Famous Indian Chiefs / Their Battles, Treaties, Sieges, and Struggles with the Whites for the Possession of America

by Charles H. L. Johnston

LITTLE TURTLE, OR MICHIKINIQUA.

Captain Armstrong, in charge of this expedition, was a man of experience in border warfare, but he allowed his entire command to walk into an ambush. The troops were hot upon the Indian trail, when a sudden wail from the forest was followed by the loud report of a rifle on the right of the skirmish line. Immediately a chorus of horrible yells arose from every quarter, and before the Americans fully realized it they were surrounded by a ring of spitting rifles. Men fell over each other in confusion, and terrified by the suddenness of the onslaught the militia broke ranks and fled. Armstrong, himself, was knocked into a mire, and sinking up to his neck in the bog was unable to take part in the fighting. He could only see the terrible slaughter among the regulars, all of whom were either killed or disabled. And later on he saw the Indians holding a savage war dance among the bodies of the slain.

Dragging himself out of the swamp at dark, the mud-bespattered leader crept back to Harmar's camp, while the doleful wails of the savages sounded loud in the inky blackness. And when he arrived he found that the American General had enough of Turtle's tactics to suit him, apparently for all time. At any rate he broke camp and retreated towards the settlements, until he arrived near the ruined villages of the Miamis. Here he ordered a halt and sent Colonel Hardin back towards the Indians with only sixty regulars and three hundred militiamen. These last were pretty poor specimens of soldiers, as they had, for the most part, been recruited in the Eastern states from men of no experience whatever in woodland fighting. They were undisciplined, untrained, and unaccustomed to the frontier. Many had gone out to fight in order to escape from legal difficulties at home. Their ability to cope with the watchful enemy was about equal to that of General Braddock's troops at Fort Duquesne, and they met with about the same fate.

Hardin had no sooner arrived at the place he had been directed to go to, when a small body of Miami Indians advanced to meet his troops. These, by yelling and firing, soon attracted the volleys of his own men. As the militiamen advanced, the redskins broke into several bands, and, appearing to be panic-stricken, fled down a long gulley. In a twinkling the militia started in pursuit, and were hurrying after the yelping braves, when suddenly a vast number of warriors beset the sixty regulars on all sides. Little Turtle directed the fighting, and, realizing that his greater number could soon annihilate the entire command, ordered a rush upon the soldiers of the new Republic, who had now formed a hollow square back to back, with bayonets at the ends of their long muskets. But the Indians fought like demons; rushed headlong against the glittering steel; and throwing their tomahawks at the soldiers, struck down those in front, while the others were soon overpowered by the vastly superior forces of the enemy. The militia, meanwhile, came straggling back from their pursuit of the decoy Indians, and for a short while made a fierce attack upon the savages. But now realizing that the regulars were all killed, and being unaccustomed to frontier fighting, they lost heart completely and retreated. Ten regulars got away with the mass of fugitives, and the dead were left as a prey to the wolves and other animals of the wild wood.

Elated by their success, the Indians, under Little Turtle and the other leaders, now continued their depredations upon the frontier with greater audacity than ever. Harmar retreated to Fort Washington, was courtmartialed, and was honorably acquitted, but immediately resigned his commission. His personal conduct in the battles had been brave, and he claimed a victory, because the warriors of Little Turtle had not followed him up after the fight. Certainly he had made the campaign in an extraordinary manner, for never had he met the Indians with his entire force intact. By splitting his command he had weakened it badly, and thus the savages had been able to overpower the separate detachments of his army. To the sagacity of Little Turtle can be laid the Indian victory, for his was the mind that had planned the ambuscade, and he was the one who had given personal direction to the annihilation of the regulars.

George Washington, who was then President of the Republic, was mortified by this series of defeats to his army, and the situation was now so grave that Congress ordered the organization of a new force to punish the savages. The Governor of the Northwest Territory, General Arthur St. Clair, was put in command of fully two thousand men and was directed to wipe out the defeat of Harmar, by administering a crushing blow to the followers of Little Turtle. Before he set out upon his journey into the wilderness, President Washington called him to Philadelphia and warned him to guard against surprise by the Indians. "You have," said he, "your instructions from the Secretary of War. The Indians have a leader of great bravery in Little Turtle, and have proven that they can fight with great strength. You know that they lay many ambuscades. Beware of a surprise! I repeat it. Beware of a surprise!" With these words of counsel ringing in his ears, St. Clair left for Fort Washington, arriving there in May, 1791.

The leader of the American forces was a man of considerable age, and was afflicted with gout and rheumatism. In the war of the Revolution he had exhibited no particular talent, but he possessed undoubted courage. He had soon collected two small regiments of regular infantrymen and some six months' levies of militia, whose pay was two dollars and ten cents a month for privates, and thirty dollars for captains. The militiamen were utterly untrained in border warfare, and their officers had had little experience, but the regular troops were well used to Indian campaigns. There were two small batteries of light guns and a few cavalrymen to swell the fighting force, which amounted in all to about two thousand warriors.

The levies of raw troops were gathered together at Fort Hamilton, twenty-five miles north from Fort Washington, and from this place an advance was begun into the Indian country on October 4th. The little army stumbled slowly through the deep woods and across the open places, cutting out its own road and making about five or six miles a day. As the wild beasts of the forest were plentiful, frequently both deer and bear were slaughtered, and venison helped to sustain the strength of the men. Halting to build another fort, christened in honor of Thomas Jefferson, the army again pressed into the country of the hostiles, while the scouts occasionally interchanged shots with parties of skulking braves. Now and again a militiaman would disappear, showing that the savages were closely watching the movements of the column, while numerous desertions cut the force down from its original numbers to fourteen hundred men. Snow was on the ground, the wintry woods surrounded the Americans with a bleak and awful silence, the sickness of St. Clair made it impossible for him to command in person, and had it not been for the efforts of the Adjutant General, Colonel Winthrop Sargent, an old Revolutionary officer, the expedition would have failed ingloriously, even before the Indians had been reached.