Wayne, The Scourge Of The Indians
"This federal republic," wrote the Spanish Count d'Aranda to his royal
master in 1782, "is born a pigmy. A day will come when it will be a
giant, even a colossus. Liberty of conscience, the facility for
establishing a new population on immense lands, as well as the
advantages of the new government, will draw thither farmers and artisans
from all the nations."
Aranda correctly weighed the value of the country's vast stretches of
free and fertile land. The history of the United States has been largely
a story of the clearing of forests, the laying out of farms, the
erection of homes, the construction of highways, the introduction of
machinery, the building of railroads, the rise of towns and of great
cities. The Germans of Wisconsin and Missouri, the Scandinavians of
Minnesota and the Dakotas, the Poles and Hungarians of Chicago, the
Irish and Italians of a thousand communities, attest the fact that the
"farmers and artisans from all the nations" have had an honorable part
in the achievement.
In laying plans for the development of the western lands the
statesmanship of the Revolutionary leaders was at its best. In the first
place, the seven States which had some sort of title to tracts extending
westward to the Mississippi wisely yielded these claims to the nation;
and thus was created a single, national domain which could be dealt with
in accordance with a consistent policy. In the second place, Congress,
as early as 1780, pledged the national Government to dispose of the
western lands for the common benefit, and promised that they should be
"settled and formed into distinct republican states, which shall become
members of the federal union, and have the same rights of sovereignty,
freedom, and independence as the other states."
Finally, in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 there was mapped out a
scheme of government admirably adapted to the liberty-loving, yet
law-abiding, populations of the frontier. It was based on the broad
principles of democracy, and it was sufficiently flexible to permit
necessary changes as the scattered settlements developed into organized
Territories and then into States. Geographical conditions, as well as
racial inheritances, foreordained that the United States should be an
expanding, colonizing nation; and it was of vital importance that
wholesome precedents of territorial control should be established in the
beginning. Louisiana, Florida, the Mexican accessions, Alaska, and even
the newer tropical dependencies, owe much to the decisions that were
reached in the organizing of the Northwest a century and a quarter ago.
The Northwest Ordinance was remarkable in that it was framed for a
territory that had practically no white population and which, in a
sense, did not belong to the United States at all. Back in 1768 Sir
William Johnson's Treaty of Fort Stanwix had made the Ohio River the
boundary between the white and red races of the West. Nobody at the
close of the Revolution supposed that this division would be adhered to;
the Northwest had not been won for purposes of an Indian reserve. None
the less, the arrangements of 1768 were inherited, and the nation
considered them binding except in so far as they were modified from time
to time by new agreements. The first such agreement affecting the
Northwest was concluded in 1785, through George Rogers Clark and two
other commissioners, with the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippewas, and
Ottawas. By it the United States acquired title to the southeastern half
of the present State of Ohio, with a view to surveying the lands and
raising revenue by selling them. Successive treaties during the next
thirty years gradually transferred the whole of the Northwest from
Indian hands to the new nation.
Officially, the United States recognized the validity of the Indian
claims; but the pioneer homeseeker was not so certain to do so. From
about 1775 the country south of the Ohio filled rapidly with settlers
from Virginia and the Carolinas, so that by 1788 the white population
beyond the Blue Ridge was believed to be considerably over one hundred
thousand. For a decade the "Indian side," as the north shore was
habitually called, was trodden only by occasional hunters, traders, and
explorers. But after Clark's victories on the Mississippi and the
Wabash, the frontiersmen grew bolder. By 1780 they began to plant camps
and cabins on the rich bottom-lands of the Miamis, the Scioto, and the
Muskingum; and when they heard that the British claims in the West had
been formally yielded, they assumed that whatever they could take was
theirs. With the technicalities of Indian claims they had not much
patience. In 1785 Colonel Harmar, commanding at Fort Pitt, sent a
deputation down the river to drive the intruders back. But his agents
returned with the report that the Virginians and Kentuckians were moving
into the forbidden country "by the forties and fifties," and that they
gave every evidence of proposing to remain there. Surveyors were
forthwith set to work in the "Seven Ranges," as the tract just to the
west of the Pennsylvania boundary was called; and Fort Harmar was built
at the mouth of the Muskingum to keep the over-ardent settlers back.
The close of the Revolution brought not only a swift revival of
emigration to the West but also a remarkable outburst of speculation in
western land. March 3, 1786, General Rufus Putnam and some other
Continental officers met at the "Bunch of Grapes" Tavern in Boston and
decided that it would be to their advantage to exchange for land in the
Seven Ranges the paper certificates in which they had been paid for
their military services. Accordingly an "Ohio Company" was organized,
and Dr. Manasseh Cutler--"preacher, lawyer, doctor, statesman,
scientist, land speculator"--was sent off to New York to push the matter
in Congress. The upshot was that Congress authorized the sale of one and
a half million acres east of the Scioto to the Ohio Company, and five
million acres to a newly organized Scioto Company.
The Scioto Company fell into financial difficulties and, after making an
attempt to build up a French colony at Gallipolis, collapsed. But
General Putnam and his associates kept their affairs well in hand and
succeeded in planting the first legal white settlement in the present
State of Ohio. An arduous winter journey brought the first band of
forty-eight settlers, led by Putnam himself, to the mouth of the
Muskingum on April 7, 1788. Here, in the midst of a great forest dotted
with terraces, cones, and other fantastic memorials of the
moundbuilders, they erected a blockhouse and surrounded it with cabins.
For a touch of the classical, they called the fortification the Campus
Martius; to be strictly up to date, they named the town Marietta, after
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. In July the little settlement was
honored by being made the residence of the newly arrived Governor of the
Territory, General Arthur St. Clair.
Before the close of the year Congress sold one million acres between the
two Miamis to Judge Symmes of New Jersey; and three little towns were at
once laid out. To one of them a pedantic schoolmaster gave the name
L-os-anti-ville, "the town opposite the mouth of the Licking." The name
may have required too much explanation; at all events, when, in 1790,
the Governor transferred the capital thither from Marietta, he
rechristened the place Cincinnati, in honor of the famous Revolutionary
society to which he belonged.
Land speculators are confirmed optimists. But Putnam, Cutler, Symmes,
and their associates were correct in believing that the Ohio country was
at the threshold of a period of remarkable development. There was one
serious obstacle--the Indians. Repeated expeditions from Kentucky had
pushed most of the tribes northward to the headwaters of the Miami,
Scioto, and Wabash; and the Treaty of 1785 was supposed to keep them
there. But it was futile to expect such an arrangement to prove lasting
unless steadily backed up with force. In their squalid villages in the
swampy forests of northern Ohio and Indiana the redskins grew sullen and
vindictive. As they saw their favorite hunting-grounds slipping from
their grasp, those who had taken part in the cession repented their
generosity, while those who had no part in it pronounced it fraudulent
and refused to consider themselves bound by it. Swiftly the idea took
hold that the oncoming wave must be rolled back before it was too late.
"White man shall not plant corn north of the Ohio" became the rallying
cry.
Back of this rebelliousness lay a certain amount of British influence.
The Treaty of 1783 was signed in as kindly spirit as the circumstances
would permit, but its provisions were not carried out in a charitable
manner. On account of alleged shortcomings of the United States, the
British Government long refused to give up possession of eight or ten
fortified posts in the north and west. One of these was Detroit; and the
officials stationed there systematically encouraged the hordes of
redskins who had congregated about the western end of Lake Erie to make
all possible resistance to the American advance. The British no longer
had any claim to the territories south of the Lakes, but they wanted to
keep their ascendancy over the northwestern Indians, and especially to
prevent the rich fur trade from falling into American hands. Ammunition
and other supplies were lavished on the restless tribes. The post
officials insisted that these were merely the gifts which had regularly
been made in times of peace. But they were used with deadly effect
against the Ohio frontiersmen; and there can be little doubt that they
were intended so to be used.
By 1789 the situation was very serious. Marauding expeditions were
growing in frequency; and a scout sent out by Governor St. Clair came
back with the report that most of the Indians throughout the entire
Northwest had "bad hearts." Washington decided that delay would be
dangerous, and the nation forthwith prepared for its first war since
independence. Kentucky was asked to furnish a thousand militiamen and
Pennsylvania five hundred, and the forces were ordered to come together
at Fort Washington, near Cincinnati.
The rendezvous took place in the summer of 1790, and General Josiah
Harmar was put in command of a punitive expedition against the Miamis.
The recruits were raw, and Harmar was without the experience requisite
for such an enterprise. None the less, when the little army, accompanied
by three hundred regulars, and dragging three brass field-pieces,
marched out of Fort Washington on a fine September day, it created a
very good impression. All went well until the expedition reached the
Maumee country. On the site of the present city of Fort Wayne they
destroyed a number of Indian huts and burned a quantity of corn. But in
a series of scattered encounters the white men were defeated, with a
loss of nearly two hundred killed; and Harmar thought it the part of
wisdom to retreat. He had gained nothing by the expedition; on the
contrary, he had stirred the redskins to fresh aggressions, and his
retreating forces were closely followed by bands of merciless raiders.
Washington knew what the effect of this reverse would be. Accordingly he
called St. Clair to Philadelphia and ordered him to take personal
command of a new expedition, adding a special warning against ambush and
surprise. Congress aided by voting two thousand troops for six months,
besides two small regiments of regulars. But everything went wrong.
Recruiting proved slow; the men who were finally brought together were
poor material for an army, being gathered chiefly from the streets and
prisons of the seaboard cities; and supplies were shockingly inadequate.
St. Clair was a man of honest intention, but old, broken in health, and
of very limited military ability; and when finally, October 4, 1791, he
led his untrained forces slowly northwards from Fort Washington, he
utterly failed to take measures either to keep his movements secret or
to protect his men against sudden attack. The army trudged slowly
through the deep forests, chopping out its own road, and rarely
advancing more than five or six miles a day. The weather was favorable
and game was abundant, but discontent was rife and desertions became
daily occurrences. As most of the men had no taste for Indian warfare
and as their pay was but two dollars a month, not all the commander's
threats and entreaties could hold them in order.
On the night of the 3d of November the little army--now reduced to
fourteen hundred men--camped, with divisions carelessly scattered, on
the eastern fork of the Wabash, about a hundred miles north of
Cincinnati and near the Indiana border. The next morning, when
preparations were being made for a forced march against some Indian
villages near by, a horde of redskins burst unexpectedly upon the
bewildered troops, surrounded them, and threatened them with utter
destruction. A brave stand was made, but there was little chance of
victory. "After the first onset," as Roosevelt has described the battle,
"the Indians fought in silence, no sound coming from them save the
incessant rattle of their fire, as they crept from log to log, from tree
to tree, ever closer and closer. The soldiers stood in close order, in
the open; their musketry and artillery fire made a tremendous noise, but
did little damage to a foe they could hardly see. Now and then through
the hanging smoke terrible figures flitted, painted black and red, the
feathers of the hawk and eagle braided in their long scalp-locks; but
save for these glimpses, the soldiers knew the presence of their somber
enemy only from the fearful rapidity with which their comrades fell dead
and wounded in the ranks."
At last, in desperation St. Clair ordered his men to break through the
deadly cordon and save themselves as best they could. The Indians kept
up a hot pursuit for a distance of four miles. Then, surfeited with
slaughter, they turned to plunder the abandoned camp; otherwise there
would have been escape for few. As it was, almost half of the men in the
engagement were killed, and less than five hundred got off with no
injury. The survivors gradually straggled into the river settlements,
starving and disheartened.
The page on which is written the story of St. Clair's defeat is one of
the gloomiest in the history of the West. Harmar's disaster was dwarfed;
not since Braddock and his regulars were cut to pieces by an unseen foe
on the road to Fort Duquesne had the redskins inflicted upon their
hereditary enemy a blow of such proportions. It was with a heavy heart
that the Governor dispatched a messenger to Philadelphia with the news.
Congress ordered an investigation; and in view of the unhappy general's
high character and his courageous, though blundering, conduct during the
late campaign, he was exonerated. He retained the governorship, but
prudently resigned his military command.
The situation was now desperate. Everywhere the forests resounded with
the exultant cries of the victors, while the British from Detroit and
other posts actively encouraged the belief not only that they would
furnish all necessary aid but that England herself was about to declare
war on the United States. Eventually a British force from Detroit
actually invaded the disputed country and built a stockade (Fort Miami)
near the site of the present city of Toledo, with a view to giving the
redskins convincing evidence of the seriousness of the Great White
Father's intentions. Small wonder that, when St. Clair sought to obtain
by diplomacy the settlement which he had failed to secure by arms, his
commissioners were met with the ultimatum: "Brothers, we shall be
persuaded that you mean to do us justice, if you agree that the Ohio
shall remain the boundary line between us. If you will not consent
thereto, our meeting will be altogether unnecessary."
It is said that Washington's first choice for the new western command
was "Light-Horse Harry" Lee. But considerations of rank made the
appointment inexpedient, and "Mad Anthony" Wayne was named instead.
Wayne was the son of a Pennsylvania frontiersman and came honestly by
his aptitude for Indian fighting. In early life he was a surveyor, and
in the Revolution he won distinction as a dashing commander of
Pennsylvania troops at Ticonderoga, Brandywine, Germantown, Stony Point,
and other important engagements. Finally he obtained a major-general's
commission in Greene's campaign in Georgia, and at the close of the war
he settled in that State as a planter. His vanity--displayed chiefly in
a love of fine clothes--brought upon him a good deal of criticism; and
Washington, who in a Cabinet meeting characterized him as "brave and
nothing else," was frankly apprehensive lest in the present business
Wayne's impetuosity should lead to fresh disaster. Yet the qualities
that on a dozen occasions had enabled Wayne to snatch success from
almost certain defeat--alertness, decisiveness, bravery, and sheer love
of hard fighting--were those now chiefly in demand.
The first task was to create an army. A few regulars were available; but
most of the three or four thousand men who were needed had to be
gathered wheresoever they could be found. A call for recruits brought
together at Pittsburgh, in the summer of 1792, a nondescript lot of
beggars, criminals, and other cast-offs of the eastern cities, no better
and no worse than the adventurers who had taken service under St. Clair.
Few knew anything of warfare, and on one occasion a mere report of
Indians in the vicinity caused a third of the sentinels to desert their
posts. But, as rigid discipline was enforced and drilling was carried on
for eight and ten hours a day, by spring the survivors formed a very
respectable body of troops. The scene of operations was then transferred
to Fort Washington, where fresh recruits were started on a similar
course of development. Profitting by the experience of his predecessors,
Wayne insisted that campaigning should begin only after the troops were
thoroughly prepared; and no drill-master ever worked harder to get his
charges into condition for action. Going beyond the ordinary manual of
arms, he taught the men to load their rifles while running at full
speed, and to yell at the top of their voices while making a bayonet
attack.
In October, 1793, the intrepid Major-General advanced with twenty-six
hundred men into the nearer stretches of the Indian country, in order to
be in a position for an advantageous spring campaign. They built Fort
Greenville, eighty miles north of Cincinnati, and there spent the
winter, while, on St. Clair's fatal battle-field, an advance detachment
built a post which they hopefully christened Fort Recovery. Throughout
the winter unending drill was kept up; and when, in June, 1794, fourteen
hundred mounted militia arrived from Kentucky, Wayne found himself at
the head of the largest and best-trained force that had ever been turned
against the Indians west of the Alleghanies. Even before the arrival of
the Kentuckians, it proved its worth by defending its forest
headquarters, with practically no loss, against an attack by fifteen
hundred redskins.
On the 27th of July the army moved forward in the direction of the
Maumee, with closed ranks and so guarded by scouts that no chance
whatever was given for surprise attacks. Washington's admonitions had
been taken to heart, and the Indians could only wonder and admire. News
of the army's advance traveled ahead and struck terror through the
northern villages, so that many of the inhabitants fled precipitately.
When the troops reached the cultivated lands about the junction of the
Maumee and Auglaize rivers, they found only deserted huts and great
fields of corn, from which they joyfully replenished their diminished
stores. Here a fort was built and given the significant name Defiance;
and from it a final offer of peace was sent out to the hostile tribes.
Never doubting that the British would furnish all necessary aid, the
chieftains returned evasive answers. Wayne thereupon moved his troops to
the left bank of the Maumee and proceeded cautiously downstream toward
the British stronghold at Fort Miami.
A few days brought the army to a place known as Fallen Timbers, where a
tornado had piled the trunks and branches of mighty trees in
indescribable confusion. The British post was but five or six miles
distant; and there behind the breastworks which nature had provided, and
in easy reach of their allies, the Indians chose to make their stand. On
the morning of the 20th of August, Wayne, now so crippled by gout that
he had to be lifted into his saddle, gallantly led an assault. The
Indian fire was murderous, and a battalion of mounted Kentuckians was at
first hurled back. But the front line of infantry rushed up and
dislodged the savages from their covert, while the regular cavalry on
the right charged the enemy's left flank. Before the second line of
infantry could get into action the day was won. The whole engagement
lasted less than three-quarters of an hour, and not a third of Wayne's
three thousand men actually took part in it.
The fleeing redskins were pursued to the walls of the British fort, and
even there many were slain. The British soldiery not only utterly failed
to come to the relief of their hard-pressed allies, but refused to open
the gates to give them shelter. The American loss was thirty-three
killed and one hundred wounded. But the victory was the most decisive as
yet gained over the Indians of the Northwest. A warfare of forty years
was ended in as many minutes.
From the lower Maumee, Wayne marched back to Fort Defiance, and thence
to the junction of the St. Mary's and St. Joseph rivers, where he built
a fort and gave it the name still borne by the thriving city that grew
up around it--Fort Wayne. Everywhere the American soldiers destroyed the
ripened crops and burned the villages, while the terrified inhabitants
fled. In November the army took up winter quarters at Fort Greenville.
At last the Americans had the upper hand. Their arms were feared; the
British promises of help were no longer credited by the Indians; and it
was easy for Wayne to convince the tribal representatives who visited
him in large numbers during the winter that their true interest was to
win the good-will of the United States. In the summer of 1795 there was
a general pacification. Delegation after delegation arrived at Fort
Greenville, until more than a thousand chiefs and braves were in
attendance. The prestige of Wayne was still further increased when the
news came that John Jay had negotiated a treaty at London under which
the British posts on United States soil were finally to be given up; and
on August 3rd Wayne was able to announce a great treaty wherein the
natives ceded all of what is now southern Ohio and southeastern Indiana,
and numerous tracts around posts within the Indian country, such as Fort
Wayne, Detroit, and Michilimackinac--strategic points on the western
waterways. "Elder Brother," said a Chippewa chief in the course of one
of the interminable harangues delivered during the negotiation, "you
asked who were the true owners of the land now ceded to the United
States. In answer, I tell you, if any nations should call themselves the
owners of it, they would be guilty of falsehood; our claim to it is
equal; our Elder Brother has conquered it." The United States duly
recognized the Indian title to all lands not expressly ceded and
promised the Indians annual subsidies. The terms of the treaty were
faithfully observed on both sides, and for fifteen years the pioneer
lived and toiled in peace.
Wayne forthwith became a national hero. Returning to Philadelphia in
1796, he was met by a guard of honor, hailed with the ringing of bells
and a salute of fifteen guns, and treated to a dazzling display of
fireworks. Congress voted its thanks, and Washington, whose fears had
long since vanished, added his congratulations. There was one other
service on the frontier for the doughty general to render. The British
posts were at last to be surrendered, and Wayne was designated to
receive them. By midsummer he was back in the forest country, and in the
autumn he took possession of Detroit, amid acclamations of Indians,
Americans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen alike. But his work was done. On
the return journey he suffered a renewed attack of his old enemy, gout,
and at Presqu'isle (Erie) he died. A blockhouse modeled on the defenses
which he built during his western campaign marks his first resting-place
and bears aloft the flag which he helped plant in the heart of the
Continent.