Military Roads of the Mississippi Basin

by Archer Butler Hulbert

To secure a comprehensive grasp of the interesting campaign now undertaken, it is necessary to keep in mind simultaneously three situations: this new army, the moving companies of peace commissioners, and that ragged pathway northward from Fort Washington with the little stockade forts which guarded it. These varying phases will be treated chronologically, at the risk of coherency, and the scattered threads gathered much in the tangled order in which they were spun amid many hopes and many fears.

One of the first important matters, in this as in previous campaigns, was to retain the neutrality of the Six Nations. The efforts in the year preceding had been approximately successful, though, according to his biographer, Stone, Joseph Brant with a party of Mohawks was present at St. Clair’s defeat. As early as January 9, 1792, an express was hurried off to the Reverend Samuel Kirtland, veteran missionary among the Iroquois, informing him that Colonel Pickering had invited the principal chiefs of the Six Nations to visit Washington. He was urged to assist in securing their acquiescence, especially Joseph Brant’s, and to accompany them on the journey.

The next act of Secretary Knox is peculiarly significant and interesting. Captain Peter Pond, a trader, and one William Steedman were ordered to proceed westward to the hostile tribes on the Maumee, feigning to be traders. “No doubt can exist,” wrote Knox, “that our strength and our resources are abundant to conquer, and even extirpate the Indians.... But this is not our object. We wish to be at peace with those Indians—to be their friends and protectors—to perpetuate them on the land. The desire, therefore, that we have for peace, must not be inconsistent with the national reputation. We cannot ask the Indians to make peace with us, considering them as the aggressors: but they must ask a peace of us. To persuade them to this effect is the object of your mission. Insinuate, upon all favorable occasions, the humane disposition of the United States; and, if you can by any means ripen their judgement, so as to break forth openly [disclose yourselves], and declare the readiness of the United States to receive, with open arms, the Indians, ... do it.... You might persuade some of the most influential chiefs to repair to our posts on the Ohio, and so, from post to post, to this place.”[126] Perhaps never in warfare were spies sent amongst an enemy on so remarkable a mission.

In response to the Government’s invitation, fifty Indian chieftains from the Six Nations arrived in Philadelphia on March 13. They were treated with utmost courtesy by the government officials and proper gifts distributed. Among other benefits, fifteen hundred dollars a year was promised by the United States to be spent encouraging education and agriculture in the Iroquois land. The chief boon secured by this display of hospitality and liberality was the promise that the Six Nations would wholly abstain from war and would immediately send a delegation to the western tribes to mediate between them and the United States, secure an armistice, and make plans for a final treaty of peace. In this promise the Government placed great hope. The Six Nations were the most prominent of their race on the continent and their chieftains exerted an influence equaled by none. Having received, in person, from the nation’s highest executive officers, protestations of friendliest nature, they were the best emissaries that could possibly treat with the hostile tribes on the Maumee on behalf of the Government.

Yet efforts to avert war did not stop here. By May it was determined to send an envoy extraordinary to the Maumee, if the hazard could possibly be accomplished. The Iroquois chiefs would, it was believed, keep their solemn pledges, yet affairs of such a nature usually developed very slowly among red-men and in the present crisis there was no time to be lost. Accordingly a fitting personage was chosen by President Washington to make the perilous attempt. His choice fell quickly on the brave leader of the Ohio Company pioneers to Marietta—General Rufus Putnam. Sufficient provision for his family in case of a disastrous termination of his journey being promised by the Government, the quiet, bold pioneer departed from his frontier home on May 22 for Fort Washington. His instructions were explicit. He was first to assure the hostile nations that the United States did not in the least desire any of the Indian’s land, but rather solemnly pledged itself to “guaranty all that remain, and take the Indians under our protection.” In turn the Indians were to agree to a truce and call in all war-parties. The most prominent chiefs were to be invited to Philadelphia to make a treaty; on his way westward General Putnam was empowered to release all Indian prisoners retained at Fort Washington and give the women presents to carry home with them in token of the Government’s pacific intentions.[127]

The frontier to which Putnam now came was in need of brave men and strong. These had been long months since that dark November day when the remains of St. Clair’s shattered army poured back upon Fort Jefferson and Fort Hamilton, Brigadier-general Wilkinson now commanded at Fort Washington and with a firm hand was managing affairs on the firing-line. His outposts, Forts Hamilton and Jefferson, were frequently surrounded by Indian scouts sent down the narrow trace from Little Turtle’s cantonments on the Maumee, but no attack on these posts had yet been made in force. Such an attack was frequently anticipated, and many sudden calls to arms sounded now and again within the little garrisons lost so far within the northern forests. The brave Captain John Armstrong still commanded at Fort Hamilton, guarding the strategic ford of the Great Miami and the narrow roadway toward Fort Jefferson and the silent corpse-strewn battle-ground beyond. Wilkinson’s principal duty was to keep the garrisons of his three little forts alive and in heart, and keep a watchful eye on the victorious enemy. In January, calling on volunteers from the country about Cincinnati, Wilkinson organized a little company to visit St. Clair’s slaughter-ground. The snow was two feet deep—a depth seldom if ever exceeded in southwestern Ohio. Kentucky volunteers crossed the Ohio on ice above the mouth of the Little Miami. Leaving Fort Washington January 25, the fatal field was reached February 1. Such was the depth of snow that comparatively few bodies could be found, save as here and there, on knolls and ridges, a white mound of driven snow marked where a wolf had left a scalped and mangled corpse. The winter of 1791-92 likewise witnessed the erection of an intermediary post between Forts Hamilton and Jefferson, most appropriately named Fort St. Clair. It was erected by a body of men under command of Captain John S. Gano, under whom William Henry Harrison served, half a mile west of the present site of Eaton, Preble County, at St. Clair’s Crossing of “Garrison Branch” of Seven Mile Creek.

As the spring of 1792 opened, and the forest roads became passable, it was expected that the Indians, by a concerted movement, would attempt to sweep the three forts north of the Ohio and make good their unjust claim to possession of that northern shore.

Accordingly spies were kept well out on the trails for any sign of an advancing army. Others were sent nearer the Indian’s lair. On April 7 two messengers, Freeman and Gerrard, were sent from Fort Washington with a speech to the hostile tribes, being ordered to follow Harmar’s Trace up the Little and Great Miamis. Three days later Wilkinson sent word to Armstrong to order out a spy by way of St. Clair’s road, who should carefully study the route all the way to the Miami towns. Accordingly one of the boldest men on the frontier, William May, was ordered to “desert” to the enemy and, shaving his head and adopting their dress and manner of living, to learn all that was being planned and done in the red-men’s camps. On May 12 Sergeant Reuben Reynolds was ordered to “desert” from Fort St. Clair and also follow St. Clair’s route to the Maumee and reside with the Indians until a favorable opportunity to return occurred. On May 20 Colonel Hardin and Captain Alexander Trueman left Fort Washington for the Maumee, bearing an official message from the Government, of similar tenor to that given to General Putnam. Thus six men had preceded Putnam to the Maumee, and only two of them went merely as spies—May and Reynolds. The fate of four of these men dampened the ardor of the frontier people for peaceful efforts. Freeman, Gerrard, Trueman, and Hardin were all murdered before reaching the Maumee. Reynolds and May returned in safety later in the year.

General Putnam learned at Fort Washington of the fate of his predecessors and determined not to throw life away uselessly. Favorable messages having been received from the upper Wabash, he turned all his efforts toward securing a meeting with the Wabash Indians in the fall of the year at Vincennes, Indiana. No more attempts were made to reach the Maumee over the “Bloody Way,” as the Indians termed the route north from Fort Washington. “The President of the United States must know well why the blood is so deep in our paths,” exclaimed a Shawanese chieftain, “... he has sent messengers of peace on these bloody roads, who fell on the way.” A messenger was even now preparing to come this way to whom bloody roads were not new and for whom they had no fear. Leaving the Indian commissioners going slowly on their way to a conference with the hostile tribes at “Auglaize”—the mouth of the Auglaize River where Defiance, Ohio, now stands—and Putnam waiting for the Weas and Kickapoos to assemble at Vincennes, let us look back to the gathering “Legion of the United States” into whose ready hands the matter of peace would go when the Indians got courage enough to throw off the mask.

It was one thing to plan an army on paper but a far more serious task to raise and organize it. And first and foremost arose the trebly difficult task of choosing a leader. The officers of Revolutionary days were fast passing into old age, and as Washington looked about him to the comrades of former years, there were few left capable of taking up the difficult task that St. Clair laid down. A memorandum left by Washington indicates the serious necessity of a wise choice and the nature of the possible candidates. Lincoln was sober, honest, and brave, but infirm and past the vigor of life; Baron Steuben, a stickler for tactics, was likewise sober and brave and sensible, but a foreigner; Moultrie was brave and had fought against the Cherokees, but Washington knew little of him; McIntosh was considered honest and brave but was not well known and consequently not popular, and was infirm; Wayne was “More active and enterprising than Judicious and cautious. No œconomist it is feared:—open to flattery—vain—easily imposed upon and liable to be drawn into scrapes. Too indulgent (the effect perhaps of some of the causes just mentioned) to his Officers. Whether sober—or a little addicted to the bottle I know not;” Weedon was not deficient of resource and was of a convivial nature though not unduly so; Hand was sensible and judicious and not intemperate; Scott was brave and “means well” but not suited for extensive command, convivial; Huntington, sober, sensible, discreet; Wilkinson, lively, sensible, pompous, and ambitious, “whether sober or not I do not know;” Gist, activity and attention doubtful, but of noble spirit; Irvine, sober, tolerably sensible, prudent, an “œconomist;” Morgan, fortunate and had met with éclat, possibly intemperate, troubled with palpitation and illiterate; Williams sensible though vain, in poor health; Putnam, (Rufus) strong-minded, discreet, “nothing conspicuous in character ... known little out of his own State and a narrow circle;” Pinckney, brave, honorable, erudite, sensible and a stickler for tactics.[128]