St. Clair's Defeat
Fort St. Clair
The Northwest Indian War was an armed conflict for control of the Northwest Territory between the United States and a loose confederation of Native American peoples who called themselves the United Indian Nations but are better known today as the Northwestern Confederacy. The United States Army considers the conflict to be the first of the American Indian Wars.
Following centuries of conflict involving Native Americans and Europeans for control of the region, the lands comprising the Northwest Territory were ceded by Great Britain to the newly formed United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. The treaty used the Great Lakes as a border between British North America and the US, and led to the Americans assuming control over the Ohio Country and Illinois Country, which had previously been prohibited to European settlement. As US settlers moved into the Northwest Territory, they were resisted by local Native Americans, and a Wyandot-led confederacy was formed in 1785 to resist American expansion onto their lands.
Four years after the confederacy was formed, the Constitution of the United States went into effect; George Washington was sworn in as president, which made him the commander-in-chief of all U.S. military forces. Washington subsequently directed the United States Army to enforce American sovereignty over the Northwest Territory. The U.S. Army, mainly consisting of untrained recruits and bolstered by volunteer militiamen, suffered a series of significant defeats, including the 1790 Harmar campaign and St. Clair's defeat in 1791, which are among the worst defeats ever suffered in the history of the United States Army.
St. Clair's defeat destroyed most of the U.S. Army and left white settlers on the American frontier vulnerable to attack. Washington appointed General Anthony Wayne to rebuild the U.S. Army, with Wayne reorganizing it into the Legion of the United States in 1792 and spending a year training and supplying the Legion. He proceeded to lead a methodical campaign up the Great Miami and Maumee river valleys in the Ohio Country before leading the Legion to a decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers near the Lake Erie in 1794. Wayne subsequently established Fort Wayne at the Miami capital of Kekionga, and the defeated Northwestern Confederacy was forced to cede extensive territory, including much of present-day Ohio, to the US in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. The war confirmed American control over the Northwest Territory, although the region would be invaded by British forces during the War of 1812.
Background
In the French and Indian War (1754–1763), France lost control of its North American colonies to Great Britain including the region south of the Great Lakes known as the Ohio and Illinois countries. Indigenous tribes of the region fought on both sides of the conflict, aligning themselves with the imperial power best suited to their economic and political needs. In the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the war, France ceded the region to the British. That year, a confederation of Natives launched Pontiac's War, an effort to drive the British away. Seeking to avoid further hostilities, the British issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, creating a boundary line between colonists and Native lands.
In 1768, British officials negotiated the Treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois, who claimed sovereignty over the Ohio Country. The treaty moved the boundary line further west and opened territory south of the Ohio River to colonial settlement. While colonial elites like George Washington organized land companies and secured grants, immigrants began pouring into the region. Natives (primarily Shawnees and Cherokees) who used present-day Kentucky as their hunting grounds had not been consulted in the treaty and denied that the Iroquois had the right to sell the land. In the early 1770s, the Shawnees worked to create a new Native confederacy to resist colonial occupation, but British officials successfully used the Iroquois to isolate them. As a result, the Shawnees fought and lost Lord Dunmore's War in 1774 with only a few Mingo allies, and they were compelled to assent to the Ohio River boundary between the colonies and Native lands.
To better control the frontier, in 1774, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act, which placed the entire region under the jurisdiction of the Province of Quebec, nullifying colonial land claims. American colonists who hoped to own or settle these lands were outraged, contributing to their decision to declare independence from Britain in 1776. Many Natives allied with the British in the western theater of the American Revolutionary War, seeking to drive out American settlers.
In the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the war, Great Britain ceded the region to the United States, making no mention of Native land rights. The Native nations technically remained at war with the United States. Richard Butler argued to them that the British had "cast you off, and given us your country." However, George Washington advised Congress that maintaining peaceful relations with Native American nations was essential to the settlement of the western territories. He argued that Native lands should be acquired through treaties and purchase rather than by military conquest, which he considered costly. Washington and his generation anticipated that continued American settlement would lead to gradual displacement of Native peoples.
Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, who had fought in the Revolution as a British ally, was stunned to learn that "England had sold the Indians to Congress." In 1783, he took the lead in forming the Northwestern Confederacy, the "most ambitious pan-tribal confederacy yet." At the Wyandot town of Junquindundeh (modern Fremont, Ohio), Brant argued that Native lands were held in common by all tribes, and so no land could be ceded without the consent of the confederacy. Among the attendees at the conference were representatives from the Iroquois, Shawnees, Lenapes (Delawares), Wyandots, Three Fires (Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi), as well as a few Cherokees and Muscogee (Creek).
In the following years, U.S. states relinquished their claims in the region to the federal government, which intended to pay debts from the Revolution by selling lands north of the Ohio River to American settlers. American officials refused to recognize the native confederacy and instead pursued a policy of divide and rule. They informed the Natives their lands had been taken by right of conquest and sought to confirm this in a series of treaties in which the Americans dictated the terms. Some Native leaders buckled to the pressure and ceded land at Fort Stanwix (1784), Fort McIntosh (1785), and Fort Finney (1786). Hardline and militant Natives remained committed to defending their lands north of the Ohio River. Shawnees and Lenapes sent out messages calling for war.
Course of the war
After many raids and counter-raids along the Ohio River boundary, in 1786, the Kentucky militia launched the first major frontier military action since the end of the Revolutionary War. Generals George Rogers Clark and Benjamin Logan headed a two-pronged invasion of Native land. In September, Clark led 1,200 militiamen north along the Wabash River. Beset by logistical problems, mutiny, and desertion, Clark returned without accomplishing anything. In October, Logan led 790 Kentucky militiamen to the Shawnee towns along the Mad River. The towns were inhabited primarily by noncombatants because the warriors had scattered for the winter hunt. Logan's men burned the towns and food supplies, killing and capturing numerous Natives. Moluntha, an elderly Shawnee chief who had signed the Fort Finney treaty, was executed by one of Logan's men.
After the destruction of their towns, Shawnee refugees were invited by the Miamis to settle along the Wabash. The towns around Kekionga, the Miami capital, were now inhabited by many of the most militant members of the Northwestern Confederacy. The next meeting of the confederacy had been scheduled to be held in the Shawnee towns, but with their destruction, the location was moved to the Wyandot village of Brownstown on the Detroit River. Joseph Brant spoke to a gathering that included Miamis and other members of the Wabash Confederacy. On December 18, 1786, the confederacy, calling themselves the "United Indian Nations," sent a letter to the U.S. Confederation Congress declaring the recent treaties invalid because they had not been conducted with the whole confederacy. They called for a new treaty conference in the spring of 1787. Until that time, the Natives suggested that each party should keep its people on their side of the Ohio River.
In July 1787, the U.S. Confederation Congress created the Northwest Territory north of the Ohio River in preparation for widespread, organized American settlement of the region. Arthur St. Clair, appointed as territorial governor, moved to Marietta, the first American settlement north of the river. He was instructed to negotiate new treaties without surrendering any lands ceded in previous treaties, acquire more land if possible, and work to undermine the native confederacy. In 1788, St. Clair invited Natives to Fort Harmar near Marietta, instead of a neutral site preferred by the Natives. Brant sent St. Clair a message asking if he would accept a new boundary, preserving everything west of the Muskingum River as Native land. When St. Clair dismissed the idea, Brant boycotted the negotiations and suggested others do the same. The Northwestern confederacy was deeply divided. Those living closest to the Americans supported compromising. Those further away – the Miamis, Lenapes, and Shawnees around Kekionga – insisted upon the Ohio River boundary. In January 1789, a group of mostly minor chiefs signed the Treaty of Fort Harmar, which merely confirmed the terms of the previous disputed treaties. "I am persuaded their general confederacy is entirely broken," wrote St. Clair. Instead of breaking the confederacy, St. Clair had discredited Natives willing to compromise and strengthened the influence of the militants.
After the Fort Harmar treaty, violence between Natives and settlers escalated. Natives attacked flatboats on the Ohio River and raided into Kentucky, killing, capturing, and torturing settlers in an attempt to stem the tide of immigrants. Americans responded with counter raids, such as one led by Major John Hardin, who in August 1789 led 220 Kentucky militiamen to the Wabash region, where they killed eight Shawnees, including women and children. In 1790, George Washington, recently inaugurated as the first President of the United States, and Secretary of War Henry Knox decided to attack the native confederacy to secure the Northwest Territory for American occupation. Because many Americans distrusted the idea of a professional "standing army," Congress kept the United States Army small and relied upon state-run militias for defense. In 1790, Congress expanded the army's single regiment, the First American Regiment, from 700 to 1,216 men. For the duration of the war, the Americans would use combined operations of militiamen and regulars, with a U.S. Army officer in overall command.
1790: Harmar campaign
On April 20, 1790, the First American Regiment participated in its first offensive against Native Americans when General Josiah Harmar joined Kentucky General Charles Scott in an attack on the Shawnee village of Chalawgatha. The following month, Native Americans retaliated by attacking settlers near Limestone (modern-day Maysville, Kentucky) in a skirmish known as Hartshorne's Defeat, leaving five settlers dead and eight missing. That autumn, the United States launched a major offensive against the Natives along the Maumee River. This punitive expedition was led by General Harmar, whose orders were to destroy Kekionga and the surrounding towns, killing any Natives who opposed him. His army, consisting of 1,100 militiamen and 320 regulars, departed Fort Washington on the Ohio River on September 30. A diversionary force led by Major Jean François Hamtramck invaded from Vincennes, though it turned back before joining with Harmar.
Native scouts monitored the slow progress of Harmar's northward march. The Natives had scattered for their annual winter hunt, but Blue Jacket, the principal Shawnee war chief, and Little Turtle, his Miami counterpart, dispatched messengers calling for the warriors to regroup. They collected about 600 men to oppose Harmar's army. This was not enough men to face the largest army most of them had ever seen, so they evacuated the noncombatants from the towns on October 14 and watched for an opportunity to strike. Harmar's advance detachment under John Hardin reached Kekionga on October 15 and spent the next few days looting and burning Native towns, as well as destroying the crops. On October 19, Hardin led 180 men on a reconnaissance mission to discover a Native war party thought to be nearby. About 16 miles from Kekionga, Hardin's scattered men were ambushed and routed by about 150 Shawnee and Potawatomi warriors. Soon after, the Natives received additional reinforcements of Odawas, Sacs, and Foxes.
On October 21, Harmar declared that his objective—the destruction of the towns—had been fulfilled, and so the army would return to Fort Washington. The expedition had destroyed five Miami towns and 20,000 bushels of their corn. They marched south, but the following day, Harmar agreed to allow a detachment of 400 men to return to Kekionga and attack any Natives who might reoccupy the town. This raid was led by Major John P. Wyllys, a regular army officer, with Hardin serving under him and commanding the militia. As they approached Kekionga, Wyllys divided his men, hoping to surround and trap the Natives. Instead, the Natives again ambushed the Americans and defeated them piecemeal, the survivors barely regrouping with Harmar's army. Blue Jacket and Little Turtle hoped to strike again at Harmar's retreating army, but a lunar eclipse the following night was regarded by many Natives as an ill omen, and the attack was called off.