When the first few Indians were sighted, Colonel Hardin made careful and scientific preparation. He attacked. The Indians did run off, with the happy, shouting militia in full hue and cry after. The regulars followed slowly. When a gap of two miles had opened, as if from the very earth out sprang Little Turtle's whole remaining force, a thousand, and the hapless regulars were in the same plight as before.
The militia fought their way back, too late. The battle on the field had become hand-to-hand. Both sides were brave; but when a soldier thrust with his bayonet, two tomahawks were there, to crash into his skull.
Major Wyllys was killed; so was Lieutenant Ebenezer Frothingham; fifty of the rank and file fell. Only eight men escaped. Of the militia, a major, two captains, and over ninety others died.
After he had been joined by the survivors, General Harmar resumed his march to Fort Washington. He claimed a victory, because he had destroyed the Indians' winter supplies; but he had lost one hundred and eighty-three soldiers killed, and forty wounded, and the Indians not more than fifty warriors.
The victory and the field of battle were left to Little Turtle. General Harmar had proved to be a commander whose orders were "Go" instead of "Come," and Colonel Hardin had not known how to fight Indians.
However, Little Turtle realized that the Americans had other officers, and that General Washington was not a man to back down.. There would be another army.
So he spent much of the winter in visiting various tribes and enlisting them. He went as far north as Ontario of Canada, and there appealed to the Missisauga nation of Algonquins. He traveled west to the Illinois River. He was a second Pontiac.
General and Governor Saint Clair himself was the officer appointed by President Washington to lead the next expedition against the Little Turtle army. He was a gallant old Continental, aged fifty-seven and gray-haired. As a young officer in a Scotch regiment he had come over to America with a British army, in 1758, to fight the French and Indians. After that war he had become a true American citizen of Pennsylvania, and as colonel and major-general had served with the Buff-and-Blue in the war for American independence.
He had been unlucky in his campaigns, but nobody ever doubted his courage. General Washington thought highly of him, and now took pains to say, in person, to him, before the start was made:
"Beware of a surprise. You know how the Indians fight. So I repeat—beware of a surprise."