“When news of the disaster on the Wabash reached Congress, the legislature demanded an investigation; the first one it ever convened.”
By R.D. Evans
THE END OF the American Revolution did not mean peace in America.
Conflict between the newly independent United States and Native American tribes in what was then called the Northwest Territory (today’s Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota) escalated year after year following the War of Independence. Eventually, these tribes would hand the country a military defeat on a scale that would be seen again until the Civil War.
Following the British surrender at Yorktown, Continental Army general George Washington stepped down and the war cabinet was dissolved. Congress, long opposed to the idea of a standing national army, presided over a mass demobilization. Ultimately, the army was reduced to just one regiment of infantry and two battalions of artillery. It would be largely up to individual states to manage their defences.
Yet as the foundations of the new nation were being laid in the east, the situation on the frontier seemed tenuous. A string of forts had been built on the eastern fringes the Northwest Territory. It was hardly a formidable perimeter; some outposts were as much as 100 miles apart with no means or ability to support or even communicate with one another. Native American settlements were deeper within the territory separated by a virtual no man’s land of wilderness.
Although spread thin, the forts did establish a military presence in the region, albeit limited. They served as bases-of-operation for surveyors sent to map the interior of the continent while dissuading encroachment by hordes of settlers descending onto friendly native lands protected by treaties. As an example of the scale of the migration of settlers onto the frontier, the population in Kentucky alone swelled from 70,000 in 1784 to 200,000 in 1796.1
Despite the fortifications, violence between native tribes and settlers only worsened.
In March of 1782, U.S. militiamen from Pennsylvania slaughtered more than 90 defenceless Christian Moravian Lenape natives in eastern Ohio in what would become known as the Gnadenhutten massacre. The killings would spark reprisals.
In June, 1782, a column of 500 volunteers under the command of William Crawford was wiped out near Sandusky. Crawford was captured and burned alive. During the same period, 17 men were sent out of Fort McIntosh, Pennsylvania to collect firewood. They were ambushed and massacred.
Yet even as the violence on the frontier worsened, in June of 1784, Congress reduced the national army further to just 80 men under major John Doughty of the artillery. The force’s sole duty was to watch over government stores at West Point, N.Y. and Fort Pitt, near today’s Pennsylvania. Ironically, Doughty was the first commander of the U.S. Army.
Later that summer, Congress realized that an 80-man standing army was far too small to keep the peace. It tapped the militias of four eastern states (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and New York) and soon established a 700-man composite force. This new brigade was to serve on the frontier for three years and then be disbanded once the hostile tribes had been pacified.2
The Secretary of War formed the unit into two companies of artillery and eight of infantry. And as Pennsylvania supplied the most men, command was given to one of their own, Lt. Col. Josiah Harmar.
As this force was slowly positioned on the increasingly wild frontier, Congress continued to expand the nation’s military. Authorization for two U.S. Army units, the First and Second regiments, was granted. The First was made up of good men, reliable and seasoned; the Second was little better than militia and was reportedly comprised of social misfits, street urchins and jail birds. Some had never fired a weapon before and many had never been in the woods.3
The force was further augmented by the creation of the First and Second Levy Regiments. These forces were drawn from various states that had a legal obligation to supply them for a six-month duration. The quality of the conscripts was well below expectations as many of the seasoned backwoods riflemen wanted nothing to do with this campaign and paid untrained substitutes to take their place.
By the Spring of 1790, Harmar, now a brigadier general, was ready to conduct the U.S. Army’s first offensive operation.4
His orders were to take the First U.S. Infantry Regiment, about 120 men, along with about 200 Kentucky militia and move against a native encampment at Chalawgatha in Kentucky.
With modest results, Congress upped the stakes and ordered Harmar back into the wilderness with a much larger force. He now had 320 U.S. Infantry but, as always, the army was small and had to be supported by 1,100 militia from Pennsylvania and Kentucky commanded by Col. John Hardin. They were ordered to attack and destroy Kekionga, near present-day Ft. Wayne, Indiana, the largest complex of villages in the territory.5
Harmar’s force was up against two native chiefs who were excellent tacticians – Chief Little Turtle of the Miami peoples and Chief Blue Jacket of the Shawnee. Knowing that Kekionga would be the target, the two chiefs emptied food stores to prevent their capture and abandoned the villages in advance of Harmar’s arrival.
Harmar sent a reconnaissance to determine the disposition of the Indigenous population. He ordered Col. Hardin with 500 of his best men to carry out the task assuring that the main column would reinforce him immediately if he was in trouble. After the local tribes took as much of their food as they could carry, Hardin’s scouts moved in and captured what they could. While they were busy burning and looting the Kekionga villages, the warriors counter-attacked inflicting heavy losses.
As the fighting continued, Hardin held out hoping that Harmar would arrive with reinforcements. About 70 U.S. soldiers and at least 100 militia men were killed before the survivors could withdraw to the outpost at Fort Washington.6
Amazingly, Harmar never left camp. The general was widely known to be a drunk, a fact overlooked by Congress. When Harmar learned of Hardin’s defeat, some reports say he was visibly shaken, yet would still not act. After a day, he moved the balance of his command into the area of Hardin’s defeat. Shocked by the scene of the massacre, the general raised the ire of his officers when he refused to allow the troops time to bury the dead.
For their part, the Miami and Shawnee referred to the massacre at Kekionga as the “Battle of the Pumpkin Fields” – steam rising from scalped heads of the dead reminded them of pumpkins being cooked in their camps.7
Congress, enraged by the disaster, demanded immediate revenge. Meanwhile, word of the victory spread among the tribes of the Northwest, prompting more raids against settlers.
Command on the frontier was given to Arthur St. Clair, an experienced Scottish-born frontier fighter going back to the French and Indian War. He had been at Washington’s side through most of the Revolution and crossed the Delaware with the future first president. A great tactician, he ended the war with Britain a major general, and later became the President of Congress. St. Clair seemed formidable, but at 53 he was in poor health and suffered from gout.
A better choice would have been General Anthony Wayne. Youthful, energetic and beloved by his men, he too had experience fighting American Indians. Still, President Washington could not be dissuaded from St. Clair.
Congress, in their haste to exact revenge after Kekionga forwarded the funds allocated to the St. Clair expedition to Henry Knox. Instead of working with and advising army quartermasters, Knox dispersed the money to a slippery New York financier, one James Duer. The two invested the money in real estate. American military forces paid a heavy price for the financial losses they incurred.
With the funds lost, the supplies procured by army quartermaster Samuel Hodgdon for the expedition were the worst imaginable: tents that would not keep out the rain, harnesses that came apart with only light use, axe blades that bent after moderate use, and worst of all shoddy gunpowder.8 St. Clair knew nothing of this; his army was on the march as the supplies were delivered. St. Clair was further encumbered when Congress ordering him to build three fortifications along his route through the wilderness. The delay prevented him from reaching enemy territory until almost the end of the 1791.
When he arrived at what would be his final camp along the Wabash River in early November, there was already snow on the ground. St. Clair had counted on grasslands to feed his horses, draught animals and cattle; deep frosts that fall had made grazing difficult. The animals died in great numbers. That wasn’t the end of the expedition’s problems; St. Clair was also lost. In fact, his army was 55 miles from where they thought they were. The army also lacked intelligence about the tribes there would be up against.9
The Indigenous confederation gathering to oppose St. Clair was the largest ever assembled – as many as 1,400 warriors.10 There were Mingos, Cheyenne, Miami, Delaware, Wyandots and others. Each carried a musket, supplied by British agents, and was also armed with a bow and hatchet. All were converging on the American encampment on the Wabash.
On the night of Nov. 3, St. Clair’s men could see hostile scouts moving among the trees and brush beyond the perimeter of the camp. For reasons unknown, St. Clair’s second in command, General Richard Butler, failed to send out pickets. Had he done so they would have seen Chief Little Turtle’s warriors completely enveloping the American encampment. More egregiously, Butler failed to inform St. Clair that the enemy had been spotted. By the next morning, the stage was set for a disaster.
When the full complement of St. Clair’s force was mustered on the morning of the Nov. 4, there were about 1,700 men brigaded together from about a dozen different units. Included were about 100 dragoons whose horses were of no value on the rugged terrain. St. Clair had a trio of six-pounders and an equal number of three-pounders, the crews of which would make inviting targets to the enemy sharpshooters.
As the morning wore on, the native forces deployed into a massive crescent and charged out of the woods. Half-naked and hideously painted for battle, they rolled over the terrified militia first, who in turn retreated into the forming-up ranks of the regulars.
The professional troops held the warriors in check but soon broke too.
The fleeing Americans ran terrified through the artillery camp, collapsing tents and supplies as they went. Some leaped onto what horses they could find and rode for safety. The wings of the native crescent formation wrapped around St. Clair’s camp engulfing the defenders. The warriors fired individually or in small groups taking advantage of cover.
St. Clair’s men rallied for an ill-advised bayonet charge to clear the enemy from the field. The warriors merely dispersed and took cover only to emerge and continue the slaughter.
Despite his gout, St. Clair tried to take command but was unable to even don his uniform.
The battle was quick and violent, lasting little more than three hours. The shock of the attack was so severe that many men froze in their tracks, stupefied with fear. Others reportedly gave up, found blankets and huddled to stay warm as they awaited certain death. Among the victims were about 200 non-combatants accompanying the American column, including with women and children.
With hope dwindling, a lieutenant-colonel from one of the Levies named William Darke made one final bayonet charge to break out of the encirclement. It succeeded and those left standing fled towards Fort Washington, 30 miles away. The pursuing warriors had no trouble tracking the fugitives who left a long trail of discarded weapons and equipment in their wake. Those who were wounded and could not flee waited to be found and dispatched by a tomahawk blow. Of the 1,700 men that had been on parade in the morning, only 32 reached Fort Washington unscathed. The slaughter might have been total had not the attackers stopped to loot the supply wagons of food, gunpowder and whiskey.
When news of the disaster on the Wabash reached Congress, the legislature demanded an investigation of the executive branch for its role in the fiasco; the first one it ever convened.
Even though President Washington and Congress set aside their rage and plotted yet another retaliation. General “Mad” Anthony Wayne was given command of the expedition to avenge the slaughter. Proper funding and better quality of equipment and supplies were made available this time.
It would take three years, but Wayne would go on to achieve victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. Yet only 32 warriors were known to have been killed by Wayne’s force of 1,700. After that, the confederation of tribes dispersed and a treaty was signed, the Indian Wars were thought to be at an end and the flood of settlers once again continued unabated.
The Congressional investigation cleared St. Clair of any responsibility in the disaster on the Wabash. Henry Knox and Samuel Hodgdon never appeared before the Congressional investigation and somehow remained in their respective positions for many years.
Footnotes
- Ells, Frazier. Arthur St. Clair. 1944. p. 46.
- Adams, Randolph G. and Peckham, Howard H., Lexington to Fallen Timbers. 1943. p. 430
- Wilson, p. 90
- Winkler, John F. Wabash 1791. 2011. P. 15
- Adams and Peckham, p. 35
- Winkler, p. 15
- Barnhart, John D. and Riker, Dorothy L. Indiana to 1816: The Colonial Period. 1971.
- Wilson, p. 189
- Ibid, p. 80
- Winkler, p. 30
