From the time of the organization of the Northwest Territory until 1790, the Indians of the Maumee region steadily increased their marauding expeditions, striking at every point along the Ohio River from the mouth of the Scioto to the mouth of the Wabash. The Government was overwhelmed with petitions and remonstrances from citizens of all classes in Kentucky. Judge Innes addressed the Secretary of War from Kentucky: “I have been intimately acquainted with this district from November 1783.... I can venture to say, that above 1500 souls have been killed and taken in the district, and migrating to it; that upwards of 20,000 horses have been taken ... and other property ... carried off and destroyed by these barbarians, to at least £15,000.”[67]
The ringleaders of these marauding bands were the Miami tribes of the upper Wabash and Miami Rivers, and Shawanese who dwelt with them. The Delawares and Wyandots, who now, in 1789, signed the Treaty of Fort Harmar (which only confirmed the previous treaties of Fort Stanwix and Fort McIntosh) were not, at first, guilty of connivance; though soon they joined the Indian confederacy regardless of their promises.
It is interesting to note at the outset that the savages to whom the attention of the nation was now about to be attracted were styled, generally, the “Northwestern Indians.” The significance of this is that now, when at last run to bay, the final campaigns in that long series of conflicts begun by Washington and Braddock and Forbes on the heads of the Ohio (1754-58), continued by Bouquet on the Muskingum (1764), Dunmore on the Scioto (1774), Crawford on the Sandusky (1781), and Clark on the Miami (1782), were to be fought to a triumphant conclusion in the region of the Wabash. These savages were the same that had ever fought the advancing fire-line of civilization—the Miamis, Delawares, Shawanese, Wyandots, and their confederates. Driven westward for nearly half a century, they made a final stand at the western extremity of Lake Erie, almost under the guns of the British forts, and are known collectively now in 1790 as the “Northwestern Indians.” The story of our actual conquest of the interior of America from the aboriginal inhabitants is practically the story of the campaigns which resulted in the acquisition successively of the Allegheny, Beaver, Muskingum, Scioto, Miami, Maumee, and Wabash river valleys. Fallen Timber sealed the doom of the Indian and ended a struggle begun at Fort Necessity in 1754. The conquest would not have taken one-half the time it did had the Indian not become allied now to France and now to England, alliances which introduced perplexing and delicate international questions which prolonged the pitiful struggle.
On the sixth of October, 1789, President Washington, acting under the new powers conferred upon him, addressed a communication to Governor St. Clair requesting accurate information as to whether or not “the Wabash and Illinois Indians are most inclined for war or peace.”[68] If found to favor the former course the governor was empowered “to call on the lieutenants of the nearest counties of Virginia and Pennsylvania, for such detachments of militia as you may judge proper, not exceeding, however, one thousand from Virginia and five hundred from Pennsylvania.”[69] With the prophetic foresight which so frequently marked Washington’s estimate of the future he added: “As it may be of high importance to obtain a precise and accurate knowledge of the several waters which empty into the Ohio, on the northwest, and of those which discharge themselves in the lakes Erie and Michigan, the length of the portage between, and nature of the ground, an early and pointed attention thereto is earnestly recommended.”[70] Anthony Gamelin, a trusty scout, was sent up the Wabash River to test the sentiments of the Wabash and Miami Indians in April 1790; the gist of his report was that the young men of the nations could not be restrained from war, that the majority of the savages had “a bad heart.” The influence of McKee and Girty was in absolute authority.[71] “I now enclose the proceedings of Mr. Gamelin,” wrote Major Hamtramck to Governor St. Clair from Vincennes, May 22, 1790, “by which your excellency can have no great hopes of bringing the Indians to a peace with the United States.”[72] The reasons are thus stated by Governor St. Clair to the Secretary of War: “The confidence these [Indians] have in their situation, the vicinity of many other nations, either much under their influence, or hostilely disposed towards the United States, and pernicious councils of the British traders, joined to the immense booties obtained by their depredations on the Ohio.”[73]
By July 16 Governor St. Clair was ready to put in motion the campaign which was voted by all concerned to be inevitable. There was a double danger in further delay; the Indians were growing more bold each day, and the people along the western frontier were beginning to distrust the strength of the Government which, while claiming them, failed utterly to protect them. Only a week before (July 7) Judge Innes wrote these startling words to the Secretary of War: “I will, sir, be candid on this subject.... The people say they have long groaned under their misfortunes, they see no prospect of relief.... They begin to want faith in the Government, and appear determined to revenge themselves: for this purpose a meeting was lately held in this place, by a number of respectable characters, to determine on the propriety of carrying on three expeditions this fall.”[74]
Accordingly by circular letters to the county lieutenants dated Fort Washington, July 16, 1790, St. Clair called upon three hundred men from Nelson, Lincoln, and Jefferson Counties, Virginia, to rendezvous at Fort Steuben (Steubenville, Ohio) September 12; seven hundred men from Madison, Mercer, Fayette, Bourbon, Woodford, and Mason Counties to rendezvous at Fort Washington September 15; and five hundred men from Washington, Fayette, Westmoreland, and Allegheny Counties, Pennsylvania, to rendezvous four miles below Wheeling on September 3. From this on affairs moved swiftly. On July 14—the day before the circular letters were sent off—General Harmar contracted with Elliott and Williams of Kentucky for one hundred and eighty thousand rations of flour, two hundred thousand rations of meat, eight hundred and sixty-eight horses equipped, one horse-master general, eighteen horse-masters, one hundred and thirty drivers, to be delivered at Fort Washington by October 1. On August 23, Secretary of War Knox wrote Governor St. Clair that he had ordered two tons of best rifle and musket powder, four tons of lead bullets, cartridge paper, case shot for five and a half inch howitzers and for three- and six-pounders to be hurried on from Philadelphia to the Ohio River. A thousand dollars was forwarded to Fort Washington for contingent expenses. Knox hurried a letter on to the governor of Virginia asking him to use his influence to induce the veteran Kentucky colonels Logan and Shelby to join the army at Fort Washington as volunteers for “the accomplishment of the public good,” and a letter to Harmar requesting him to invite “those characters,” and to treat them with “the greatest cordiality.” St. Clair wrote immediately to the British commander at Detroit explaining candidly the nature of the campaign now on foot, explicitly stating its object and asking that the enemy should receive no assistance from British traders “from whose instigation,” he made bold to add, “there is good reason to believe, much of the injuries committed by the savages has proceeded.”
Everything considered, the young government responded nobly to the call of its western citizens. This was its first war, and one has to know only a little of the struggles for mere equipoise and maintenance since the close of the Revolution to realize that a war at this time, of any proportions, was a most trying and exhausting undertaking. This has never been sufficiently emphasized. His first inauguration now two years past, the labors of his new honors were already bearing heavily upon the first president. If greater trials had ever been his portion, even in the struggle for independence, they had in a measure been anticipated and borne with a patience commensurate with the great interests at stake. He had been able to manœuver his armies from red-coat generals’ grasp, and the fretful complainings of the “times that tried men’s souls” were alternately hushed in the presence of gloom and scattered in the hour of victory. But now the clash of personal interest and state pride rose loud about the chief executive, and advisers, who had once lost all thought of self in the common danger, now became uncertain quantities in the struggle for personal advancement, and bickered spitefully over matters of preferment and policy. The country which Washington loved never needed his services more than now when these untried problems of currency, debt, and policy—and now of war—came rapidly to the front.
The President’s call for militia was answered with too great alacrity. A motley collection of Kentucky militia was assembling by the middle of September, and those from Pennsylvania reached Fort Washington on the twenty-fourth. The Kentuckians were formed into three battalions under Majors Hall, M’Mullen, and Bay, commanded by Lieutenant-colonel Trotter—under whom they were anxious to serve. The Pennsylvanians were formed in one battalion under Lieutenant-colonel Trubley and Major Pond, the whole commanded by Colonel John Hardin, subject to General Harmar’s orders. The regulars were formed in two battalions under Major John P. Wyllys and Major John Doughty. The company of artillery, having three pieces of ordnance, was under the command of Captain William Ferguson. A battalion of flying militia or light mounted troops was commanded by Major James Fontaine. The entire army numbered one thousand four hundred and fifty-three, of which three hundred and twenty were regulars. The “army” had assembled quickly; the stores had been forwarded to the place of rendezvous with exceeding despatch and faithfulness. The army was fatally weak in two particulars: many undisciplined old men and boys had volunteered as substitutes; and the arms, furnished by the volunteers themselves, were in lamentably poor condition. Taken all in all, with the exception of armament, which was somewhat bettered at Fort Washington, this first little American army that now began an invasion of the Maumee Valley was in no better or no worse condition than the ordinary militia forces formerly put into the field by Pennsylvania or Kentucky.
On the twenty-sixth of September the militia, eleven hundred strong, under Colonel Hardin, set forth from Fort Washington, striking in a northwesterly direction toward the valley of the Little Miami, on General Clark’s route of 1780. David H. Morris, making a slight error in dates, leaves this account, which gives, as the first day’s march of the militia, four miles: “On the 29th of September, we took up our march for the Maumee Villages, near where Fort Wayne now stands, and proceeded four miles.”[75]
Of the start from Fort Washington Thomas Irwin leaves record: “My Second visit to Said Cincinnati was as a volunteer from Washington, Pa. on Harmars Campaign about the first week in October 1790.... Fort Washington was Built, not finished, in my absence. The Militia from Kentucky and Pennsylvania Rendezvoused There at the same time Marched from Thence for the Indian Towns Between the 10th and 15th of october 1790 on the Trace made By General Clark from Kentucky in october 1782[76] which crossed the river hill[77] north of Fort Washington passed Mcmillins[78] Spring as it was afterwards Called Encamped at reading until Harmar came up with the regular Troops.”