About this time Scott hears from Colonel Hardin. The redoubtable old Indian fighter who was saved to die in the service of his country, has pushed on and captured the two villages observed from High Gap, and is encumbered with many prisoners. He now discovers a stronger village farther to the left, and proceeds to attack. This latter village is probably in the neighborhood of the present site of Granville, and opposite the point where the Riviere De Bois Rouge, or Indian creek, enters the Wabash. Scott at once detaches Captain Brown and his company to support the Colonel, but nothing can stop the impetuous Kentuckian, and before Brown arrives, "the business is done," and Hardin joins the main body before sunset, having killed six warriors and taken fifty-two prisoners. "Captain Bull," says Scott, "the warrior who discovered me in the morning, had gained the main town, and given the alarm a short time before me; but the villages to my left were uninformed of my approach, and had no retreat."
The first day of fighting had been very encouraging. The next morning Scott determined to destroy Kethtipecanunck, or Tippecanoe, eighteen miles up the river. His knowledge of geography was poor, for he talks about Kethtipecanunck being at the mouth of the Eel river, but his fighting qualities were perfect. On examination, however, he discovers that his men and horses are greatly worn down and crippled by the long march and the fighting of the day before. Three hundred and sixty men are at last selected to make the march on foot. At half after five in the evening they start out under the command of lieutenant-commandant Wilkinson and at one o'clock the next day they have returned, having completely burned and destroyed what Scott denominated as "the most important settlement of the enemy in that quarter of the federal territory." Wilkinson's detachment had reached the village near daybreak. The advance columns of the Kentuckians charged impetuously into the town just as the Indians were crossing the Wabash, and a brief skirmish ensued from the opposite shores, during which several Indian warriors were killed and two Americans wounded. Many of the inhabitants of Kethtipecanunck were French traders and lived in a state of semi-civilization. "By the books, letters, and other documents found there," says Scott, "it is evident that place was in close connection with, and dependent upon, Detroit; a large quantity of corn, a variety of household goods, peltry, and other articles, were burned with this village, which consisted of about seventy houses, many of them well furnished." Scott lamented that the condition of his troops prevented him from sweeping to the head of the Wabash. He says he had the kind of men to do it, but he lacked fresh horses and provisions and was forced to return to Kentucky. On the fourth of June, he released sixteen of the weakest and most infirm of his prisoners and gave them a written address of peace to the Wabash tribes. It was written in a firm, manly tone, but without grandiloquence. He now destroyed the villages at Ouiatenon, the growing corn and pulse, and on the same day of the fourth, set out for Kentucky. The grand old man, who was to fight with Wayne at Fallen Timbers, had done well. Without the loss of a single man, and having only five wounded, he had killed thirty-two warriors "of size and figure," and taken fifty-eight prisoners. He took a receipt from Captain Joseph Asheton of the First United States Regiment at Fort Steuben, for forty-one prisoners.
On the twenty-fifth of June, governor St. Clair wrote to the Kentucky Board of War to send a second expedition against the Wabash towns. On the fifth day of July the Board appointed James Wilkinson as the commander. The troops were ordered to rendezvous at Fort Washington, by the twentieth of July, "well mounted on horseback, well armed, and provided with thirty days' provisions." In certain instructions from Governor St. Clair to General Wilkinson, of date July thirty-first, Wilkinson's attention is called to a Kickapoo town "in the prairie, northward and westward of L'Anguille," about sixty miles. This town will be mentioned later. Wilkinson was directed also to restrain his command from "scalping the dead." With a Kentuckian, the only good Indian was a dead one.
On the first day of August, Wilkinson rode out of Cincinnati with five hundred and twenty-five men. His destined point of attack was the Eel river towns, about six miles above the present city of Logansport. The country he had to pass through was mostly unknown, full of quagmires and marshes, and extremely hard on his horses. He made a feint for the Miami village at Kekionga, but on the morning of the fourth, he turned directly northwest and headed for Kenapacomaqua, or L'Anguille, as the Eel river towns were known. After some brief skirmishes, with small parties of warriors and much plunging and sinking in the bogs, he crossed the Wabash about four and one half miles above the mouth of the Eel river, and striking an Indian path, was soon in front of the Indian towns. He now dismounted and planned an attack. The second battalion was to cross the river, detour, and come in on the rear of the villages. The first battalion was to lie perdue until the maneuver was executed, when a simultaneous charge was to be made on all quarters of the town. Before the plan could be executed, however, the troops were discovered, whereupon an instant charge was made by plunging into the river and attacking the town on the front. Six warriors were killed, "and in the hurry and confusion of the charge, two squaws and a child."
Wilkinson found the towns of the Eel river tribes scattered along Eel river for a distance of three miles. These villages were separated by almost impassable bogs, and "impervious thickets of plum, hazel and black-jack." The head chief of the tribe, with his prisoners and a number of families were out digging a root, which the Indians substituted for the potato. A short time before Wilkinson arrived, most of the warriors had gone up the river to a French store to purchase ammunition. This ammunition had come from Kekionga on the same day. Several acres of green corn with the ears in the milk were about the town. All of this was destroyed. Thirty-four prisoners were taken and a captive released.
After encamping in the town for the night, Wilkinson started the next morning for the Kickapoo town "in the prairie." He considered his position as one of danger, for he says he was in the "bosom of the Ouiatenon country," one hundred and eighty miles from succor, and not more than one and a half days' forced march from the Potawatomi, Shawnees and Delawares. This was, of course, largely matter of conjecture.
The Kickapoo town that Wilkinson was headed for was in fact about sixty miles from Kenapacomaqua and in the prairie. But it was south and west of the Eel river villages instead of north and west. The imperfect geographical knowledge of the times led Wilkinson to believe it was on the Illinois river, but it was in fact on Big Pine creek, near the present town of Oxford, in Benton County, Indiana. Wilkinson was right in one regard, however, for he knew that the village he sought was on the great Potawatomi trail leading south from Lake Michigan. This trail passed down from the neighborhood of what is now Blue Island, in Chicago, south through Momence and Iroquois, Illinois, south and east again through Parish Grove, in Benton County, across Big Pine Creek and on to Ouiatenon and Kethtipecanunck, or Tippecanoe. It was a great fur trading route and of great commercial importance in that day. This Kickapoo village "in the prairie," was about twenty miles west of the present city of Lafayette, and about two and one-half miles from the present site of Oxford, at a place known in later years as "Indian Hill." It was well known to Gurdon S. Hubbard, who visited it in the early part of the last century and had an interesting talk with the Kickapoos there about the battle of Tippecanoe. Jesse S. Birch, of Oxford, an accurate local historian, has preserved an interesting account of this village as seen by the early settlers in the years from 1830 to 1840. The Kickapoos had, at that time, moved on to other places, but bands of the Potawatomi were still on the ground. "Pits," says Birch, "in which the Indians stored their corn, were to be seen until a few years ago. The burying grounds were about half a mile northwest of the village and only a short distance west of the Stembel gravel pit. The Potawatomi were peaceful, John Wattles, who describes their winter habitations, visited them often in his boyhood days. Pits, the sides of which were lined with furs, were dug four or five feet deep, and their tents, with holes at the top to permit the escape of smoke, were put over them. By keeping a fire on the ground in the center of the pit, they lived in comparative comfort, so far as heat and Indian luxuries were concerned, during the coldest weather. There are evidences of white men having camped near this village. Isaac W. Lewis found an English sovereign while at play on his father's farm, but a short distance from the site of the village. In the early 30's, his father and eldest brother, while plowing, found several pieces of English money." The glittering coins of "the great father," had easily found their way into savage hands.
But Wilkinson was not destined to strike this main Kickapoo town. He encamped the first night six miles from Kenapacomaqua, and the next day he marched west and then northwest passing between what are now the points of Royal Center and Logansport, and "launched into the boundless prairies of the west with the intention to pursue that course until I could strike a road which leads from the Potawatomi of Lake Michigan immediately to the town I sought." Here for eight hours he floundered about in an endless succession of sloughs and swamps, wearing out his horses and exhausting his men. "A chain of thin groves extending in the direction of the Wabash at this time presented to my left." Wilkinson now extricated himself from the swamps and gained the Tippecanoe trail, and camped at seven o'clock in the evening. He had marched a distance of about thirty miles, and several of his horses were completely broken down.
