St. Clair's Defeat

by Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County

The number of Indians engaged in this action can never be ascertained with any degree of certainty. Estimates have varied from one to three thousand. Colonel John Johnston, long an Indian agent in this region, had many opportunities to form a correct opinion on this subject. His statements in a letter of 1846 are worthy of consideration.

“The number of Indians at the defeat of St. Clair must have been large. At that time game was plentiful, and a large number of Indians could have subsisted easily. Wells, one of our interpreters, was there and fought for the enemy. To use his own language, he tomahawked and scalped the wounded, dying, and dead, until he was unable to raise his arm. The principal tribes in the battle were the Delaware, Shawnee, Wyandot, Miami, and Ottawa. A few Indians of the Chippewa and Potawatomi tribes were also present. I had no accurate means of knowing the total number, but it could not have been less than two thousand.”

Some time after the defeat of St. Clair, General Wilkinson, who had become commander of Fort Washington, ordered an expedition to visit the battleground. Captain Buntin, who was with the party, afterward wrote a letter to St. Clair from which the following is extracted.

“In my opinion, those unfortunate men who were captured alive suffered the greatest torture by having their limbs torn off. The women were treated with the most indecent cruelty; stakes as thick as a person’s arm were driven through their bodies. The former I observed while burying the dead; the latter was discovered by Colonel Sargeant and Dr. Brown. We found three carriages whole; the other five were so badly damaged that they were useless. By the General’s orders, we dug pits in different places and buried all the bodies that were exposed to view or that could be found conveniently.

“During this time several small parties were detached—some to protect the main group and others to examine the course of the creek. At some distance in front of the ground occupied by the militia, these parties found a large camp, not less than three quarters of a mile long. They thought it had been the camp of the Indians the night before the action. We remained on the field that night, and the next morning we hitched horses to the carriages and started for Fort Jefferson.

“There is little reason to believe that the enemy carried off the cannons, and it is thought they were either buried or thrown into the creek. I think the latter more probable, but as it was frozen over with thick ice and covered with a deep snow, it was impossible to make a search with any prospect of success. I have mentioned the camp occupied by the enemy the night before the action. Could Colonel Oldham have complied with your orders on that evening, things at this day might have worn a different aspect.”

Mr. McDowell, previously mentioned, was one of those who visited the battleground. He stated that although the bodies were much abused and stripped of everything of any value, they were recognized and interred in four large graves. General Butler was found in the shattered remains of his tent. After he had been wounded, he was carried to the tent; while two surgeons were dressing his wounds, a ball struck one of them in the hip. At that instant, an Indian, who was determined to have Butler’s scalp, rushed in. While attempting to scalp the General, he was shot by the dying surgeon.

In December, 1793, General Wayne arrived with his army at Greenville and sent forward a detachment to the spot of St. Clair’s Defeat. They arrived on Christmas Day and pitched their tents on the battleground. Before the men could make their beds in their tents that night, they had to gather the bones together and carry them out. The next day graves were dug and the bones remaining above ground were buried. Six hundred skulls were among them. The flesh was entirely off the bones, but in many cases the sinews yet held them together. After this melancholy duty was performed, a fortification was built and named Fort Recovery in commemoration of its being recovered from the Indians who had been in possession of the ground since 1791. On the completion of the fort, one company of artillerymen and one of riflemen were left there; the others returned to Greenville.

Henry Howe, HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF OHIO (Cincinnati: Published by the state of Ohio, 1908), Vol. II, pp. 223-32.

The terrible battle known as St. Clair’s Defeat was fought on the morning of November 4, 1791, in what is now the northwestern part of Darke County, Ohio, near the Indiana boundary. Early in the preceding spring General St. Clair had received orders to raise and organize an army, to march into the wilderness as far as the junction of the St. Mary’s and the St. Joseph rivers, and to establish a line of military posts from Fort Washington at Cincinnati to the present site of Fort Wayne. The forts were intended to keep the Indians in wholesome dread of the power of the whites and to prevent those fearful depredations which had already done so much to check the advancing tide of civilization. In the execution of these orders, St. Clair surmounted many serious obstacles. After building Forts Hamilton and Jefferson, he reached a branch of the Wabash and encamped there in supposed security on the evening of the third of November. His army numbered between two and three thousand men. Several hundred women and children, the families of the soldiers, traveled with the army.