While St. Clair was preparing his army in 1791, he sent Scott, with about eight hundred Kentucky volunteers, into the Wabash region around the Indian town of Ouiatenon to distract the attention of the Indians. That Scott was more successful than his commander was destined to be is shown in his report to the Secretary of War, printed later as a letter in the INDIANAPOLIS GAZETTE. It is reprinted here with changes in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Sir:
In prosecution of the enterprise, I marched (with eight hundred and fifty troops under my command) four miles from the banks of the Ohio on May 23. On the twenty-fourth, I resumed my march and pushed forward with the utmost industry. I directed my route to Ouiatenon in the best manner my guides and information enabled me, though both were greatly deficient.
By May 31, I had marched one hundred and fifty miles over a country cut by four large branches of the White River and by many smaller streams with steep, muddy banks. During this march, I crossed country alternately interspersed with the most luxurious soil and with deep clay bogs from one to five miles wide, which were rendered almost impassable by brush and briers. Rain fell in torrents every day, with frequent blasts of wind and thunderstorms. These obstacles impeded my progress, wore down my horses, and destroyed my provisions.
On the morning of June 1, as the army entered an extensive prairie, I saw an Indian on horseback a few miles to the right. I immediately sent a detachment to intercept him, but he escaped. Finding myself discovered, I determined to advance with all the rapidity my circumstances would permit, rather with the hope than with the expectation of reaching the object sought that day, for my guides were strangers to the country which I occupied. At one o’clock in the afternoon, having marched by computation one hundred and fifty-five miles from the Ohio, I entered a grove which bordered on an extensive prairie and discovered two small villages to my left, two and four miles distant.
My guides now recognized the ground and informed me that the main town was four or five miles in front, behind a point of woods which jutted into the prairie. I immediately detached Colonel John Hardin, with sixty mounted infantrymen and a troop of light horse under Captain McCoy, to attack the villages to the left, while I moved on briskly with my main body, in order of battle, toward the town, the smoke of which was discernible. My guides were mistaken concerning the location of the town; instead of its standing at the edge of the plain through which I had marched, I found, in the low ground bordering on the Wabash (on turning the point of woods), just one house in front of me. Captain Price was ordered to assault that with forty men. He executed the command with great gallantry and killed two warriors.
When I gained the summit of the hill which overlooks the villages on the banks of the Wabash, I discovered the enemy, in great confusion, endeavoring to make their escape over the river in canoes. I instantly ordered Lieutenant Colonel Commandant Wilkinson to rush forward with the first battalion. This detachment gained the bank of the river just as the rear of the enemy embarked. Regardless of a brisk fire kept up from a Kickapoo town on the opposite bank, well-directed rifle fire destroyed in a few minutes all the savages crowded in five canoes.
The enemy still kept possession of the Kickapoo town. I determined to dislodge them; for that purpose I ordered Captain King’s and Captain Logsdon’s companies, under the direction of Major Barbee, to march down and to cross the river below the town. Several of the men swam the river, and others traveled in a small canoe. This movement was unobserved; my men had taken posts on the bank before they were discovered by the enemy, who immediately abandoned the village. About this time, word was brought me that Colonel Hardin was encumbered with prisoners and that he had discovered a stronger village (farther to my left than those I had observed), which he was proceeding to attack. I immediately detached Captain Brown with his company to support the colonel; but, as the distance was six miles, before the captain arrived the business was done. Colonel Hardin joined me a little before sunset, having killed six warriors and having taken fifty-two prisoners. Captain Bull, the warrior who discovered me in the morning, had gained the main town and had given the alarm; but the Indians of the villages to the left were uninformed of my approach and had no chance to retreat. The next morning, I decided to detach my lieutenant colonel commandant, with five hundred men, to destroy the important town of Kenapacomaqua at the mouth of the Eel River, eighteen [sic] miles from my camp and on the west side of the Wabash. But, on examination, I discovered that my men and horses were so crippled and worn down by the long, laborious march and the active exertion of the preceding day that only three hundred and sixty men could be found able to undertake the enterprise; they prepared to march on foot.