Volume IV Part 5 (2/2)
Successful Bayonet Charge.
At the same time the first line of the infantry charged with equal impetuosity and success. The Indians delivered one volley and were then roused from their hiding places with the bayonet; as they fled they were shot down, and if they attempted to halt they were at once a.s.sailed and again driven with the bayonet. They could make no stand at all, and the battle was won with ease. So complete was the success that only the first line of regulars was able to take part in the fighting; the second line, and Scott's horse-riflemen, on the left, in spite of their exertions were unable to reach the battle-field until the Indians were driven from it; ”there not being a sufficiency of the enemy for the Legion to play on,” wrote Clark. The entire action lasted under forty minutes. [Footnote: Bradley MSS., entry in the journal for August 20th.]
Less than a thousand of the Americans were actually engaged. They pursued the beaten and fleeing Indians for two miles, the cavalry halting only when under the walls of the British fort.
A Complete and Easy Victory.
Thirty-three of the Americans were killed and one hundred wounded.
[Footnote: Wayne's report; of the wounded 11 afterwards died. He gives an itemized statement. Clark in his letter makes the dead 34 (including 8 militia instead of 7) and the wounded only 70. Wayne reports the Indian loss as twice as great as that of the whites; and says the woods were strewn with their dead bodies and those of their white auxiliaries.
Clark says 100 Indians were killed. The Englishman, Thomas Duggan, writing from Detroit to Joseph Chew, Secretary of the Indian Office, says officially that ”great numbers” of the Indians were slain. The journal of Wayne's campaign says 40 dead were left on the field, and that there was considerable additional, but unascertained, loss in the rapid two miles pursuit. The member of Caldwell's company who was captured was a French Canadian; his deposition is given by Wayne. McKee says the Indians lost but 19 men, and that but 400 were engaged, specifying the Wyandots and Ottawas as being those who did the fighting and suffered the loss; and he puts the loss of the Americans, although he admits that they won, at between 300 and 400. He was furious at the defeat, and was endeavoring to minimize it in every way. He does not mention the presence of Caldwell's white company; he makes the mistake of putting the American cavalry on the wrong wing, in trying to show that only the Ottawas and Wyandots were engaged; and if his figures, 19 dead, have any value at all, they refer only to those two tribes; above I have repeatedly shown that he invariably underestimated the Indian losses, usually giving the losses suffered by the band he was with as being the entire loss. In this case he speaks of the fighting and loss as being confined to the Ottawas and Wyandots; but Brickell, who was with the Delawares, states that ”many of the Delawares were killed and wounded.” All the Indians were engaged; and doubtless all the tribes suffered proportionately; and much more than the Americans. Captain Daniel Bradley in his above quoted letter of Aug. 28th to Ebenezer Banks (Bradley MSS.) says that between 50 and 100 Indians were killed.] It was an easy victory. The Indians suffered much more heavily than the Americans; in killed they probably lost two or three times as many.
Among the dead were white men from Caldwell's company; and one white ranger was captured. It was the most complete and important victory ever gained over the Northwestern Indians, during the forty years' warfare to which, it put an end; and it was the only considerable pitched battle in which they lost more than their foes. They suffered heavily among their leaders; no less than eight Wyandot chiefs were slain.
The British in the Fort.
From the fort the British had seen, with shame and anger, the rout of their Indian allies. Their commander wrote to Wayne to demand his intentions; Wayne responded that he thought they were made sufficiently evident by his successful battle with the savages. The Englishman wrote in resentment of this curt reply, complaining that Wayne's soldiers had approached within pistol shot of the fort, and threatening to fire upon them if the offence was repeated. Wayne responded by summoning him to abandon the fort; a summons which he of course refused to heed. Wayne then gave orders to destroy everything up to the very walls of the fort, and his commands were carried out to the letter; not only were the Indian villages burned and their crops cut down, but all the houses and buildings of the British agents and traders, including McKee's, were levelled to the ground. The British commander did not dare to interfere or make good his threats: nor, on the other hand, did Wayne dare to storm the fort, which was well built and heavily armed.
The Army Marches Back.
After completing his work of destruction Wayne marched his army back to Fort Defiance. Here he was obliged to halt for over a fortnight while he sent back to Fort Recovery for provisions. He employed the time in work on the fort, which he strengthened so that it would stand an attack by a regular army. The mounted volunteers were turned to account in a new manner, being employed not only to escort the pack-animals but themselves to transport the flour on their horses. There was much sickness among the soldiers, especially from fever and ague, and but for the corn and vegetables they obtained from the Indian towns which were scattered thickly along the Maumee they would have suffered from hunger.
They were especially disturbed because all the whiskey was used up. [Footnote: Daily Journal of Wayne's Campaign, ”American Pioneer,” I., 351]
On September 14th the legion started westward towards the Miami Towns at the junction of the St. Mary's and St. Joseph's rivers, the scene of Harmar's disaster. In four days the towns were reached, the Indians being too cowed to offer resistance. Here the army spent six weeks, burned the towns and destroyed the fields and stores of the hostile tribes, and built a fort which was christened Fort Wayne. British deserters came in from time to time; some of the Canadian traders made overtures to the army and agreed to furnish provisions at a moderate price; and of the savages only straggling parties were seen. The mounted volunteers grew mutinous, but were kept in order by their commander Scott, a rough, capable backwoods soldier. Their term of service at length expired and they were sent home; and the regulars of the Legion, leaving a garrison at Fort Wayne, marched back to Greeneville, and reached it on November 2d, just three months and six days after they started from it on their memorable and successful expedition. Wayne had shown himself the best general ever sent to war with the Northwestern Indians; and his victorious campaign was the most noteworthy ever carried on against them, for it brought about the first lasting peace on the border, and put an end to the b.l.o.o.d.y turmoil of forty years'
fighting. It was one of the most striking and weighty feats in the winning of the West.
Winter Quarters at Greeneville.
The army went into winter quarters at Greeneville. There was sickness among the troops, and there were occasional desertions; the discipline was severe, and the work so hard and dangerous that the men generally refused to re-enlist. [Footnote: Draper MSS., William Clark to Jonathan Clark, November 23, 1794.] The officers were uneasy lest there should be need of a further campaign. But their fears were groundless. Before winter set in heralds arrived from the hostile tribes to say that they wished peace.
The Indians Utterly Downcast.
The Indians were utterly downcast over their defeat. [Footnote: Canadian Archives, William Johnson Chew to Joseph Chew, December 7. 1794.] The destruction of their crops, homes, and stores of provisions was complete, and they were put to sore s.h.i.+fts to live through the winter.
Their few cattle, and many even of their dogs, died; they could not get much food from the British; and as winter wore on they sent envoy after envoy to the Americans, exchanged prisoners, and agreed to make a permanent peace in the spring. They were exasperated with the British, who, they said, had not fulfilled a single promise they had made. [Footnote: Brickell's Narrative.]
Their Anger with the British.
The anger of the Indians against the British was as just as it was general. They had been lured and goaded into war by direct material aid, and by indirect promises of armed a.s.sistance; and they were abandoned as soon as the fortune of war went against them. Brant, the Iroquois chief, was sorely angered by the action of the British in deserting the Indians whom they had encouraged by such delusive hopes; and in his letter to the British officials [Footnote: Canadian Archives, Joseph Brant to Joseph Chew, Oct. 22, 1794; William J. Chew to J. Chew, Oct. 24, 1794.]
he reminded them of the fact that but for their interference the Indians would have concluded ”an equitable and honorable peace in June 1793”--thus offering conclusive proof that the American commissioners, in their efforts to make peace with the Indians in that year, had been foiled by the secret machinations of the British agents, as Wayne had always thought. Brant blamed the British agent McKee for ever having interfered in the Indian councils, and misled the tribes to their hurt; and in writing to the Secretary of the Indian Office for Canada he reminded him in plain terms of the treachery with which the British had behaved to the Indians at the close of the Revolutionary War, and expressed the hope that it would not be repeated; saying:[Footnote: Canadian Archives, Brant to Joseph Chew, Feb. 24, and March 17, 1795.]
”If there is a treaty between Great Britain and the Yankees I hope our Father the King will not forget the Indians as he did in the year '83.”
When his forebodings came true and the British, in a.s.senting to Jay's treaty, abandoned their Indian allies, Brant again wrote to the Secretary of the Indian Office, in repressed but bitter anger at the conduct of the King's agents in preventing the Indians from making peace with the Americans while they could have made it on advantageous terms, and then in deserting them. He wrote: ”This is the second time the poor Indians have been left in the lurch & I cannot avoid lamenting that they were prevented at a time when they had it in their power to make an Honorable and Advantageous Peace.” [Footnote: _Do_., Brant to Chew, Jan.
19, 1796.]
Wrath of the British Indian Agents.
McKee, the British Indian agent, was nearly as frank as Brant in expressing his views of the conduct of the British towards their allies; he doubtless felt peculiar bitterness as he had been made the active instrument in carrying out the policy of his chiefs, and had then seen that policy abandoned and even disavowed. In fact he suffered the usual fate of those who are chosen to do some piece of work which unscrupulous men in power wish to have done, but wish also to avoid the responsibility of doing. He foretold evil results from the policy adopted, a policy under which, as he put it, ”the distressed situation of the poor Indians who have long fought for us and bled farely for us [is] no bar to a Peaceable accommodation with America and ... they [are]
left to s.h.i.+ft for themselves.” [Footnote: Canadian Archives, McKee to Chew, March 27, 1795.] That a sentence of this kind could be truthfully written by one British official to another was a sufficiently biting comment on the conduct of the British Government.
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