Volume IV Part 5 (1/2)
Among these wilderness warriors who served under Wayne were some who became known far and wide along the border for their feats of reckless personal prowess and their strange adventures. They were of course all men of remarkable bodily strength and agility, with almost unlimited power of endurance, and the keenest eyesight; and they were masters in the use of their weapons. Several had been captured by the Indians when children, and had lived for years with them before rejoining the whites; so that they knew well the speech and customs of the different tribes.
Feats of the Scouts.
One of these men was the captain of the spies, William Wells. When a boy of twelve he had been captured by the Miamis, and had grown to manhood among them, living like any other young warrior; his Indian name was Black Snake, and he married a sister of the great war-chief, Little Turtle. He fought with the rest of the Miamis, and by the side of Little Turtle, in the victories the Northwestern Indians gained over Harmar and St. Clair, and during the last battle he killed several soldiers with his own hand. Afterwards, by some wayward freak of mind, he became hara.s.sed by the thought that perhaps he had slain some of his own kinsmen; dim memories of his childhood came back to him; and he resolved to leave his Indian wife and half-breed children and rejoin the people of his own color. Tradition relates that on the eve of his departure he made his purpose known to Little Turtle, and added, ”We have long been friends; we are friends yet, until the sun stands so high [indicating the place] in the heavens; from that time we are enemies and may kill one another.” Be this as it may, he came to Wayne, was taken into high favor, and made chief of scouts, and served loyally and with signal success until the end of the campaign. After the campaign he was joined by his Indian wife and his children; the latter grew up and married well in the community, so that their blood now flows in the veins of many of the descendants of the old pioneers. Wells himself was slain by the Indians long afterwards, in 1812, at the Chicago ma.s.sacre.
Surprise of an Indian Party.
One of Wells' fellow spies was William Miller. Miller, like Wells, had been captured by the Indians when a boy, together with his brother Christopher. When he grew to manhood he longed to rejoin his own people, and finally did so, but he could not persuade his brother to come with him, for Christopher had become an Indian at heart. In June, 1794, Wells, Miller, and a third spy, Robert McClellan, were sent out by Wayne with special instructions to bring in a live Indian. McClellan, who a number of years afterwards became a famous plainsman and Rocky Mountain man, was remarkably swift of foot. Near the Glaize River they found three Indians roasting venison by a fire, on a high open piece of ground, clear of brushwood. By taking advantage of the cover yielded by a fallen treetop the three scouts crawled within seventy yards of the camp fire; and Wells and Miller agreed to fire at the two outermost Indians, while McClellan, as soon as they had fired, was to dash in and run down the third. As the rifles cracked the two doomed warriors fell dead in their tracks; while McClellan bounded forward at full speed, tomahawk in hand. The Indian had no time to pick up his gun; fleeing for his life he reached the bank of the river, where the bluffs were twenty feet high, and sprang over into the stream-bed. He struck a miry place, and while he was floundering McClellan came to the top of the bluff and instantly sprang down full on him, and overpowered him. The others came up and secured the prisoner, whom they found to be a white man; and to Miller's astonishment it proved to be his brother Christopher. The scouts brought their prisoner, and the scalps of the two slain warriors, back to Wayne. At first Christopher was sulky and refused to join the whites; so at Greeneville he was put in the guard house. After a few days he grew more cheerful, and said he had changed his mind. Wayne set him at liberty, and he not only served valiantly as a scout through the campaign, but acted as Wayne's interpreter. Early in July he showed his good faith by a.s.sisting McClellan in the capture of a Pottawatamie chief.
An Unexpected Act of Mercy.
On one of Wells' scouts he and his companions came across a family of Indians in a canoe by the river bank. The white wood rangers were as ruthless as their red foes, sparing neither s.e.x nor age; and the scouts were c.o.c.king rifles when Wells recognized the Indians as being the family into which he had been adopted, and by which he had been treated as a son and brother. Springing forward he swore immediate death to the first man who fired; and then told his companions who the Indians were.
The scouts at once dropped their weapons, shook hands with the Miamis, and sent them off unharmed.
Last Scouting Trip before the Battle.
Wells' last scouting trip was made just before the final battle of the campaign. As it was the eve of the decisive struggle, Wayne was anxious to get a prisoner. Wells went off with three companions--McClellan, a man named Mahaffy, and a man named May. May, like Wells and Miller, had lived long with the Indians, first as a prisoner, and afterwards as an adopted member of their tribe, but had finally made his escape. The four scouts succeeded in capturing an Indian man and woman, whom they bound securely. Instead of returning at once with their captives, the champions, in sheer dare-devil, ferocious love of adventure, determined, as it was already nightfall, to leave the two bound Indians where they could find them again, and go into one of the Indian camps to do some killing. The camp they selected was but a couple of miles from the British fort. They were dressed and painted like Indians, and spoke the Indian tongues; so, riding boldly forward, they came right among the warriors who stood grouped around the camp fires. They were at arm's-length before their disguise was discovered. Immediately each of them, choosing his man, fired into an Indian, and then they fled, pursued by a hail of bullets. May's horse slipped and fell in the bed of a stream, and he was captured. The other three, spurring hard and leaning forward in their saddles to avoid the bullets, escaped, though both Wells and McClellan were wounded; and they brought their Indian prisoners into Wayne's camp that night. May was recognized by the Indians as their former prisoner; and next day they tied him up, made a mark on his breast for a target, and shot him to death. [Footnote: McBride collects or reprints a number of narratives dealing with these border heroes; some of them are by contemporaries who took part in their deeds. Brickell's narrative corroborates these stories; the differences are such as would naturally be explained by the fact that different observers were writing of the same facts from memory after a lapse of several years. In their essentials the narratives are undoubtedly trustworthy. In the Draper collection there are scores of MS. narratives of similar kind, written down from what the pioneers said in their old age; unfortunately it is difficult to sift out the true from the false, unless the stories are corroborated from outside sources; and most of the tales in the Draper MSS. are evidently hopelessly distorted. Wells'
daring attack on the Indian camp is alluded to in the Bradley MSS.; the journal, under date of August 12th, recites how four white spies went down almost to Lake Erie, captured two Indians, and then attacked the Indians in their tents, three of the spies being wounded.]
Wayne Reaches the Maumee and Builds Fort Defiance.
With his advance effectually covered by his scouts, and his army guarded by his own ceaseless vigilance, Wayne marched without opposition to the confluence of the Glaize and the Maumee, where the hostile Indian villages began, and whence they stretched to below the British fort. The savages were taken by surprise and fled without offering opposition; while Wayne halted, on August 8th, and spent a week in building a strong log stockade, with four good blockhouses as bastions; he christened the work Fort Defiance. [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., 490, Wayne to Secretary of War, Aug. 14, 1794.] The Indians had cleared and tilled immense fields, and the troops revelled in the fresh vegetables and ears of roasted corn, and enjoyed the rest; [Footnote: Bradley MSS. Letter of Captain Daniel Bradley to Ebenezer Banks, Grand Glaize, August 28, 1794.] for during the march the labor of cutting a road through the thick forest had been very severe, while the water was bad and the mosquitoes were exceedingly troublesome. At one place a tree fell on Wayne and nearly killed him; but though somewhat crippled he continued as active and vigilant as ever. [Footnote: American Pioneer, I., 317, Daily Journal of Wayne's Campaign. By Lieutenant Boyer. Reprinted separately in Cincinnati in 1866.]
The Indians Decline to Make Peace.
From Fort Defiance Wayne sent a final offer of peace to the Indians, summoning them at once to send deputies to meet him. The letter was carried by Christopher Miller, and a Shawnee prisoner; and in it Wayne explained that Miller was a Shawnee by adoption, whom his soldiers had captured ”six month since,” while the Shawnee warrior had been taken but a couple of days before; and he warned the Indians that he had seven Indian prisoners, who had been well treated, but who would be put to death if Miller were harmed. The Indians did not molest Miller, but sought to obtain delay, and would give no definite answer; whereupon Wayne advanced against them, having laid waste and destroyed all their villages and fields.
Wayne Marches Forward.
His army marched on the 15th, and on the 18th reached Roche du Bout, by the Maumee Rapids, only a few miles from the British fort. Next day was spent in building rough breastwork to protect the stores and baggage, and in reconnoitring the Indian position. [Footnote: American State Papers, 491, Wayne's Report to Secretary of War, August 28, 1794.]
The Indians--Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, Ottawas, Miamis, Pottawatamies, Chippewas, and Iroquois--were camped closed to the British. There were between fifteen hundred and two thousand warriors; and in addition there were seventy rangers from Detroit, French, English, and refugee Americans, under Captain Caldwell, who fought with them in the battle. The British agent McKee was with them; and so was Simon Girty, the ”white renegade,” and another partisan leader, Elliott.
But McKee, Girty, and Elliott did not actually fight in the battle.
[Footnote: Canadian Archives, McKee to Chew, August 27, 1794. McKee says there were 1300 Indians, and omits all allusion to Caldwell's rangers.
He always underestimates the Indian numbers and loss. In the battle one of Caldwell's rangers, Antoine La.s.selle, was captured. He gave in detail the numbers of the Indians engaged; they footed up to over 1500. A deserter from the fort, a British drummer of the 24th Regiment, named John Bevin, testified that he had heard both McKee and Elliott report the number of Indians as 2000, in talking to Major Campbell, the commandant of the fort, after the battle. He and La.s.selle agree as to Caldwell's rangers. See their depositions, American State Papers, IV., 494.]
The Indians' Stand at the Fallen Timbers.
On August 20, 1794, Wayne marched to battle against the Indians.
[Footnote: Draper MSS., William Clark to Jonathan Clark, August 28, 1794. McBride, II., 129; ”Life of Paxton.” Many of the regulars and volunteers were left in Fort Defiance and the breastworks on the Maumee as garrisons.] They lay about six miles down the river, near the British fort, in a place known as the Fallen Timbers, because there the thick forest had been overturned by a whirlwind, and the dead trees lay piled across one another in rows. All the baggage was left behind in the breastwork, with a sufficient guard. The army numbered about three thousand men; two thousand were regulars, and there were a thousand mounted volunteers from Kentucky under General Scott.
March of the Army.
The army marched down the left or north branch of the Maumee. A small force of mounted volunteers--Kentucky militia--were in front. On the right flank the squadron of dragoons, the regular cavalry, marched next to the river. The infantry, armed with musket and bayonet, were formed in two long lines, the second some little distance behind the first; the left of the first line being continued by the companies of regular riflemen and light troops. Scott, with the body of the mounted volunteers, was thrown out on the left with instructions to turn the flank of the Indians, thus effectually preventing them from performing a similar feat at the expense of the Americans. There could be no greater contrast than that between Wayne's carefully trained troops, marching in open order to the attack, and St. Clair's huddled ma.s.s of raw soldiers receiving an a.s.sault they were powerless to repel.
Heavy Skirmis.h.i.+ng,
The Indians stretched in a line nearly two miles long at right angles to the river, and began the battle confidently enough. They attacked and drove in the volunteers who were in advance and the firing then began along the entire front. But their success was momentary. Wayne ordered the first line of the infantry to advance with trailed arms, so as to rouse the savages from their cover, then to fire into their backs at close range, and to follow them hard with the bayonet, so as to give them no time to load. The regular cavalry were directed to charge the left flank of the enemy; for Wayne had determined ”to put the horse hoof on the moccasin.” Both orders were executed with spirit and vigor.
Charge of the Dragoons.
It would have been difficult to find more unfavorable ground for cavalry; nevertheless the dragoons rode against their foes at a gallop, with broad-swords swinging, the horses dodging in and out among the trees and jumping the fallen logs. They received a fire at close quarters which emptied a dozen saddles, both captains being shot down.
One, the commander of the squadron, Captain Mis Campbell [Footnote: A curious name, but so given in all the reports.], was killed; the other, Captain Van Rensselaer, a representative of one of the old Knickerbocker families of New York, who had joined the army from pure love of adventure, was wounded. The command devolved on Lieutenant Covington, who led forward the troopers, with Lieutenant Webb alongside him; and the dragoons burst among the savages at full speed, and routed them in a moment. Covington cut down two of the Indians with his own hand, and Webb one.