LITTLE TURTLE'S BATTLE-AXE
General St. Clair left the nation's capitol with the words of the President ringing in his ears, and went directly to Fort Washington, arriving there in the middle of May, 1791. Various causes delayed the campaign, which began early in September, one year after the defeat of General Harmar. Fort Hamilton was built on the Miami in the country of Turtle, and Fort Jefferson forty miles farther on. Leaving a garrison in each, the army advanced, but its strength was reduced by desertions to fourteen hundred effectives. The militia were dissatisfied and unreliable.
Early in November, St. Clair made his camp on high ground, within fifteen miles of the Miami villages. The militia, to the number of three hundred, crossed a creek and halted on the first elevation a quarter of a mile beyond the main body. While forming their camp, Little Turtle attacked them. The militia immediately broke in a wild panic. Without attempting any fight, most of them flung away their guns, the warriors at their heels, and cutting them down as they ran. The Indians pursued them all the way to the main body and then attacked it. The soldiers fought heroically, and drove back their enemies several times, but the charges were repeated under the direction of the Turtle, with a boldness rarely shown by his race. The end of it all was another crushing disaster, in which the troops lost thirty-eight officers and about eight hundred men. Many of the wounded suffered shocking barbarities. Thus, out of a total of fourteen hundred, nearly seventy per cent. were slain or disabled.
In this woful affair, the opposing forces were equal—the Indians being perhaps a trifle the greater in number—and the credit of the victory by the red men is therefore the more marked. The horde was commanded by Little Turtle, and although there is no way of knowing his loss, it was certainly less than that of the whites. Years afterward, the chief declared that only nine of his warriors were killed, but the number was probably fifty or sixty.
Nothing could have been more complete than the panic of the soldiers. General Butler, second in command, was killed; the camp and artillery were abandoned, because not a horse was left alive to draw off the cannon, and the panting fugitives continued to throw away their guns and accoutrements long after the pursuit ceased. They did not halt until they reached Fort Jefferson, twenty-nine miles from the scene of the massacre.
Personally no one could have shown more bravery than General St. Clair. His clothing was pierced eight times by bullets, three horses were killed under him, and he strove with all the power and authority at his command to check the flight and rally the troops; but terrified men are as uncontrollable as so many thirsting buffaloes in their rush for water.
Washington was of a serene temperament, and very rarely did he give way to anger. We know, however, of two occasions in which his rage overmastered him. One of these was at Monmouth Court House, on that flaming day in June, 1778, when he came face to face with General Charles Lee, leading a retreat of a part of the patriot forces, and the other was when the news reached him of the disaster to St. Clair and his army. He stormed up and down his room, his passion so terrible, that none of his attendants dare address him.
"Right there!" he thundered, pointing at a chair, "he sat, and the last words I said to him were a warning against the very thing that has happened; there can be no excuse for such atrocious, horrible blundering."