The Indians returned again to their council at Miami, and the commissioners supposing they would now be prepared to receive them, proceeded on their voyage westward. Arriving at the mouth of Detroit river they were obliged to land, being forbidden by the British authorities to proceed any farther toward the place of meeting.
They were met here by another Indian deputation, bringing a paper with a written statement of their determination, to make the Ohio the boundary line between the Indian country and the United States, and requiring the latter, if sincere in their desires for peace, to remove their settlements to the south side of that river. To this the commissioners were desired to give an explicit written answer.
They replied, referring to the understanding from their conference at Niagara, that some concessions were to be made on both sides, and giving a brief history of the treaties by which a title had been acquired to land north of the Ohio, on the faith of which, settlements had been formed which could not be removed; hence they answered explicitly.—"The Ohio river cannot be designated as the boundary line."
They expressed the hope that negotiations might proceed on the basis of these treaties, closing with some concessions, and liberal offers for some lands still held by the Indians.
The debate at this council, it is said, ran high. Thayendanegea, and others of the Six Nations were strenuous in their advocacy of peace. The offer of the commissioners to establish a boundary line that would include the settlements already made north of the Ohio, they regarded as reasonable, and that farther concessions ought not to be required. Quite a number of tribes were influenced to adopt this view, which at one time it was thought would prevail. But there were certain ruling spirits present determined to make no concession, and the council broke up without allowing the commissioners, or any other white person, not in sympathy with Britain, to be present.
Previous to the holding of this council, the army had been re-organized under the command of General Anthony Wayne, an officer of untiring energy and vigilance; a larger number of soldiers had been called into the field, and as they were placed under a severe discipline, to inure them to the dangers and hardships of the campaign, it was undertaken with flattering prospects of success.
Pittsburgh had been made the place of rendezvous; but fearing the influence of an encampment near a town, and wishing to inspire in his soldiers a feeling of self reliance, General Wayne, on the 27th of November, 1792, marched his army to a point twenty-two miles distant on the Ohio, which he called Legionville, fortifying it and taking up his quarters there for the winter.
On the 30th of April, 1793, as spring had opened, he broke up his garrison at Legionville, and led his army down the river, to Fort Washington, its site being that of the present beautiful and flourishing city of Cincinnati.
Here he remained while the negotiations were going on with the Indians at the West. As soon as they were ended and the result known, he took a more advanced position, marching in October in the direction pursued by, General St. Clair, to a point on the south-west branch of the Miami, six miles beyond Fort Jefferson, and eighty from Fort Washington, which he fortified and called Greenville.
On the 23d of December, a detachment of the army commanded by Major Burbeck took possession of the ground where the army of General St. Clair, two years before on the 4th of the preceding November, had sustained a terrible defeat. Here they gathered up sadly and sacredly the bones that marked this as a place of human slaughter, put in order the field-pieces that were still upon the ground, served them with a round of three times three, over the remains of their fallen comrades, and erected a fortress, appropriately naming it Fort Recovery.