The year that brought Lasselle to Miamitown gave also to the region Peter LaFontaine and Charles (John?) Beaubien from Detroit.[74] Both settled in the Spy Run area of modern Fort Wayne. In his marriage with a Miami woman and the identification of his interests with those of the Indians, LaFontaine declared his loyalty to the red men. LaFontaine’s grandson, Francis LaFontaine, was the last chief of the Miamis to hold any real authority over the tribe. To Charles Beaubien there attaches greater interest. He was very active in the English cause and was a favorite of both Hamilton and Major Arent S. DePeyster, who succeeded Hamilton as Lieutenant-Governor of Detroit. From Miamitown, Beaubien, with a young Frenchman named Lorimer and a band of some eighty Indians, made a raid into Kentucky, where they captured an American party under Daniel Boone at Blue Licks in 1778. In the same year he served as a scout for Hamilton’s army, preceding it to Vincennes. DePeyster, in 1780, proposed to recall all the traders, but Beaubien, from Miamitown. Because of his pro-British activities, Beaubien was cordially hated by the people of Vincennes, who “wish[ed] to hang” him.[75]
On September, 26, 1778, Hamilton received from Beaubien at Miamitown the first news that Colonel George Rogers Clark and his Virginians had taken Vincennes.[76] Hamilton prepared for his ill-fated expedition to Vincennes by ordering the militia to prepare the Maumee-Wabash portage route and strengthen the defenses at Miamitown. Supplies, valued at $50,000, were left there to be sent to Vincennes later. Concerning the portage, Hamilton wrote:
The waters were so uncommonly low that we should not have been able to have passed but that at the distance of four miles from the landing place the beavers had made a dam which kept up the water; these we cut through to give passage to our boats.... The beaver are never molested at that place by the traders or Aberigines, and soon repair their dam.[77]
Clark constantly thought the capture of Detroit to be his ultimate goal in the northwest campaign. The first step in his proposed expedition was to be the reduction of Miamitown; however, he was prevented from making any move toward Miamitown and Detroit, as he lacked men and supplies. While the subject was still fresh in the minds of the inhabitants along the lower Ohio, another individual made his appearance to undertake what even the daring Clark considered imprudent. This man was Augustus Mottin de LaBalme, a lieutenant-colonel in the French cavalry who had come to America to offer his services to the colonies. In July, 1777, he was commissioned inspector general of cavalry by Congress, but feeling himself slighted in not being placed in command of that division of the army, he resigned in October and engaged in private business. Late in the spring of 1780, he was sent west to arouse the French in Illinois. The antipathy of the Indians and French toward the Virginians hindered him a great deal and in order to accomplish his purpose, he abandoned the Virginians and promised the French and Indians that royal troops of France would soon be on the Mississippi.[78]
Map carried by Colonel LaBalme at the time of his death. Courtesy British Library.
At Vincennes and Kaskaskia he gathered a force to lead against Miamitown, with the ultimate objective being Detroit. Four hundred men were to have joined him at Ouiatenon, but as these reinforcements did not appear, he was obliged to strike at Miamitown on November 3, 1780, with but 103 men, before the news of the expedition reached there. The initial blow was successful as the traders and Indians were taken by surprise and barely had time to flee the village. The Lasselle family was forced to escape by way of the Maumee, and in their haste, their small daughter was drowned. LaBalme’s men fell to plundering the traders’ goods and Indian villages, then retired to Aboite creek, a few miles to the southwest. Beaubien and LaFontaine, whose goods had been destroyed, incited the Indians to attack LaBalme, as the Indians, learning the party was French, were not disposed at first to retaliate. The red men, led by their famous war chief, Little Turtle, in his first major engagement, completely defeated LaBalme’s force, all but a few being either killed or captured. LaBalme himself was killed and his personal papers, along with the news of the victory, were sent to DePeyster at Detroit. Among these papers was the intelligence LaBalme had gathered about Miamitown and its traders. The goods at Beaubiens’ store, which was “kept by Mr. LaFontaine, and old man” was valued at 50,000 livres. Another store, kept by Mr. Mouton, a partner of Beaubien, was also valued at 50,000 livres. These goods were “equally well disposed” to “Mr. Barthelemy [listed in the census of Fort Miami in 1769], Mr. Rivard, Mr. Lorrance, Mr. Gouin of Detroit, Mr. Lascelle [Lasselle?], Mr. Pottevin, Mr. Paillet, Mr. Duplessy, & others ... & an American called George, a partner of Israel [possibly the Jew, Levi, who aided Captain Morris in 1764].”[79]
DePeyster was thoroughly alarmed upon learning of LaBalme’s expedition, and he immediately dispatched the “Rangers” to Miamitown with orders to cover the cannon there, until it was possible to send them to Detroit.[80] Captain Thompson of the “Rangers” reported to DePeyster on March 14, 1781, that he was taking immediate action to alter the old fort. A false rumor that the French of Vincennes were heading for Miamitown, brought the Indians flocking to their villages. Their spirit was very high, and several times they asked Captain Thompson for assistance “to go and destroy Post St. Vincent, as it is the only place that gives them any uneasiness.”[81] Within a year, however, DePeyster reported that the Miamis and other tribes in the area were growing fearful of being too closely allied with the British.[82] It is possible that they had received some information concerning Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown.
The treaty of Paris in 1783, which formally brought to an end the Revolutionary War, transferred the sovereignty of the land south of the Great Lakes to the United States. Actually this transfer made little impression on conditions at Miamitown, for, in truth, the Revolution in the West closed only with the Jay and Greenville treaties. Great Britain, in violation of the treaty of Paris, continued to hold Detroit together with other posts along the southern shore of the Lakes. By this means they maintained effective control of the fur trade of the Northwest, and, thereby, to a great extent, influenced the Indians. Just how much the British officials were responsible for the Indian warfare from 1783 to 1794 is a debatable question. At times the action of the British officials seems to have been a case of the right hand not letting the left hand know what it was doing. Most present-day students of the subject are inclined to acquit the British government of any positive agency in the matter. They point out that the constant warfare injured the fur trade of the area which was in a state of decline during this period anyway.[83] Nor did the Indians need much encouragement to take the warpath, as the ever-increasing tide of immigration coming down the Ohio and across the mountains threatened to engulf them. But the American settler did not reason this way; to him the English government was responsible. Milo Quaife, historian of the Northwest, correctly observes:
The present day scholar, possessing sources of information denied to contemporaries and entire immunity from the gory scalping knife and tomahawk, may consider the subject calmly and philosophically; the American borderer’s opinions were based upon the acts of Great Britain’s agents in America and the visible facts of the situation on the frontier.[84]