The Indians were too wise to meet this army in anything like open battle. They carefully kept out of its way, expending their energies in picking off stragglers, and occasionally sending in a stray shot from some point, from which they could flee before it could be reached by the infuriated soldiers.
General Clark pushed forward, burned several Indian towns, and laid waste many fields. A few prisoners were taken, and a few killed, when the expedition returned and disbanded.
This was the only enterprise of the kind that was set on foot by Kentucky during the year 1782, which, however, was marked by one of the darkest deeds on the part of white men, which blacken the pages of our history.
On the 8th of March, Colonel Daniel Williamson, with a body of men, marched to the Moravian town of Gnadenhutten, where he obtained possession of the arms of the Christian Indians through treachery, and then massacred one hundred of them in as cruel and atrocious manner as that shown by Nana Sahib at Cawnpore. The harvest of such an appalling crime was rapine and death along the frontier, as it has been demonstrated many a time since.
These outrages became so numerous that Colonel William Crawford organized an expedition in Western Pennsylvania, numbering 450 men, with which he started against the Wyandot towns on the Sandusky.
His force in fact was nothing but an undisciplined rabble, and no one could predict anything but disaster, when it should penetrate the Indian country. It was this lack of discipline that had given the death-blow to so many expeditions against the tribes on the frontier, and which is the strongest ally an enemy can have.
Early in June, Colonel Crawford's force reached the plains of Sandusky, straggling along like the remnants of a defeated army, and so mutinous that numbers were continually straying back, deserting openly and caring nothing for the wishes or commands of their leader.
Colonel Crawford saw that a crisis was approaching, and calling a council, it was agreed that if a large force of Indians was not encountered within the succeeding twenty-four hours, they would withdraw altogether from the country.
A thousandfold better would it have been had they done so at once.
Within the succeeding hour, scouts came in with the news that a large body of savages were marching against them, and at that moment were almost within rifle-shot.