In the winter of 1789-1790 strange things were happening in the Miami villages on the St. Joseph and the Maumee. Henry Hay was there, the British agent of a Detroit merchant. Here are some of the facts that he has recorded in his diary. LeGris, the Little Turtle, Richardville, and Blue Jacket, the Shawnee chief, were all in that vicinity. George Girty lived close by in a Delaware town. He had married an Indian woman and was really a savage. On the twenty-sixth of December 1789, Girty came to Miamitown to report to Hay. He said that the Delawares were constantly being told by the Miamis that the ground they occupied was not theirs; that the Delawares had answered that they were great fools to fight for others' lands, and that they would war no longer against the Americans, but would remove to the Spanish territory beyond the Mississippi. These facts Hay must report in writing to Alexander McKee, the British Indian agent. On the second of January, 1790, it was reported that Antoine Laselle, a French trader who had resided at Miamitown for nineteen years, was a prisoner in the hands of the Weas. The crime charged against him was that he had written a letter to the Americans at Vincennes apprising them of an Indian attack, and that as a consequence of that letter the attacking party had been captured. One of them was the son of a Wea who had burned an American prisoner at Ouiatenon the preceding summer, and the Weas now charged that this son would be burned by his American captors. Laselle was supposed to be in imminent peril, and all the French and English traders at Miamitown called on LeGris. LeGris said that he had always warned the traders about penetrating the lower Indian country, but that numbers of the French had gone to trade there without his knowledge. He had cautioned Laselle, but Laselle had gone without letting him know. If Laselle had told him of his intended trip, he would have sent along one of his chiefs with him, or given him a belt as a passport. LeGris said that no time must be lost, and that he would at once send forward three of his faithful warriors to put a stop to the business. On the fifth day of January, one Tramblai arrived from Ouiatenon, and said that all the reports concerning Laselle were false and that he was having a good trade. On the thirteenth, Laselle himself arrived with Blue Jacket and a Frenchman. He bore a letter from the Indians and the French-Canadians at Tippecanoe to LeGris, certifying that "the bearer Antoine Laselle is a good loyalist and is always for supporting the King," That was a satisfactory certificate of character along the Wabash in 1790.
On the thirteenth of February, 1790, the Shawnees who live near Miamitown, arrive at that village with the prisoner McMullen. His face is painted black, as one who approaches death. In his hands he holds the "Shishequia" made of deer hoofs. He constantly rattles this device, and sings, "Oh Kentuck!" He thinks that the day of doom is at hand and that he will be burned at the stake. Some Indian chief, however, has lost a son. The paint will be washed off and the feathers fastened in his scalplock, and he will be adopted to take the place of the slain, but he does not know that now. The story of his capture is typical of the times. He was born in Virginia and came to Kentucky to collect a debt. With two companions he crosses the Ohio at the mouth of the Kentucky to hunt wild turkeys. They separate in the woods, and the Shawnees surround him, and cut off all means of escape to the canoe. He tries to break through the encircling ring but is hit on the head with a war billet, and now he is here. The Shawnee band who captured him were out for revenge. Last spring they had gone out to hunt. A party of Miamis who were on the warpath returned by another route. The Kentuckians who followed them, fell in with the Shawnees, and slew some of their women and children. Thus runs the tale of blood and reprisal of those savage days.
On the twelfth day of December, 1789, and shortly after his arrival at Miamitown, Hay relates that he saw the heart of a white prisoner, "dried like a piece of dried venison," and with a small stick "run from one end of it to the other." The heart "was fastened behind the fellows bundle that killed him, with also his scalp." On Sunday, the twenty-first day of March, 1790, and shortly before Hay's departure from Detroit, a party of bloody Shawnees arrived with four prisoners, one of them a negro. Terrible havoc had been done on the Ohio. One boat had been attacked on which were one officer and twenty-one men. All had been killed, the boat sunk, and its contents hid in the woods. Nineteen persons had been taken near Limestone, now Maysville, Kentucky. All were prisoners, save two or three. John Witherington's family had been separated from him. He had a wife "7 months gone with child" and seven children. In addition to all the above outrages, information was gathered from time to time of all affairs along the Ohio. The garrisons were numbered, the officers named, and every motion of governor St. Clair closely scrutinized.
Thus in the very heart of the American country did British officers and agents control the Indian trade; heartlessly wink at or encourage the scalping parties of the savages, and keep a close and jealous watch on the numbers and movements of the American forces. The diary of the Englishman reveals the whole story.
The spring of 1790 was one of horror. Says Judge Burnet: "The pioneers who descended the Ohio, on their way westward, will remember while they live, the lofty rock standing a short distance above the mouth of the Scioto, on the Virginia shore, which was occupied for years by the savages, as a favorite watch-tower, from which boats, ascending or descending, could be discovered at a great distance. From that memorable spot, hundreds of human beings, men, women and children, while unconscious of immediate danger, have been seen in the distance and marked for destruction." On the fourth of April, William W. Dowell writing to the honorable John Brown of Kentucky, relates that about fifty Indians were encamped near the mouth of the Scioto. To decoy the passing boats to the shore they made use of a white prisoner, who ran along the bank uttering cries of distress and begging to be taken on board. Three boats and a pirogue were captured, and several persons brutally murdered. A boat belonging to Colonel Edwards of Bourbon, Thomas Marshall and others, was hailed by the same white prisoner who pleaded to be taken on board and brought to Limestone. The stratagem failing to work the savages at once exposed themselves and began to fire on the boats, but without effect. They then pushed off from the shore with a boat load of about thirty warriors and gave chase, and as they were better supplied with oars than the white men, they would have soon overtaken them. The cool resolution and presence of mind of one Colonel George Thompson now saved the day. He threw out all the horses in the boat he commanded, received Colonel Edward's crew into his own, and after a frantic chase of fifteen miles, effected an escape. Seventeen horses were lost, fifteen hundred pounds worth of dry goods, and a considerable quantity of household goods.
The leading spirits in all these attacks at the mouth of the Scioto were the Shawnees. The attacks became so frequent, that it was now determined to organize a punitive expedition against them. Two hundred and thirty Kentucky volunteers under General Charles Scott crossed the river at Limestone and were joined by one hundred regulars under General Harmar. They struck the Scioto several miles up from its mouth and marched down that stream, but the savages scattered in front of them and only four Indians were slain. Harmar reported to the government that he might as well have tried to pursue a pack of wolves.
The movements of the federal government in 1789 and 1790 were extremely slow. In the first place, a great many of the people of the eastern seaboard regarded the Kentuckians and all ultra-montane dwellers with positive distrust. This feeling crept into the counsels of the government itself. On June 15th, 1789, in a report of Henry Knox, secretary of war, to President Washington, on the Wabash Indians, the secretary says that since the conclusion of the war with Great Britain, "hostilities have almost constantly existed between the people of Kentucky and the said Indians. The injuries and murders have been so reciprocal, that it would be a point of critical investigation to know on which side they have been the greatest." It was probably just such sentiments as these that led to the orders of July, 1789, withdrawing the Virginia scouts and rangers who had helped to protect the frontiers, thus leaving the western people entirely dependent upon the limited garrisons stationed at the few and widely separated frontier posts. In the second place, the government neither had the men nor the money at command wherewith to undertake a successful expedition against the savages. The number of warriors on the Wabash and its communications were placed by Secretary Knox at from fifteen hundred to two thousand. This was probably an over-estimate, but the Indians were formidable. The regular troops stationed at the frontier posts were less than six hundred. To organize and equip an army sufficient to extirpate the Indians and destroy their towns, would require the raising of nineteen hundred additional men, and an expenditure of two hundred thousand dollars. This was a sum of money, says the secretary, "far exceeding the ability of the United States to advance, consistently with a due regard to other indispensable objects." In the third place, the government vainly imagined that it was possible to effect a peace with the Wabash tribes. The views of Secretary of War Knox were very emphatic on this subject. "It would be found, on examination, that both policy and justice unite in dictating the attempt of treaty with the Wabash Indians; for it would be unjust, in the present confused state of injuries, to make war on those tribes without having previously invited them to a treaty, in order amicably to adjust all differences." With these views, Washington himself concurred, observing, "that a war with the Wabash Indians ought to be avoided by all means consistently with the security of the frontier inhabitants, the security of the troops, and the national dignity."
Accordingly, about the first of January, 1790, Governor Arthur St. Clair, descended the river Ohio from Marietta, opposite Fort Harmar, to Losantiville, opposite the mouth of the Licking river. Here was located Fort Washington. He changed the name of Losantiville to Cincinnati, organized the county of Hamilton, and proceeded to Fort Steuben or Clarksville, at the Falls of the Ohio. There he dispatched a messenger to Major John Hamtramck, the commandant at Vincennes, with friendly speeches to be forwarded by him to the Indians of the Wabash. A sincere and honest effort was to be made to bring about peace, although St. Clair himself had but little faith in an amicable adjustment and expressed the opinion that the Miamis and the renegade Shawnees, Delawares and Cherokees, lying near them, were "irreclaimable by gentle means." The heart "dried like a piece of dried venison" was ample proof that St. Clair was right.
The first peace messenger sent by Hamtramck was Fred Gamelin, a Frenchman. He proceeded no farther than the Vermilion river, where he was informed by an Indian that if he went any farther his life would be taken, and he returned to Vincennes. On the first of April, Hamtramck sent forward Antoine Gamelin, an intelligent French merchant. The first village he arrived at was close to Vincennes, and was named Kikapouguoi. The Indians at this place were friendly, and he proceeded up the Wabash. He next arrived at a town of the Vermilion Piankeshaws. The first chief of the village and all the warriors seemed to be pleased with the words of peace from the Americans, but said that they could not give a proper answer before consulting their "eldest brethren," the Miamis. They desired that Gamelin should go forward to Kekionga or Miamitown, and bring back a report of what the head chiefs should say. Gamelin had now fairly entered the sphere of British influence. He was told that the nations of the lake had a bad heart and were ill disposed toward the Americans; that the Shawnees of Miamitown would never receive his speech.
Gamelin now advanced to the large Indian village of the Kickapoos, situated on the Big Vermilion river, in what is now Vermilion County, Indiana. Their principal town was on the site of what is now known as "The Army Ford Stock Farm," a few miles from the present village of Cayuga. This farm has been in the possession of the old Shelby family for years. The house contains two or three old fireplaces and has been built for about a century. It stands on a high bluff facing the Vermilion river, and the view is very picturesque. In making recent excavations for gravel along the roadway to the west of the buildings, an Indian skeleton was unearthed. It was in a fair state of preservation and the teeth in the skull were still perfect. There were also several Indian arrowheads, remains of a leathern pouch with a draw-string, and parts of a grass-woven blanket. By the side of the skeleton of the savage were the bones of a dog, and also a small copper bell, which was probably worn about the dog's neck. The Kickapoos held the dog in especial veneration and at the time of the burial of the warrior, fully equipped with arms and tobacco for the happy hunting ground, the dog was probably slain to accompany his master.