Wayne’s tactics in road-building as he neared the enemy’s villages is perhaps quite unparalleled; indeed, as will be emphasized, this remarkable campaign was not less impressive to the savages—these swift plunges through the forests, the sudden pauses and the astonishing feints—than was the battle which soon crushed the Indian confederacy. At the same time the careful historian would greatly err should he not give Wayne credit for obeying, even now, the earnest commands of his superiors to secure an armistice and a peace without a battle. Secretary Knox had, over and again, urged Wayne to secure peace without bloodshed if possible. A battle in any case was hazardous; there were possibilities of defeat; there were greater promises of a continuous war even in case of an American victory. The British had displayed characteristic arrogance in building a fort at Roche de Bout this very spring, around which the Indian cohorts were probably gathering. Complications with England were undoubtedly possible, if not entirely probable. From Lieutenant Clark’s journal it is clear that General Wilkinson proposed, as soon as the Auglaize was reached, to make a dash with a flying column upon the populous district at the junction of the Auglaize with the Maumee. Wayne refused to consider the plan[156]—and throughout the remainder of Clark’s journal his words are well-nigh abusive of General Wayne’s whole management of the campaign.[157] The dare-devil Wayne’s caution at this strategic juncture of this important campaign portrays an element of steadiness for which the hero of Stony Point has perhaps never received sufficient credit.
On the eighth of August, after marching through five miles of cornfields, where were “vegetables of every kind in abundance,” according to Boyer, the tired Legion came in view of the Maumee, of which they and a whole nation had heard so much. The spot of encampment was the site of the present city of Defiance on the commanding point between the rivers, and here in the three days succeeding, Fort Defiance was erected. To the Indians the name of the spot was Grand Glaize.[158] Wells’s rangers reported that the Indian army was lying two miles above the British fort, on the west bank of the Maumee. According to Posey, Wayne on the eleventh despatched an old Indian to the hostile camp with offers of peace; two days later an old squaw was posted off with a similar message. Neither returned. On the sixteenth, the fort being nearly completed, Major Hunt was left in command, and the grand advance began. The route was down the left bank of the Maumee straight toward the painted lines of Little Turtle’s army. Christopher Miller—the red-man made white by that plunge in the creek—met the army today with a message from the chieftain White Eyes, Clark records, asking Wayne to remain ten days at Grand Glaize, not erecting a fort, and the Indians would perhaps treat with him. “This letter,” Lieutenant Clark states, “was generally considered as a challenge.”[159]
Nineteen miles was made the first day (August 16) and twelve the day following. As the road was “generally bad,” as Boyer affirms, these tremendous marches must be considered remarkable, for each camp was heavily fortified and the enemy was just at hand. The spies in advance were unceasing in their vigilance and activity; and on the eighteenth poor May, who had lived with the Indians as a spy the preceding winter at Wayne’s command, was entrapped and captured, suffering a most cruel death. This day the army encamped forty-one miles from Fort Defiance and made a strong entrenchment which was named Fort Deposit. Here the heavy baggage was stored that the troops might go into action unencumbered.
On the twentieth, at seven in the morning, the Legion advanced in fighting order. The Indian army, its left wing lying on Presque Isle, was stretched across the valley for two miles in a well-chosen position. A tornado had swept the forest here and the mass of fallen trees offered a particularly advantageous spot for the Indians’ favorite method of fighting. Such spots were very common in the old Black Forest of the West and were generally known as “fallen timber” by the Indians and pioneers;[160] in them cavalry was almost useless. Thus the mounted volunteers, the Indians believed, would be debarred from the fight.
At eleven o’clock the advanced lines met. At the first burst of sudden flame the American vanguard of volunteers was staggered, perhaps surprised at the fire from an unseen enemy lying beneath the tangled wind-rack of the forest. The guards on the right fell back through the regulars commanded by Cook and Steele. The regulars were thrown into confusion. It was fifteen minutes before order was restored but when joined by the riflemen and legionary cavalry, a charge with trailed arms was ordered and the savages were pricked out from their lairs with the point of the bayonet. A heavy firing on the left announced that the battle now was raging there, but only for a moment. The whole Indian plan of battle was destroyed by the impetuous bayonet charges of troops hard-drilled in the dull days at Legionville, Hobson’s Choice, and in the snows of Greenville. The redskins hid where a tornado had passed—not expecting another more destructive than the first! For two miles the scattering horde was pursued headlong through the forests. A halt was ordered just within sight of the British fort, whose guns were silent though menacing. The Indians poured on down the valley toward the present site of Toledo and Lake Erie.
The battle of Fallen Timber was a decisive and important victory. The Indians numbered about fifteen hundred; a considerable number of advancing allies never reached the battle-ground. The rapid strides of Wayne had forced the meeting unexpectedly. Those ten days the Indians had requested for conference would have largely increased their strength. The number killed and wounded on either side was inconsiderable; forty Indians, only, were found on the two-mile field of conflict. Twenty-six killed and eighty-seven wounded, was the Legion’s loss. Of the Kentuckians, who hardly got into the action on account of the swift success of the Legion, seven privates were killed, and ten privates and three officers were wounded.
Remaining three days on the battle-field, Wayne destroyed many acres of corn and many Indian huts and then returned to Fort Defiance. Thence he ascended the Maumee to the junction of the St. Mary and St. Joseph—Harmar’s battle ground—and built a fort which he permitted the oldest officer (Posey?) to name “Fort Wayne in honor of the hero of Stony Point.” From Fort Wayne the army ascended the St. Mary to Fort Adams, and thence passed to Loramie’s, where a new Fort Loramie was erected. The troops from there opened a new route across to Fort Greenville. Here, in the following year, the awed and broken Indian nations signed the Treaty of Fort Greenville which practically reaffirmed the previous Treaty of Fort Harmar.
Viewed as a whole, Wayne’s campaign is most interesting from the standpoint of road-building. It was Wayne’s advance which awed the savages, not the battle of Fallen Timber. The army crashing northward through the forests as though ever in the pursuit of a foe, the impregnable forts that arose here and there, the strongly fortified camps, the fleet and active scouting parties, the stern but even temper of Wayne’s exhortations for peace, and at last, the fierce bayonet charge amid the prostrate trees, accomplished the very mission of the hour. That winding line of a road from the Ohio to Roche de Bout, and the five new forts that sprang up on it in 1793 and 1794, have left their impress strongly upon western history. The Indians never forgot the “Whirlwind,” who was also a “Black Snake.” Since that road was built, the Indian race has never been a national menace. Bloody battles there have been, but at no time has the expansion of the United States been seriously jeopardized by Indian hostility.
Clark’s conquest of Vincennes was now made good by the conquest of the Maumee Valley; Harmar’s reverses and St. Clair’s annihilation were avenged—the Old Northwest was won.