Prominent among the causes which had contributed to St. Clair's overthrow was the absence of an efficient corps of scouts to bring him information of the enemy's movements and protect his own army against surprise. The preparation of Wayne in this respect, and the skilful use which he made of his force of scouts, was in marked contrast to the course of his unfortunate predecessor. One of the leaders of this force was William Wells, the son-in-law of Little Turtle, who three years before had assisted his dusky relative to overthrow St. Clair. Since then he had rejoined the whites, to whom by reason of his long life on the frontier, and his intimate acquaintance with the very Indians against whom Wayne was marching, his services were invaluable. His scouts covered Wayne's front so effectively that the Indians were unable to obtain any correct information concerning his numbers or movements.
On June 30 an assault was made on Fort Recovery by two thousand Indians, but they were beaten off with considerable loss, which caused some of them to leave for their homes in despair.[280] On the other hand, Wayne's forces were augmented by the arrival of General Scott at the head of sixteen hundred Kentucky mounted volunteers. Having further deceived the enemy as to his intentions by making demonstrations to right and left, Wayne marched by a devious route to the Indian villages at the junction of the Glaize and the Maumee rivers, in the heart of the hostile country.[281] Here he had hoped to strike a telling blow, but the timely information of a deserter enabled the Indians to flee before his arrival. But their villages, stretching for several miles up and down the river, with cornfields more extensive than Wayne had ever seen before, "from Canada to Florida," fell into his hands without striking a blow. He spent some time in building here a strong stockade fort, which he grimly named Defiance, and in sending a last futile overture to the Indians for peace. It was now the middle of August, and on learning of the failure of his embassy, Wayne set forth on the final stage of his campaign.
[280] Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVIII, 444-45.
[281] Wayne to the Secretary of War, August 14, 1794; American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 490.
The defiance to which his fortress gave expression was not directed against the Indians alone, for the British officials in the Northwest were now co-operating almost openly with the natives. In February, 1794, in the course of a speech to an Indian delegation. Lord Dorchester asserted that he would not be surprised if war between his country and the United States should begin during the year. This speech caused an immediate furore at Montreal, where it was construed to indicate that Dorchester had private intelligence which rendered him confident that such a war would shortly begin.[282] During the ensuing weeks it was actively circulated among the western tribes,[283] who were incited to collect their forces and assured that in the event of war they would have an opportunity to make a new boundary line. At the same time Simcoe, acting under Dorchester's orders, proceeded from Detroit to the Rapids of the Maumee, a few miles above the modern city of Toledo, with three companies of British regulars, and constructed a fort to serve as an outpost for the defense of Detroit against Wayne's advance. There is nothing improbable in the assertion that the Indians were given to understand that its gates would be open to shelter them, in case of need, from Wayne's army, and it is clear that both the Indians and the Americans believed that the British were to all intents and purposes co-operating with the former. Wayne had learned of Simcoe's advance early in June, and since then he had received information from his scouts that the British had participated in the attack on Fort Recovery. It was therefore with the expectation of having a double foe to deal with that he planted and named Fort Defiance, preparatory to beginning the descent of the Maumee to the Rapids, where the British fort was located and near which the Indians had taken their stand.
[282] Michigan Pioneer Collections, XX, 331. For an account of Dorchester's speech and its results see Roosevelt, op. cit., IV, 57-60, 62.
[283] See, for example, Lieutenant-colonel Butler's speech to the chiefs of the Six Nations at Buffalo Creek, in April, 1794, printed in Michigan Pioneer Collections, XX, 342-43.
The advance from Fort Defiance was begun on August 15, and three days later Wayne's army was within striking distance of the enemy. Here a halt was made and a temporary fortification thrown up. The savages had elected to defend a place known as Fallen Timbers, where the ground was thickly strewn with tree trunks as the result of a former tornado. This furnished an ideal covert for their mode of warfare, and at the same time, as they believed, rendered it impossible for Wayne's dreaded cavalry to act. Behind this shelter about two thousand warriors lay on the morning of August 20 awaiting Wayne's approach. The Indians were far from confident of repeating their success of three years before against St. Clair. Little Turtle, the leader on that occasion, had urged the acceptance of the peace overtures of "the chief who never sleeps," but in this he was overruled. Already some of the northern tribes had slunk away, disheartened by their discomfiture at Fort Recovery. The southern Indians had sent encouraging messages, but had failed to back them up with their warriors, and the sole hope of assistance rested with the British, who in similar crises in times gone by had failed them.[284]
[284] Winsor, Westward Movement, 457.
In the ranks of the two armies, about to join combat, were a number of men who are famous in the history of the Northwest. General Wayne had acquired fame in the Revolution as a daring leader of men, but this campaign furnishes the climax of his military career and his surest claim upon the grateful remembrance of posterity. From the most unpromising of raw material he had fashioned an army fit to cope with the red man in his lair, and had imbued it with his own dauntless confidence and enthusiasm. He had transformed such men as St. Clair had with difficulty held together in the absence of the enemy, and who had proved so helpless in his presence, into the peers of the frontiersmen themselves in marksmanship and dexterity in the saddle; and had made them submissive to an iron discipline which rendered them immeasurably superior to the latter for the conduct of a campaign or battle.