tribes sent, on July 29, a deputation, with Simon Girty as inter- preter, and on the 30th the whole question at issue and the past history of their respective grievances were rehearsed. Girty, speaking for the Indians, insisted that the provisions of the Fort Stanwix treaty should be the basis of an agreement. The commissioners replied that the Stanwix treaty was made twenty- five years aback, and that it was modified when the treaty of 1782 placed the bounds of the United States on the line of the lakes. This was hardly a happy reference, when a standing grievance of the Indians was that the treaty of 1782 paid them no consideration whatever, and dealt out their lands as if they did not belong to them. Nor was it helpful to be told that the Indians who sided with Great Britain in the revolutionary contest must accept the consequent necessity of modifying the original treaty of Fort Stanwix. Such modifications had taken place in the later treaty of Fort Stanwix, and in those subse- quently made with the Wyandots and Shawnees. To confirm all these by additional gratuities, the Indians were reminded that St. Clair had met six hundred Indians at Fort Harmar, and removed all objections. This having been done, and the coded lands parceled out to white settlers, the United States were bound to keep faith with the grantees. To make the mat- ter still smoother with the tribes, they were willing, if the
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WAR INEVITABLE.
grant to Clark at the Ohio rapids be included, to add as a new gift an unprecedented sum of money and many goods.
These statements made no effect, and the conference ended. The next day the Indian delegates intimated that the commis- sioners had best go home, or at least such was the form of com- ment which Girty gave to their utterances. After some days the council sent a defiant answer in due form. They denied that the United States had any better right to buy their lands than the English had. They thought that the Americans, instead of offering money to them, had much better use it in buying out their grantees, so that they could turn the Indian
land over to its true owners. During these later days of the conference, all efforts of Brant to induce Simcoe to interpose in favor of a compromise having failed, the commissioners had nothing to do but to declare that the end had come, and on the same day (August 16) they left Detroit for Fort Erie. At this point they dispatched a messenger to Wayne, who was waiting at Fort Washington, informing him of the failure to negotiate. The outcome was known in Philadelphia in Sep- tember, and it was generally believed, as Wolcott said, that the failure was "in great measure owing to British influence." Washington shared this distrust, and, as early as February, had cautioned Knox not to relax his preparations for war.
Recruiting was going on slowly, and by March, 1793, Wayne had not received half his promised force. When the spring had fairly opened, he had moved his two thousand five hundred men down the river to Fort Washington, and sent a summons for the mounted volunteers of Kentucky, which a committee, consisting of Judge Innes, John Brown, Isaac Shelby, Benjamin Logan, and Charles Scott, had been organizing.
Wayne, as we have seen, had been directed to act on the defensive only, till he heard of the failure of the negotiations at the Detroit River. With this restraint he learned, not without irritation, of the raids which the Indians were making in every direction, but he prudently kept quiet. During the summer he had asked permission of Knox to send out a body of six hundred militia, away from the line of his proposed march, partly to deceive the enemy as to his intentions, and partly to distract their attention. The matter, as it happened, came before Washington and his advisers at the very meeting
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at which they heard from the commissioners of their failure. They were in no humor to risk defeat by dividing the western army, and the same messenger who carried to its general a confirmation of the tidings, which he had already received, of the fruitless task of the commissioners, took also a refusal to his proposal.
The Indians naturally knew of the failure in advance, and in Septem- ber they fell upon one Court House of Wayne's convoys and captured some horses. On October 6, Wayne wrote F to Knox that the next day he should advance beyond Fort Jefferson to 25 Rods a position where he was to lay out a camp for winter quarters, and to be prepared to act as oc- Mud Creek casion required. The Tecumseh's Point Kentucky volunteers [This cut, taken from Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio, p. 142, shows the line of the stockade at Greenville, in relation to the modern town.] were coming in slowly, and he could not report more than twenty-six hundred regulars, with some four hundred horse militia and guides, the rest being detailed for garrison duty along his com- munications. He had taken pride in his cavalry, and he had divided them into companies, according to the color of the horses, - sorrel, bay, chestnut, and gray, - and, as he wrote to Knox, he was anxious lest the Indians would bring on an action where dragoons could not manœuvre to advantage. William Priest, a traveler in the country at the time, says that " it is generally imagined that Wayne will meet the fate of Braddock and St. Clair, but a few military men I have dis- cussed with are of another opinion, for the general is forming a body of cavalry on principles entirely new, from which much is expected."
His march was accordingly begun on October 7, 1793, and
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WAYNE'S PREPARATIONS.
six days later he was laying out a winter's camp, six miles be- yond Fort Jefferson, which he named in honor of his old com- mander in the southern department in the revolutionary days, Fort Greeneville or, as it was commonly written, Greenville.
If his marching force was not all that he had hoped for, Wayne felt that many months of discipline had made a large part of them tough and ready warriors, and that he had some months before him for seasoning them in all the hardship and skill of forest warfare. They already showed a marked pro- ficiency in loading and firing on the run, and were not inapt in springing to their work with loud hallooes, as Willet had recom- mended. Wayne, however, was still conscious of a murmuring discontent in some of the fresher levies, and he charged it upon the " baleful leaven " of the democratic clubs, which Genet was just now patronizing in the east, and whose refractory spirit was making its way over the mountains.
The British scouts had reported his position as not two days distant from the Auglaize, and Dorchester heard of it and reported from Quebec to Dundas that, on October 18, Wayne had with him three thousand regulars, two thousand militia, and two hundred Indians, - a not unusual exaggeration.
All through the autumn and winter there was anxiety in Canada. In February, 1794, Dorchester informed Hammond that Wayne's language, as reported to him, showed that he had hostile designs against the English. Evidently to gain time, about the end of 1793, the Delawares had opened communica- tion with Wayne, prevailed to do so "by sinister means," as McKee said. Nothing came of it, for Wayne insisted, as a preliminary, on the restoration of prisoners. Dorchester, in March, was evidently thinking that some coercion had been applied by the other tribes to make the Delawares firmer.
Wayne was aware of the influence which Siincoe was now exerting on the Indian councils, and we have Brant's testimony that the British had given the Indians powder, and had led them to suppose that in case of disaster they would succor them. Wayne examined the prisoners his scouts brought in to confirm such intelligence, if there was ground for it. He got little satisfaction, however. There were some who affirmed it, and others who denied it. There is no doubt, however, that Simcoe was wishing ardently for Wayne's defeat, and determined in any
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event to prevent supplies reaching him by the lake from Presqu'- Isle. He could not have been unprepared, later, to receive ad- viees from Dundas that, in case Wayne was beaten, the oppor- tunity should not be lost to secure a barrier territory between Canada and the Americans. Simcoe had not as yet received such implicit instructions, but he could easily divine them. A. speech of Dorchester, which had reached Detroit, served an immediate purpose, but to aronse the Indians and to counte- nance Simcoe in active agencies in helping them, Dorchester had lately been in council with the ministry, and his words stood easily for their opinions. This speech was a reply, which he had made on February 10, 1794, to an Indian delegation. Kingsford, a recent historian of Canada, thinks that its indis- cretions were but the natural revulsion which Dorchester felt when, fresh from England, he saw how great a hold the French Revolution had taken upon the Americans. Whether this was so or not, the speech was intemperate and incendiary, and when a report of it reached Philadelphia, Hammond sought to efface its effect by declaring that Dorchester had not been authorized to make it. It is certain that Dundas later rebuked the utterer for doing what was more likely " to provoke hostili- ties than to prevent them." The language of the harangue was so unguarded that there was a tendency even in Phila- delphia to doubt its authenticity, - a belief that later misled Marshall and Sparks. Washington certainly accepted it, as did Clinton, who forwarded it to the President. It is now known to be preserved in the English archives, and Stone, the biogra- pher of Brant, found a certified copy among the papers of that chief. Another copy was sent to Carondelet.
In this speech Dorchester charged the United States with bad faith in the boundary dispute; that all advance of settle- ments since 1783 were encroachments, which nullified the Amer- ivan right of preemption. He said he should not be surprised if England and the United States were at war in the course of the present year, and in that case the warriors would have the chance to make a new line, and appropriate all improvements which the Americans had made within it.
Copies of the speech were circulated early in April, 1794, among the western Indians, Lientenant-Colonel Butler being an active agent in the matter. Inspired by it, and acting indeed
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AT THE MAUMEE RAPIDS.
under Dorchester's express orders, Simcoe, sharing Dorchester's lack of confidence in the American protestations, took three companies of regulars to the rapids of the Maumee, and there hastily constructed a fort, necessary, in his opinion, as an outpost of Detroit, and intended to be a check in the way of Wayne's advance. This is the reason which Simcoe gives, on April 11, in a letter written on the spot to Carondelet, who had asked him to join Spain in a campaign on the Mississippi, in resist- ance to the proposed French invasion of Louisiana. When Washington heard of this positive advance upon American ter- ritory, he called it the "most open and daring act " which the British had attempted, and in sending instructions to Wayne, Knox conveyed the order of Washington that if, in the course of the campaign it should become necessary to dislodge the gar- rison of this fort, Wayne must do so.
On June 7, some Indian prisoners were brought in, and from them Wayne learned of Simcoe's advance. They also reported that there were two thousand Indians at the Maumee rapids, and that, including militia, the British of Fort Miami garrison counted about four hundred. One of the captives said that the British had promised to have fifteen hundred men in the coming fight.
During June, 1794, Wayne was occupied with his daily drills. He exercised his men with sabre and bayonet, and kept out a cloud of scouts to prevent any spy of the enemy getting within observation. Besides using his backwoodsmen for this service, he had a few Chickasaws and Choctaws. His wood-choppers were opening roads here and there, and serving to deceive the Indians as to his intended march. He had already sent a detail to the field of St. Clair's defeat, and had built there a small fort, which, in recognition of his reoccupation of the ground, he called Fort Recovery. On the 26th, General Scott reached Greeneville with sixteen hundred mounted Kentuckians, and among them was William Clark, the brother of George Rogers Clark, and later known for his passage of the Rockies. On the 28tl, he sent forward a party, and when near Fort Recovery, on the 30th, they were assailed by a rush of Indians upon some · dragoons, who received the attack, charged in return, somewhat recklessly, and there was a considerable loss of horses, which Wayne could ill spare. It was thought that there were whites
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among the enemy. In order to deceive the Indians, he turned west and went on to the St. Mary's River, where he built a fort, which he called Fort Adams. In July, he turned east, and marched seventy miles to the confluence of the Auglaize and the Mamnee. Here, on August 8, he built Fort Defiance, in the midst of immense fields of corn. He was now within sixty miles of the British fort, and his route to it lay along the banks of the Maumee. He sent forward a converted Shawnee to announce his readiness to treat for peace. Little Turtle, the Indian leader, was not disinclined to accept the offer. His scouts had convinced him of the sleepless vigilance of Wayne. They had found it impossible to pierce the line of watchful spies by which the American commander concealed his force. Simcoe also had lost confidence in the ability of the Indians to withstand the Americans, and he had written to Dundas that, while he hoped for Wayne's defeat, he was by no means sure it would happen. " If Wayne attacks Detroit," he wrote, "you must be prepared to hear it is taken."
Just at the time that Simcoe was building Fort Miami, the legislature of Pennsylvania had directed the occupation of Presqu'Isle, and on March 1, 1794, Governor Mifflin had in- structed Major Denny to raise a company of troops, and to proceed to that spot and protect the commissioners in laying out the town. He was enjoined to avoid every unfriendly aet which could possibly irritate the Indians or excite the enmity of the British garrisons not far off. While the spring came on, it ,was apparent that the movement had excited the fears of Brant and his countrymen, and that there was danger of active oppo- sition on the part of the British. It was even supposed that the American troops on the way to that point from Le Bœuf would be met and driven back. In the latter part of May, the federal government, fearing such complications, and under- standing the hazard which Wayne was confronting, asked Gov- ernor Mifflin to suspend the movement. The request was looked upon as an interference with the rights of the legislature, which had simply ordered the occupation of their own territory, but Mifflin did not hesitate, and promptly issued orders in conform- ity with Washington's wishes, and at a later day the Assembly confirmed them. The federal government were nevertheless fearful lest the resentful spirit shared by the Indians and their
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WAYNE ADVANCING.
British friends might yet bring peril, and Knox, in writing to Mifflin on July 17, declared that there could be no certain avoidance of the danger while British policy controlled the Indians.
Matters were in this critical state when Wayne began his advance ; and just before the American general delivered his final stroke, Simcoe, apprehensive of the worst, and ignorant of Washington's interposition at Presqu'Isle, was writing to his superiors that unless disaster overtook Wayne, nothing could prevent the American occupation of the southern shores of Lake Erie from Buffalo Creek to Miami Bay, when there would be an end to British supremacy on the lakes.
To revert to the hesitancy of Little Turtle. Had Brant been on the spot, that Indian leader might have had an abettor in his tendency to treat with Wayne, though the movement to occupy Presqu'Isle had done much to bring back the old antipathy of the Mohawks. Brant, at a distance, was disquieted over the rumors which reached him that it was going to be difficult to keep fast the Mackinac and other northwestern tribes who were threatening to leave. The messengers which the southern In- dians had sent to offer encouragement to their northern friends had not been followed up by the arrival of southern warriors, and the Miami confederates, without Brant and his associates on the one side, and with the Wabash tribes indifferent on the other side, found they had little to depend upon except the British, whose help they remembered had failed them in critical junctures in the past. So the chiefs had delayed to respond to Wayne's invitation.
The Americans had nothing to gain by hesitation, and Wayne, on August 15, again advanced. His army now counted about two thousand six hundred men. He himself was not in good condition, for he was suffering from gout, and sat his horse swathed in flannel. On his staff, yielding him assistance, he had a hero of later savage warfare, a future President of the Republic, in William Henry Harrison.
The army was confident. In long drilling they had antici- pated all possible conditions. They knew there was no chance of being enveloped as St. Clair had been. They knew that their flanks were guarded, and if a charge was ordered, the gap
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between the van and its supports, and the hovering dragoons, would not permit their being ent off. In these and other pos- sibilities, the army enjoyed that sense of security which comes from knowing the vigilance of its commander.
The next day, Angust 16, 1794, a messenger met the advance and delivered to Wayne a request that the Indians might have ten days in which to consider his proposals for peace. Wayne was not in a mood to dally. He hastily built a defense for the baggage which he intended to leave at that point, and moved on. On the 18th, he reached the upper end of the rapids. He threw up another breastwork to protect his provisions, and began to feel the enemy. He made up his mind there were from fifteen hundred to two thousand of them. McKee says they numbered one thousand three hundred. The British flag flaunted on the fort at the lower end of the rapids, and he knew not what he might have to encounter. Not far away, in a ground of their own choosing, encumbered with the trunks of trees which a whirlwind at some time had prostrated, and concealed by tall grasses which grew between, the enemy lay crouched.
The action began with the Indians rising upon a band of mounted volunteers who were ahead, floundering over a ground where horsemen were at a disadvantage. The first line of in- fantry, flanked by other cavalry, came promptly to their sup- port. Their orders were to fire, charge, and continue firing as they ran. They put their practice in this difficult movement , into play, and on they went, scrambling over and under the trunks, preserving a nearly even front. They gave the enemy no time to reload, and before the second line, with the support of Scott's Kentucky horse, could join in the contest, the Indi- ans were in headlong retreat. It took forty minutes to press them back - with not a chance to recover themselves -- for a distance of two miles into the immediate vicinity of the British fort. Less than a thousand of Wayne's soldiers had won the day.
There was no sign in the fort of any attempt to succor the savages. The hinges of the gates which were expected to open and receive the fugitives did not creak. The Indians had van- ished in the forests, and, as the commander of the fort informed his superior, no one knew whither.
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THE BATTLE WON.
Wayne's loss in killed and wounded had been little over a hundred. There was never any report on the loss of the enemy. It is denied by the British writers that there were any whites in the fight. Against their general denial, there is Wayne's own testimony that British dead were found on the field. It has been asserted that a body of Detroit militia, seventy in number, commanded by a Captain Caldwell, participated in the action, and that four of them were killed. Brant, at a later day, said that he had procured the powder which was used from the British authorities at Quebec, and that he should have led his Mohawks in the fight had he not been sick and at a dis- tance. So ended the battle of Fallen Timbers.
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