"History is written by the victors."
- Winston Churchill
Today is the 215th anniversary of the infamous day that the American army was destroyed.
That isn't hyperbole. I don't mean "defeated", or "suffered a setback". I mean an entire American army was wiped out on the battlefield.
How come you never heard of this? See Churchill's quote above for an answer. America eventually won the war, but it would change America forever.
To tell this forgotten piece of history properly we need to go all the way back to 1763, when King George was deciding on the best way to end the French and Indian Wars.
Shortly before King George issues the
Proclamation of 1763, the native american tribes of the Great Lakes formed their first ever confederacy under
Chief Pontiac.
Pontiac's War in the spring and summer of 1763 succeeded in taking eight out of the 12 British forts west of the Appalachian Mountains and defeating several small British armies. By the time King George delivered his proclamation in October of that year, indian rights were on his mind.
the colonists could not help but feel a strong resentment when what they perceived to be their prize was snatched away from them. The proclamation provided that all lands west of the heads of all rivers which flowed into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or northwest were off-limits to the colonists. This excluded the rich Ohio Valley and all territory from the Ohio to the Mississippi rivers from settlement.
This was the way it was to remain until the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783. After General George Washington order the Iroquois Nations to be "not merely overun, but destroyed" in 1779, there no longer existed an indian federation capable of stopping westward settlement. While the
Treaty of Paris may have ended the war between America and Britain, it didn't even mention the tribes of the
Old Northwest Territories. Those tribes, led by the Shawnee, had not only
not been defeated like the British had, they had ended the war on a high note with their victory at the
Battle of Blue Licks.
The Revolutionary War ended with the new nation heavily in debt. It needed cash and it needed it fast. The only thing it had an excess of was land - most of it west of the Appalachias. The
Land Ordinance of 1785 opened up those huge tracks of land to speculators and settlers. Once again, the indians weren't consulted first. Belatedly the Continental Congress tried to address this problem with the
Northwest Ordinance, but by that time hostilies had already started.
The Western Lakes Confederacy
The Confederacy first came together in the autumn of 1785. This confederacy was really just a revival of the confederacy of tribes that Pontiac put together a generation before. Of the fourteen tribes involved, seven of the leading tribes had been members of Pontiac's confederation. They declared that the parties to the Confederacy would deal jointly with the United States, rather than individually, and that the Ohio River would be the boundary between indian land and the white man's land.
There was one more player in this game - the British. While the British had ceded this territory to America, they still had forts there. The British, still smarting from losing the war to America, sold guns and ammo to the indians. The man leading this endevour for the British was Joseph Brant.
"A Standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People."
- John Adams
It's important to note at this point in history that America didn't have a professional standing army. Armies were created only when there was a need for them. And because of the dire fiscal condition of the government, new tax revenue had to be acquired before that could be done. During a time of relative peace a small force of 600 regulars was maintained to maintain the peace on the new western front. This force was called the First American Regiment.
Little Turtle's War
Little Turtle was a war chief of the Miami Indians, born circa 1752. Little was known of him prior to the 1790's other than the fact that he helped the British during the Revolution.
The war started slow, with small raiding parties against white settlements in the Ohio valley. Then in the fall of 1786, General Benjamin Logan led a force of federal troops and Kentucky militia against Shawnee villages along the Mad River. Logan's Raid met limited success because the indians had abandoned the villages well in advance. However, his burning of the villages and crops did succeed in making the war more violent. During the mid-to-late 1780's white settlers and travelers suffered about 1,500 casualties in this simmering war.
In 1790, President George Washington ordered General Josiah Harmar to launch a major offensive against the Shawnee and Miami tribal areas.
In October 1790, Harmar started marching in western Ohio with 320 regular soldiers and about 1,100 Pennsylvania and Kentucky militiamen.
Josiah Harmar
The militiamen were poorly trained; many did not know how to load and fire a musket; several others did not even have a gun. Harmar was determined to destroy the native villages near modern-day Fort Wayne. He intended to attack the Miami Indians, the Shawnee Indians, and the Delaware Indians, along with other natives located in western Ohio.
The natives fled their villages as Harmar's army approached. Around that time some of the scouts captured a Shawnee. After some "intense interrogation" they learned that the Miami and Shawnee were preparing for the army's advance.
On October 20, Harmar sent out a detachment of 300 men under the command of Ensign Phillip Hartshorn to find out where the indians had gone. Hartshorn and 70 of his men were killed in an ambush. Most of the militiamen fled the battle
without even firing a shot. Some of the retreating militiamen did not stop until they crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. Harmar, instead of advancing the army to the ambush site in order to bury the dead, withdrew several miles. Morale sank even lower. Col. John Hardin then demanded that he be allowed to take 400 men and attack the Indian force, or at least bury the dead. Harmar gave the OK.
So on October 22 Hardin found almost 1,100 indians camped near the ambush site, led by Little Turtle. He sent a messenger back to Harmar asking for reinforcements, and then prepared for combat. He didn't have to wait long.
Hardin's men put up a good fight, but they were outnumbered more than two to one. Harmar never sent reinforcements. After several hours, Hardin's forces broke and fled in a route. They left 129 dead on the battlefield. Nearly 100 more were wounded. Indian casualties were almost as many.
Afterwards, Little Turtle managed to draw General Harmar into the Maumee Valley by convincing the troops his men were fleeing in terror. "Harmar was caught off guard, flanked, and lost 183 soldiers to Little Turtle's warriors." If Little Turtle had followed up on this victory and chased his fleeing enemy, he may have wiped out the entire American military at the time. But that day was still to come.
In 1791, the United States army convened a court-martial against Harmar. He was accused him of wrongdoing during the campaign, including being drunk on duty. The court-martial exonerated him of all charges, but Harmar retired from the army on Jan. 1, 1792. Harmar's actions in western Ohio only heightened tensions between the white settlers and the Indians. Following Harmar's defeat, native attacks against settlers increased.
Obviously this military campaign was a disaster. It was time to send a larger army and better officers. It was time to unleash
Arthur St. Clair.
General Arthur St. Clair was a Revolutionary War hero. He was a general under Washington when he crossed the Delaware River to win victories at Trenton and Princeton. St. Clair was elected the "9th President of the United States in Congress Assembled on February 2, 1787." It was his Confederation Congress that approved the Philadelphia Convention at Independence Hall that would write the Constitution that still exists today.
However, in the late 1780's, St. Clair was also flat broke. His job as President of the United States (under the Articles of Confederation) didn't go with a paycheck. He incurred huge debts during the Revolution and had no way of paying them back. During his presidency in July 1787, he was elected Governor of the Northwest Territory. The most powerful elected politician in the land, who also happened to be desperate for money, managed to get appointed governor of a huge swath of land ripe for speculation and profit. It wasn't a coincidence.
And now the land he was governor of, his ticket out of debt and his political responsibility, was totally beyond his control because the people that actually lived there didn't want to give it up to settlers and land speculators. Meanwhile, his long-time friend and allie, George Washington became President in April 1789. In March of 1791 Washington asked St. Clair to put down the indian revolt.
Order of Battle
On September 17, 1791 Maj. Gen. Arthur St. Clair headed north from what is now Cincinnati, Ohio to establish a fort at the head of the Maumee River. He led a little over 2,000 men, most of whom were short-term soldiers. They were not professionally trained. they were tasked with building a fort at the Miami village of Kekionga, but were only equipted with 15 hatchets, 18 axes, 12 hammers and 24 handsaws. Desertions were common. By the time they reached their destination on November 3rd, the army was down to 1,400 men and 86 officers, although only 52 officers and 868 enlisted and militia were actually available for duty that morning. They were equipted for summer weather, but it was already turning cold.
His newly appointed field Quartermaster, Samuel Hodgdon, relied on private contractors to procure supplies in the East, for movement down the Ohio River to Fort Washington (present-day Cincinnati) where Army regulars and short-term militiamen were rendezvousing. But the system failed miserably.
With contracts going to low-bidders the troops ultimately got tents that leaked, clothing that wore out in no time, shoes that were "vile in the extreme," and powder so weak it would carry a ball only a short distance. Both men and animals also lacked the subsistence to stay healthy.
St. Clair was 55 years old at the time and suffered from severe gout. For much of the march he was carried on a stretcher. Nevertheless, he still talked about the coming "utter destruction" of the indians.
"Beware of surprise. Trust not the Indian; leave not your arms for the moment; and when you halt for the night be sure to fortify your camp. Again and again, General: Beware of surprise!"
- Washington's advice to St. Clair
Pitted against the American army was about 1,800-2,000 indians, mostly Miami and Shawnee. Little Turtle led the Miami. The Shawnee was led by Blue Jacket.
Almost nothing is know about Blue Jacket before this war. He was about 45 years old at the time of this battle. Even this picture is a guess of what he looked like.
There was one other warrior worth mentioning, although he wasn't a chief yet. His named was Tecumseh. His job during this campaign was to lead the scouts and harass the American army. His days of glory were still ahead of him.
"Cowards, cowards, cowards"
St. Clair did not follow George Washington's advice.
Twenty Chickasaw scouts who were at his disposal for retrieving vital information concerning the location of the adversary were dispatched on October 29th on a distant assignment to seize prisoners. St. Clair also made a geographical error in the location of his November 4th camp, thinking it was close to Kekionga. In reality they were 20 miles south of the settlement. In addition, he chose to direct his most able soldiers, 300 officers and men of the First American Regiment, to attend to deserters and guard incoming supplies, rather than to prepare for battle. They undoubtedly were looking for 60 deserters who had fled four days before the battle due to low morale, poor supplies and inclement weather. St. Clair also erroneously chose not to entrench the camp the night before even though his "men are much fatigued." Simple earth or wood fences would have given the troops at least a crude barrier, as well as relay the unspoken message to the Native Americans that they were on their guard.
It was later learned that St. Clair's deputy, General Richard Butler, had learned the night before the battle that a large body of Native American warriors was gathering nearby, which he failed to relay to his superior. He paid dearly for his miscommunication by not living to see the next night.
At dawn on November 4th, the armies led by Little Turtle and Blue Jacket surprised the St. Clair's army. The Americans almost immediately collapsed into disorder.
"The savages seemed not to fear anything we could do. They could skip out of reach of bayonet and return, as they pleased. The ground was literally covered with the dead. . . . It appeared as if the officers had been singled out, as a very great proportion fell. The men being thus left with few officers, became fearful, despaired of success, gave up the fight."
- from the journal of Maj. Ebenezer Denny
While St. Clair prepared for battle poorly, he displayed courage during it. St. Clair had three horses shot out from under him, and his jacket and hat displayed eight bullet holes. He tried in vain to rally his troops. At one point he chanted "cowards, cowards, cowards" at the men hiding under wagons and behind trees.
"A general, enrapped tenfold in flannel robes, unable to walk, placed on his car, bolstered on all sides with pillows and medicines, and thus moving to attack the most active enemy in the world, was...tragi-comical indeed."
- Lieutenant-Colonel Wiliam Drake
In less than an hour nearly half of the troops had been killed or wounded, with most of the horses shot. By the middle of the morning, the rest of the panicked soldiers hastily retreated, and were easily shot as they ran away.
"The retreat, in those circumstances, was, you may be sure, a very precipitate one: it was, in fact, a flight...But the most disgraceful part of the business is, that the greatest part of the men threw away their arms and accoutrements, even after the pursuit, which continued about four miles, and ceased."
- Major-General Arthur St. Clair to Henry Knox, Secretary of War, November 9, 1791
Relatively speaking, it was the worst defeat the American army ever suffered. Over 65% of the entire American army, that includes every man under arms in the service of the American government, was dead on that battlefield. Three times as many men died in the Battle of Wabash as did in the Battle of Little Big Horn 85 years later. 88% of all officers became casualties. The American casualty rate, among the soldiers, was 97.4 percent, including 632 of 920 killed (69%), and 264 wounded. Nearly all of the 200 camp followers were slaughtered, for a total of 832 Americans killed. Only 24 soldiers weren't wounded or dead.
Little Turtle, in contrast, walked away from the battle losing only 21 warriors with only forty wounded.
"To suffer that army to be cut to pieces, hacked, butchered, tomahawked, by a surprise - the very thing I guarded him against - O, God! O God!. . . . He's worse than a murderer! How can he answer to his country!"
- George Washington as described by Washington Irving
To listen to a folk song about St. Clair's Defeat, click here.
While Little Turtle could win a battle, he completely failed to follow up on his victory. They failed to attack Fort Jefferson, 29 miles away, where the 300-man First American Regiment was stationed, and where the survivors waited out the winter. (There was no Third American Regiment in existence.) Within weeks the indian army had broken apart into tribes again, after agreeing to meet again in the spring. The American survivors came back in the spring to bury the dead.
Fallout
That isn't the end of the story of the Battle of Wabash.
Washington forced St. Clair to resign immediately after returning to the east. The House of Representatives, in response to the outcry, launched its first ever congressional investigation on March 27, 1792.
Because Congress was to investigate the executive branch, they naturally sought sensitive documents about the war. "Knox brought this matter to Washington's attention, and because of the major separation of powers issues involved, the president summoned a meeting of all of his department heads (Knox, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph). This was one of the first meetings of all of these officials together, and some scholars consider this occasion the beginning of the Cabinet."
"We had all considered, and were of one mind, first, that the House was an inquest, and therefore might institute inquiries. Second, that it might call for papers generally. Third, that the Executive ought to communicate such papers as the public good would permit, and ought to refuse those, the disclosure of which would injure the public: consequently were to exercise a discretion. Fourth, that neither the committees nor House has a right to call on the Head of a Department, who and whose papers were under the President alone; but that the committee should instruct their chairman to move the House to address the President. (20 5 Annals of Congress (1796), 773.)"
The president decided not to hand over originals of the documents, nor documents that he felt should be kept secret "for the public good". It was the first exercise of "executive privilege". In the end, Washington eventually determined that no documents would harm the public.
A Congressional committee appointed to investigate St Clair's defeat admitted that Congress had delayed too long in passing the bill for the protection of the frontier and then had not allowed sufficient time for recruiting and disciplining an army for such an expedition. However, in its report on May 8, 1792, it laid the burden of blame for failure of the expedition upon "the delays consequent upon the gross and various mismanagements and neglects in the Quartermaster's and contractor's departments," and exonerated completely the commander-in-chief. Although at the request of Knox and Hodgdon the committee re-examined its report early the next year, it concluded that its original findings justified.
At that point the investigation took a strange turn, Congress voted down a motion to consider the Committee's findings, issued no official report and abruptly dropped the entire matter to the dismay of General St. Clair, who wanted to clear his name.
While St. Clair's military career was over, he was allowed to continue his career as governor of the territories for another 10 years. He died in poverty in August, 1818.
The Birth of the Standing Army
''The citizens of every state questioned the effectiveness of the government and the Constitution. The crisis facing the United States was critical, for the government's credibility was almost destroyed."
- G. Danforth Hollins
President Washington appointed a new general to finish the job that his two previous generals failed at. His name was "Mad Anthony" Wayne, and he too was a Revolutionary War hero. By coincidence, Wayne and St. Clair had been rivals going all the way back to 1776. Wayne's most famous feat was the storming of the British fortifications at Stony Point via a nighttime bayonet charge on July 15, 1779.
Wayne was to command America's new professional army, called The Legion of the United States. The two disasterous defeats at the hands of Little Turtle proved to Washington that militias simply weren't enough to fight a war with. More importantly, a third defeat at the hand of the indians would show a significant sign of weakness to rival european countries that they might decide to exploit.
Wayne went to Pittsburgh in July 1792 to start the training of his Legion. This training continued until September 11, 1793, when Washington gave the order to launch the offensive.
Wayne moved his forces to the site of both Hardin's and St. Clair's defeats and built Fort Recovery there. Indian scouts called Wayne "the Chief who never sleeps." On June 30, 1794, an indian army of 1,200 attacked the fort. The battle lasted well into the following day. Despite outnumbering the defenders by more than two to one, Wayne's Legion managed to hold the fort. Little Turtle's forces lost twice as many men as they lost against St. Clair. Lacking provisions for a long seige, the indian forces began breaking up shortly afterwards.
Little Turtle, being no one's fool, realized that his enemy, and the eventual outcome of this war, had changed. He encouraged his forces to negotiate with the Americans because the numbers and weaponry wasn't on the indian's side. Other chiefs refused to listen, and they stripped Little Turtle of his leadership position. Military leadership of the indian confederation fell to Blue Jacket. Little Turtle never took up arms against the white man again, and even encouraged the Miami Indians from joining Tecumseh's Indian confederation decades later. He died on July 14, 1812, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Fade to Black
By this time Wayne's army had grown to 3,000 men, while Blue Jacket's army numbered about 1,500. Blue Jacket's army took a defensive stand along the Maumee River (not far from present-day Toledo, Ohio), near a number of uprooted trees. The idea being that the trees would hinder the advance of the army.
The Battle of Fallen Timbers (August 20, 1794) was not a decisive battle, as both sides lost about 40 men. However, unlike past battles, the American army withdrew only after they were done with the battlefield (and destroying indian villages and crops). It was obvious that the indians were outnumbered, outgunned, and outclassed in this battle.
What's more, the British at nearby Fort Miamis shut its gate to their indian allies. The indian confederation realized that the British weren't about to take risks for them. In 1796 the British finally began evacuating their forts in the Northwest Territories, like the Treaty of Paris had demanded.
In 1795 the indians signed the Treaty of Greenville, which ceded most of Ohio to the new American nation. It only lacked one significant signature - Tecumseh.