CHAPTER III
ST. CLAIR’S CAMPAIGN
Harmar wrought wide destruction but of the kind that made the Indians of the Maumee irrevocably and bitterly angry. The main boast of the returning campaigners was that the enemy did not pursue them—which, after all, was more significant than we can realize today. It illustrates in a word the exact effect of the raid; the Indians were dumbfounded at the arrival of a white army so far within their forests. They knew as well as the whites that the punishment administered to the frontiersmen was almost wholly due to the rash boldness of the latter, who, rushing heedlessly after the scurrying savages, made ambuscades possible. Yet Harmar’s actual success was only in burning villages and crops, and sending crowds of old men and women and children fleeing to the swamps and forest fastnesses. Practically, it was the old story of a score of Kentucky raids into the “Indian side” of the Ohio over again. “You are the ‘town-destroyer,’” was the cry of an old chieftain to President Washington, “and when that name is heard our women look quickly behind them and turn pale.” But there was something more to be done on the Maumee than to make squaws turn pale! That would not keep back the murdering bands from the infant settlements along and below the Ohio.
This became plain so suddenly that the shock was felt throughout the East. In no way could the Northwestern Indians have struck home more quickly than by perpetrating the terrible Big Bottom Massacre. The New England colony which, led by Rufus Putnam, founded Marietta at the mouth of the Muskingum had, by January 1790, expanded in all directions.[87] One company of pioneers had ascended the Muskingum to Big Bottom, Morgan County, Ohio. At dusk, on the second night in January, 1791, a band of savages crossed the river at Silverheels Riffle above the unprotected blockhouse, and entered the settlement feigning friendship. The pioneers offered them a portion of the evening meal, when a sudden burst of flame swept the room. Several whites fell straight forward into the fireplace before which they were eating; others, to the number of fourteen, were instantly put to death. But one blow was struck by the whites at Big Bottom. The goodwife of the woodsman Meeks, uninjured by the first fire that swept the cabin, took advantage of the cloud of smoke to seize a broad-ax standing by the wall. As an Indian strode forward to the bloody finale, the glittering blade sank deeply into his shoulder. It was but one blow—but it was a token of a Nation’s anger; it meant as much as the blood-red battle-ax the departing murderers left beside the smouldering ruins of Big Bottom blockhouse.
The message of that war-club sped eastward. The blow at the New England colony was sure to attract unusual attention, and no doubt played an important part in deciding the great question of the hour. This was a question of war or peace. As in the year previous, so now in 1791 (as well as in later times) there were many who opposed Indian warfare from humanitarian principles. Suffice it to say these opponents of war did not live on the Muskingum or Licking Rivers! Yet peace, for all concerned, if it could be secured at an honorable price, was most desirable, and the United States faced the question fairly and with energy. As early as December, 1790, the famous Seneca chieftain Cornplanter, being in Philadelphia, was urged not only to present the exact feeling of the Government to the Six Nations in New York and on the Allegheny, but was asked to visit the hostile western nations as a peace messenger. The declaration of war by the savages at Big Bottom in no wise deterred the United States from this purpose of obtaining peace at the least price in blood and treasure. In March, 1791, Colonel Thomas Proctor was sent to the Senecas to urge the young men of that tribe not to take the war path, and then was ordered to go with Cornplanter to the Maumee River. The task was dangerous and laborious, but Proctor pushed his way through the forests of Pennsylvania and New York to the Senecas who kept so well the western door of the “Long House of the Iroquois.” It was a fruitless mission. “The people at the setting sun are bad people,” said an old warrior to the intrepid herald; “you must look when it is light in the morning until the setting sun, and you must reach your neck over the land, and take all the light you can, to show the danger.”
The Senecas were right and the further Proctor “reached his neck out” over the land the more plainly was this seen to be true. Gordon, the British commander at Niagara, forbade him taking ship for the Maumee; “the unfriendly denial,” he wrote the Secretary of War, “puts a stop to the further attempting to go to the Miamies.” Another item in his letter was of significance: Joseph Brant with forty warriors had gone westward to the confederated tribes on an unknown mission.
In April, Colonel Timothy Pickering was also sent to the Senecas, and, meeting them in convention at Painted Post, urged the chieftains to hold back the young men from joining the hostile tribes. Governor St. Clair likewise sent messages, especially to the western tribes urging that hostile bands be withdrawn from the frontier ere the United States should be compelled to bring heavy chastisement. But peace is sometimes as costly, and more so, than war; such proved to be the case now. It was early believed by the most farsighted that a crushing defeat of the northwestern confederacy would be a great saving of blood. And so while peaceful efforts were being forwarded as effectually as the situation of the distant tribes and the hostility of English agents permitted, warlike preparations were likewise being made. As the spring of 1791 opened, the frontiers were overrun with murderous bands and the cry from the infant West to the central government could not be unheeded. “I most earnestly implore the protection of government,” wrote the brave Putnam to Washington, “for myself and friends inhabiting these wilds of America.” The cry from Kentucky and the lower Ohio was equally piercing.
The plan of the United States at this juncture was wholly in keeping with its dignity and its power. Failing in an attempt of reconciliation, it was determined to throw into the Indian land several raiding bands of horsemen “to demonstrate that they [the savages] were within our reach, and lying at our mercy.”[88] In case these strokes did not awe the offenders, a grand campaign on an extensive scale was to be inaugurated. Fearing the worst, though hopeful of the better, preparations for all these movements were put on foot, to be countermanded if peaceful measures sufficed. The attitude of the Government at this serious crisis of its first Indian war must be judged humane and generous. The Indians protested that they had never ceded an inch of territory northwest of the Ohio; yet at four treaties supposed representatives of all the nations concerned had received from American commissioners payment for all lands now (1791) occupied or claimed by the white men. In each case the nations had been formally invited to each treaty; they now averred that only irresponsible chieftains had signed these treaties. In a single instance it is possible to believe that unscrupulous Indians might have so deceived the government officials and wronged the Indians, but that this could have occurred on three occasions was manifestly absurd. The Ohio Company purchase and the Symmes purchase had been made, the pioneers had emigrated and settled the lands. The Government had given no white man right to cross the treaty line. Those settlements could not be uprooted without great injustice. The war seemed, therefore, an imperative necessity, and the Government had no honorable alternative if peace efforts failed. We have had many dealings with the Indians since 1790, and it is of some comfort to rest assured that our first Indian war was eminently just and right.