The Land of the Miamis

Says Hiram Beckwith, in speaking of the Potawatomi: "Always on friendly terms with the Kickapoos, with whom they lived in mixed villages, they joined the latter and the Sacs and Foxes in the exterminating war upon the Illinois tribes, and afterwards obtained their allotment of the despoiled domain." The Potawatomi advancing by sheer force of numbers, rather than by conquest, finally appropriated a large part of the lands in the present state of Indiana, north of the Wabash, commingling with the Kickapoos at the south and west, and advancing their camps as far down as Pine creek. The Miamis were loud in their remonstrances against this trespassing, and denounced the Potawatomi as squatters, "never having had any lands of their own, and being mere intruders upon the prior estate of others," but the Potawatomi were not dispossessed and were afterwards parties to all treaties with the United States government for the sale and disposal of said lands. The Miamis also lost a part of their lands on the lower west side of the Wabash to the Kickapoos. Pressing eastward from the neighborhood of Peoria, the Kickapoos established themselves on the Vermilion, where they had a village on both sides of that river at its confluence with the main stream. They were, says Beckwith, "Greatly attached to the Vermilion and its tributaries, and Governor Harrison found it a difficult task to reconcile them to ceding it away."

To the last, however, the Miamis remained the undisputed lords and masters of most of the territory watered by the two Miamis of the Ohio, and by the Wabash and its tributaries down to the Ohio. The great head and center of their power was at Kekionga (now Fort Wayne), always referred to by President Washington as "the Miami Village." It was a pleasant situation in the heart of the great northwest, at the junction where the swift flowing St. Joseph and the more gentle stream of the Saint Marys, formed the headwaters of the Maumee. On the eastern side of the St. Joseph was the town of Pecan, a head chief of the Miami, and the same savage who had supplied deer and buffalo meat for Brigadier General Harmar on his mission to Kaskaskia in 1787. Pecan was an uncle of the famous chief, Peshewah, or Jean Baptiste Richardville, who after the death of Little Turtle in 1812, became the head chief of the Miami tribe, and was reputed to be the richest Indian in North America. The southern end of this town was near the point of juncture of the St. Marys and St. Joseph, and the village extended north along what is now known as Lakeside, in the present city of Fort Wayne, a pleasant drive revealing at times the rippling waters of the river to the west. To the south of this village lay the Indian gardens, and east of the gardens the extensive corn fields and meadows. On the northern side of the town more corn fields were found, and north and west of it extended the forests. The banks of the Maumee just below the junction, and south of this old village, are quite high and steep, and along the northern side now runs the beautiful avenue known as Edgewater. Traveling down Edgewater to the eastward one comes to a great boulder with a brass tablet on it. You are at Harmar's Ford, and at the exact point where the regulars crossed the river just after sunrise of October 22nd, 1790, to attack the Indians. Here it was that Major John Wyllys fell leading the charge. Along the southern bank of the Maumee the ground is elevated and crowning these elevations were the forests again. It was through these forests that Hardin's forces approached the fatal battlefield.

On the western bank of the St. Joseph was a mixed village of French and Indians known as LeGris' Town, and it in turn was surrounded by more corn fields. LeGris was also an important chief of the Miamis, and named in Henry Hay's journal as a brother-in-law of the Little Turtle. He signed the treaty of Greenville under the Indian name of Na-goh-quan-gogh. Directly south of this village ran the St. Marys, and to the west of it was a small wooded creek known as Spy Run.

To these villages in August, 1765, came George Croghan on his way to Detroit. He describes the carrying-place between the Wabash and the Maumee systems to be about nine miles in length, "but not above half that length in freshes." He reported navigation for bateaux and canoes between the carrying place and Ouiatenon as very difficult during the dry season of the year on account of many rapids and rifts; but during the high-water time the journey could be easily made in three days. He says the distance by water was two hundred forty miles and by land about two hundred ten. Within a mile of Miamitown he was met by a delegation of the Miami chiefs and immediately after his entrance into the village the British flag was raised. He describes the villages as consisting of about forty or fifty cabins, besides nine or ten French houses. He entertained no very high opinion of the French and describes them as refugees from Detroit, spiriting up the Indians against the English. He describes the surrounding country as pleasant, well watered, and having a rich soil.

Recently another account of these villages has been given to the world by the publication of the diary of one Henry Hay, who, as a representative of certain merchants and traders of Detroit, visited these villages in the winter of 1789-1790, while they were still under the influence of the British agents at Detroit, although the soil was within the jurisdiction of the United States government. It was then one of the most important trading places for the Indian tribes in the northwest, and in close proximity to the great council grounds of the northwestern Indian confederacy in the valley of the Maumee. Le Gris, was there, and Jean Baptiste Richardville, then a youth; also the Little Turtle himself, about to become the most famous and wily strategist of his day and time.

Let there be no mistaken glamour cast about this scene. Already the disintegration of the Indian power was setting in. The traders among them, both English and French, seem to have been a depraved, drunken crew, trying to get all they could "by foul play or otherwise," and traducing each other's goods by the circulation of evil reports. Hay says, "I cannot term it in a better manner than calling it a rascally scrambling trade." Winter came on and the leading chiefs and their followers went into the woods to kill game. They had nothing in reserve to live upon, and in a hard season their women and children would have suffered. The French residents here seem to have been a gay, rollicking set, playing flutes and fiddles, dancing and playing cards, and generally going home drunk from every social gathering. The few English among them were no better, and we have the edifying spectacle of one giving away his daughter to another over a bottle of rum. The mightiest chieftains, including Le Gris, did not scruple to beg for whiskey, and parties of warriors were arriving from the Ohio river and Kentucky, with the scalps of white men dangling at their belts.

There was still a considerable activity at this place, however, in the fur trade, and the English thought it well worth holding. Raccoon, deer, bear, beaver, and otter skins were being brought in, although the season was not favorable during which Hay sojourned there on account of it being an open winter. Constant communication was kept up with Detroit on the one hand and the Petit Piconne (Tippecanoe) and Ouiatenon on the other. La Fountaine, Antoine LaSalle, and other famous French traders of that day were doing a thriving business in the lower Indian country.

That these Miami villages were also of great strategical value from the military standpoint, and that this fact was well known to President Washington, has already been mentioned. The French early established themselves there, and later the English, and when the Americans after the Revolution took dominion over the northwest and found it necessary to conquer the tribes of the Wabash and their allies, one of the first moves of the United States government was to attack the villages at this place, break up the line of their communication with the British at Detroit, and overawe the Miamis by the establishment of a strong military post.

To the last, the Miamis clung to their old carrying place. Wayne insisted at the peace with the Miamis and their allies, at Greenville, Ohio, in 1795, that a tract six miles square around the newly established post at Fort Wayne should be ceded to the United States, together with "one piece two miles square on the Wabash river, at the end of the portage from the Miami of the Lake (Maumee), and about eight miles westward from Fort Wayne." This proposal was stoutly resisted by the Little Turtle, who among other things said: "The next place you pointed to, was the Little River, and you said you wanted two miles square at that place. This is a request that our fathers, the French or British, never made of us; it was always ours. This carrying place has heretofore proved, in a great degree, the subsistence of your younger brothers. That place has brought to us in the course of one day, the amount of one hundred dollars. Let us both own this place and enjoy in common the advantage it affords." Despite this argument, however, Wayne prevailed, and the control of Kekionga and the portage passed to the Federal government; that ancient Kekionga described by Little Turtle as "the Miami village, that glorious gate, which your younger brothers had the happiness to own, and through which all the good words of our chiefs had to pass from the north to the south, and from the east to the west."

Returning to the Potawatomi, it will be seen that this tribe, which originally came from the neighborhood of Green Bay, was probably from about the middle of the eighteenth century, in possession of most of the country from the Milwaukee river in Wisconsin, around the south shore of Lake Michigan, to Grand River, "extending southward over a large part of northern Illinois, east across Michigan to Lake Erie, and south in Indiana to the Wabash." The Sun, or Keesass, a Potawatomi of the Wabash, said at the treaty of Greenville, that his tribe was composed of three divisions; that of the river Huron, in Michigan, that of the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan, and the bands of the Wabash. In the year 1765, George Croghan, Indian agent of the British government, found the Potawatomi in villages on the north side of the Wabash at Ouiatenon, with a Kickapoo village in close proximity, while the Weas had a village on the south side of the river. This would indicate that the Potawatomi had already pushed the Miami tribe south of the Wabash at this place and had taken possession of the country.

Far away to the north and on both shores of Lake Superior, dwelt the Chippewas or Ojibways, famed for their physical strength and prowess and living in their conical wigwams, with poles stuck in the ground in a circle and covered over with birch bark and grass mats. The Jesuit Fathers early found them in possession of the Sault Ste. Marie, and when General Wayne at the treaty of Greenville, reserved the post of Michillimacinac, and certain lands on the main between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, Mash-i-pinash-i-wish, one of the principal Chippewa chieftains, voluntarily made the United States a present of the Island De Bois Blanc, at the eastern entrance of the straits of Mackinac, for their use and accommodation, and was highly complimented by the general for his generous gift. A reference to the maps of Thomas G. Bradford, of 1838, shows the whole upper peninsular of Michigan in the possession of the Chippewas, as well as the whole southern and western shores of Lake Superior, and a large portion of northern Wisconsin. One of their principal sources of food supply was wild rice, and the presence of this cereal, together with the plentiful supply of fish, probably accounts for their numbers and strength. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, they expelled the Foxes from northern Wisconsin, and later drove the fierce fighting Sioux beyond the Mississippi. They were the undisputed masters of a very extensive domain and held it with a strong and powerful hand. One of their chiefs proudly said to Wayne: "Your brothers' present, of the three fires, are gratified in seeing and hearing you; those who are at home will not experience that pleasure, until you come and live among us; you will then learn our title to that land." Though far removed from the theatre of the wars of the northwest, they, together with the Ottawas, early came under the British influence, and resisted the efforts of the United States to subdue the Miamis and their confederate tribes, fighting with the allies against General Harmar at the Miami towns, against St. Clair on the headwaters of the Wabash and against Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timbers on the 20th of August, 1794.

The rudest of all the tribes of the northwest were the Ottawas, those expert canoemen of the Great Lakes, known to the French as the "traders," because they carried on a large trade and commerce between the other tribes. They seem to have had their original home on Mantoulin Island, in Lake Huron, and on the north and south shores of the Georgian Bay. Driven by terror of the Iroquois to the region west of Lake Michigan, they later returned to the vicinity of L'Arbe Croche, near the lower end of Lake Michigan, and from thence spread out in all directions. Consulting Bradford's map of 1838 again, the Ottawas are found in the whole northern end of the lower Michigan peninsula. Ottawa county, at the mouth of Grand river, would seem to indicate that at one time, their towns must have existed in that vicinity, and in fact their possessions are said to have extended as far down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan as the St. Joseph. To the south and east of these points "their villages alternated with those of their old allies, the Hurons, now called Wyandots, along the shore of Lake Erie from Detroit to the vicinity of Beaver creek, in Pennsylvania." They were parties with the Wyandots and Delawares and other tribes to the treaty of Fort Harmar, Ohio, at the mouth of Muskingum, in 1789, whereby the Wyandots ceded large tracts of land in the southern part of that state to the United States government, and were granted in turn the possession and occupancy of certain lands to the south of Lake Erie. The Ottawa title to any land in southern Ohio, however, is exceedingly doubtful, and they were probably admitted as parties to the above treaty in deference to their acknowledged overlords, the Wyandots. Their long intercourse with the latter tribe, in the present state of Ohio, who were probably the most chivalrous, brave and intelligent of all the tribes, seems to have softened their manners and rendered them less ferocious than formerly. Like the Chippewas, their warriors were of fine physical mould, and Colonel William Stanley Hatch, an early historian of Ohio, in writing of the Shawnees, embraces the following reference to the Ottawas: "As I knew them, (i. e., the Shawnees), they were truly noble specimens of their race, universally of fine athletic forms, and light complexioned, none more so, and none appeared their equal, unless it was their tribal relatives, the Ottawas, who adjoined them. The warriors of these tribes were the finest looking Indians I ever saw, and were truly noble specimens of the human family." The leading warriors and chieftains of their tribe, however, were great lovers of strong liquor, and Pontiac, the greatest of all the Ottawas, was assassinated shortly after a drunken carousal, and while he was singing the grand medicine songs of his race.

But the wandering Ishmaelites of all the northwest tribes were the Shawnees. Cruel, crafty and treacherous, and allied always with the English, they took a leading part in all the ravages and depredations on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia during the revolution and led expedition after expedition against the infant settlements of Kentucky, from the period of the first pioneers in 1775, until Wayne's victory in 1794. These were the Indians who kept Boone in captivity, made Simon Kenton run the gauntlet, stole thousands of horses in Kentucky, and who for years attacked the flatboats and keel boats that floated down the Ohio, torturing their captives by burning at the stake.

General William Henry Harrison, in speaking of the migrations of this tribe, says: "No fact, in relation to the Indian tribes, who have resided on the northwest frontier for a century past, is better known, than that the Shawnees came from Florida and Georgia about the middle of the eighteenth century. They passed through Kentucky (along the Cumberland river) on their way to the Ohio. But that their passage was rather a rapid one, is proved by these circumstances. Black Hoof, their late principal chief (With whom I had been acquainted since the treaty of Greenville), was born in Florida, before the removal of his tribe. He died at Wapocconata, in this state, only three or four years ago. As I do not know his age, at the time of his leaving Florida, nor at his death, I am not able to fix with precision the date of emigration. But it is well known that they were at the town which still bears their name on the Ohio (Shawneetown, Ill.), a few miles below the mouth of the Wabash, some time before the commencement of the Revolutionary war; that they remained there some years before they removed to the Scioto, where they were found by Governor Dunmore, in the year 1774. That their removal from Florida was a matter of necessity, and their progress from thence, a flight, rather than a deliberate march, is evident from their appearance, when they presented themselves upon the Ohio, and claimed the protection of the Miamis. They are represented by the chiefs of the latter, as well as those of the Delawares, as supplicants for protection, not against the Iroquois, but against the Creeks and Seminoles, or some other southern tribes, who had driven them from Florida, and they are said to have been literally sans provat et sans culottes."

Later writers have mentioned that while they originally dwelt in the south, that one division of the tribe lived in South Carolina, while another and more numerous division lived along the Cumberland river, and had a large village near the present site of Nashville. The Cumberland river was known on the early maps preceding the Revolution as the Shawnee river, while the Tennessee was called the Cherokee river. This Cumberland division is said to have become engaged in war with both the Cherokees and Chickasaws, and to have fled to the north to receive the protection of the powerful nations of the Wabash.

Notwithstanding the magnanimous conduct of the Miamis, however, they, together with the Wyandots of Ohio, always regarded the Shawnees with suspicion and as trouble makers. The great chief of the Miamis told Antoine Gamelin at Kekionga, in April, 1790, when Gamelin was sent by the government to pacify the Wabash Indians, that the Miamis had incurred a bad name on account of mischief done along the Ohio, but that this was the work of the Shawnees, who, he said, had "a bad heart," and were the "perturbators of all the nations." To the articles of the treaty at Fort Harmar, in 1789, the following is appended: "That the Wyandots have laid claim to the lands that were granted to the Shawnees, (these lands were along the Miami, in Ohio), at the treaty held at the Miami, and have declared, that as the Shawnees have been so restless, and caused so much trouble, both to them and to the United States, if they will not now be at peace, they will dispossess them, and take the country into their own hands; for that country is theirs of right, and the Shawnees are only living upon it by their permission."

From the recital of the above facts, it is evident that the Shawnees could never justly claim the ownership of any of the lands north of the Ohio. That, far from being the rightful sovereigns of the soil, they came to the valleys of the Miamis and Wyandots as refugees from a devastating war, and as supplicants for mercy and protection. This is recognized by the Quaker, Henry Harvey, who was partial to them, and for many years dwelt among them as a missionary. Harvey says that from the accounts of the various treaties to which they were parties, "they had been disinherited altogether, as far as related to the ownership of land anywhere." Yet from the lips of the most famous of all the Shawnees, came the false but specious reasoning that none of the tribes of the northwest, not even the Miamis who had received and sheltered them, had a right to alienate any of their lands without the common consent of all. "That no single tribe had the right to sell; that the power to sell was not vested in their chiefs, but must be the act of the warriors in council assembled of all the tribes, as the land belonged to all – no portion of it to any single tribe." This doctrine of communistic ownership was advocated by Tecumseh in the face of all the conquests of the Iroquois, in the face of the claim of the Wyandots to much of the domain of the present state of Ohio, and in the face of all of Little Turtle's claims to the Maumee and the Wabash valleys, founded on long and undisputed occupancy and possession. It never had any authority, either in fact or in history, and moreover, lacked the great and saving grace of originality. For if any Indian was the author of the doctrine that no single tribe of Indians had the power to alienate their soil, without the consent of all the other tribes, the first Indian to clearly state that proposition was Joseph Brant of the Mohawk nation, and Brant was clearly inspired by the British, at the hands of whom he was a pensioner.

The savage warriors of the northwest were not formidable in numbers, but they were terrible in their ferocity, their knowledge of woodcraft, and their cunning strategy. General Harrison says that for a decade prior to the treaty of Greenville, the allied tribes could not at any time have brought into the field over three thousand warriors. This statement is corroborated by Colonel James Smith, who had an intimate knowledge of the Wyandots and other tribes, and who says: "I am of the opinion that from Braddock's war, until the present time (1799), there never was more than three thousand Indians at any time, in arms against us, west of Fort Pitt, and frequently not half that number."

Constant warfare with the colonies and the Kentucky and Virginia hunting shirt men had greatly reduced their numbers, but above all the terrible ravages of smallpox, the insidious effects flowing from the use of intoxicants, and the spread of venereal disorders among them, which latter diseases they had no means of combating, had carried away thousands and reduced the ranks of their valiant armies.

Woe to the general, however, who lightly estimated their fighting qualities, or thought that these "rude and undisciplined" savages, as they were sometimes called, could be met and overpowered by the tactics of the armies of Europe or America! They were, says Harrison, "a body of the finest light troops in the world," and this opinion is corroborated by Theodore Roosevelt, who had some first hand knowledge of Indian fighters. The Wyandots and Miamis, especially, as well as other western bands, taught the males of their tribes the arts of war from their earliest youth. When old enough to bear arms, they were disciplined to act in concert, to obey punctually all commands of their war chiefs, and cheerfully unite to put them into immediate execution. Each warrior was taught to observe carefully the motion of his right hand companion, so as to communicate any sudden movement or command from the right to the left, Thus advancing in perfect accord, they could march stealthily and abreast through the thick woods and underbrush, in scattered order, without losing the conformation of their ranks or creating disorder. These maneuvers could be executed slowly or as fast as the warriors could run. They were also disciplined to form a circle, a semi-circle or a hollow square. They used the circle to surround their enemies, the semi-circle if the enemy had a stream on one side or in the rear, and the hollow square in case of sudden attack, when they were in danger of being surrounded. By forming a square and taking to trees, they put their faces to the enemy in every direction and lessened the danger of being shot from behind objects on either side.

The principal sachem of the village was seldom the war chief in charge of an expedition. War chiefs were selected with an eye solely to their skill and ability; to entrust the care and direction of an army to an inexperienced leader was unheard of. One man, however, was never trusted with the absolute command of an army. A general council of the principal officers was held, and a plan concerted for an attack. Such a council was held before the battle of Fallen Timbers, in which Blue Jacket, of the Shawnees, Little Turtle of the Miamis, and other celebrated leaders participated. The plan thus concerted in the council was scrupulously carried out. It was the duty of the war chief to animate his warriors by speeches and orations before the battle. During the battle he directed their movements by pre-arranged signals or a shout or yell, and thus ordered the advance or retreat. The warriors who crept through the long grass of the swamp lands at Tippecanoe to attack the army of Harrison, were directed by the rattling of dried deer hoofs.

It was a part of the tactics practiced by the war chiefs to inflict the greatest possible damage upon the enemy, with the loss of as few of their own men as possible. They were never to bring on an attack without some considerable advantage, "or without what appeared to them the sure prospect of victory," If, after commencing an engagement, it became apparent that they could not win the conflict without a great sacrifice of men, they generally abandoned it, and waited for a more favorable opportunity. This was not the result of cowardice, for Harrison says that their bravery and valor were unquestioned. It may have been largely the result of a savage superstition not to force the decrees of Fate. Says Harrison: "It may be fairly considered as having its source in that particular temperament of mind, which they often manifested, of not pressing fortune under any sinister circumstances, but patiently waiting until the chances of a successful issue appeared to be favorable." When the Great Spirit was not angry, he would again favor his children. One tribe among the warriors of the Northwest, however, were taught from their earliest youth never to retreat; to regard "submission to an enemy as the lowest degradation," and to "consider anything that had the appearance of an acknowledgment of the superiority of an enemy as disgraceful." These were the Wyandots, the acknowledged superiors in the northwestern confederacy. "In the battle of the Miami Rapids of thirteen chiefs of that tribe, who were present, only one survived, and he badly wounded."

The well known policy of the savages to ambush or outflank their enemies was well known to Washington. He warned St. Clair of this terrible danger in the Indian country, but his advice went unheeded. A pre-concerted attack might occur on the front ranks of an advancing column, and almost immediately spread to the flanks. This occurred at Braddock's defeat. The glittering army of redcoats, so much admired by Washington, with drums beating and flags flying, forded the Monongahela and ascended the banks of the river between two hidden ravines. Suddenly they were greeted by a terrible fire on the front ranks, which almost immediately spread to the right flank, and then followed a horrible massacre of huddled troops, who fired volleys of musketry at an invisible foe, and then miserably perished. When St. Clair started his ill-fated march upon the Miami towns in 1791, his movements were observed every instant of time by the silent scouts and runners of the Miamis. Camping on the banks of the upper Wabash, and foolishly posting his militia far in the front, he suddenly saw them driven back in confusion upon his regulars, his lines broken by attacks on both flanks, and his artillery silenced to the last gun. The attack was so well planned, so sudden and so furious, that nothing remained but precipitate and disastrous retreat. Out of an army consisting of fourteen hundred men and eighty-six officers, eight hundred and ninety men and sixteen officers were killed and wounded. St. Clair believed that he had been "overpowered by numbers," and so reported to the government. "It was alleged by the officers," says Judge Burnet, "that the Indians far outnumbered the American troops. That conclusion was drawn, in part, from the fact that they outflanked and attacked the American lines with great force, and at the same time on every side." The truth is, that St. Clair was completely outwitted by the admirable cunning and strategy of Little Turtle, the Miami, who concerted the plan of attack, and directed its operation. Nor is it at all likely that the Indians had a superior force. They often attacked superior numbers, if they enjoyed the better fighting position, or could take advantage of an ambush or surprise. A very respectable authority, who has the endorsement of historians, says: "There was an army of Indians composed of Miamis, Potawatomis, Ottowas, Chippewas, Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, and a few Mingoes and Cherokees, amounting in all to eleven hundred and thirty-three, that attacked and defeated General St. Clair on the 4th of November, 1791. Each nation was commanded by their own chiefs, all of whom were governed by the Little Turtle, who made the arrangements for the action, and commenced the attack with the Miamis, who were under his immediate command. The Indians had thirty killed and died with their wounds the day of the action and fifty wounded."

Of such formidable mould, were the redmen of the northwest, who went into battle stripped to the skin, and with bodies painted with horrible stripes of vermilion. So disastrous had been the result of their victories over the armies of Harmar and St. Clair, and so illy equipped with men, money and supplies was the infant government of the United States, that immediately prior to the campaign of General Anthony Wayne, a military conference was held between President Washington, General Knox, Secretary of War, and General Wayne, to devise a system of military tactics that should thereafter control in the conduct of all wars against the Indians of the northwest.

The development of this system of tactics has been outlined by General William Henry Harrison, who was an aide to Wayne, in a personal letter to Mann Butler, one of the historians of Kentucky.

It was determined that in all future contests with the tribes, that the troops employed should, when in the Indian country, be marched in such manner as that the order of march could be immediately converted, by simple evolution, into an order of battle. In other words, that the troops while actually in the line of march, could be almost instantly formed in lines of battle. This was to prevent any sudden or unexpected attack, and this was always liable to occur in the thickly wooded country. The troops were also taught to march in open formation, each file to be more than an arm's length from those on the right and left. The old European system of fighting men shoulder to shoulder was entirely impracticable in a wilderness of woods, for it invited too great a slaughter, interfered with the movement of the troops, and shortened the lines. The great object of the Indian tactics was always to flank their enemy, therefore an extension of the lines was highly desirable when entering into action. "In fighting Indians, there was no shock to be given or received, and a very open order was therefore attended with two very great advantages; it more than doubled the length of the lines, and in charging, which was an essential part of the system, it gave more facility to get through the obstacles which an action in the woods presented."

A system was also developed whereby, in case the Indians attempted to flank the enemy, they were met by a succession of fresh troops coming from the rear to extend the lines. When encamped, the troops were to assume the form of a hollow square, with the baggage and cavalry, and sometimes the light infantry and riflemen, in the center. A rampart of logs was to be placed around the camp, to prevent a sudden night attack, and to give the troops time to get under arms, but this rampart was not intended as a means of defense in daylight. "To defeat Indians by regular troops, the charge must be relied upon; the fatality of a contest at long shot, with their accurate aim and facility of covering themselves, was mournfully exhibited in the defeats of Braddock and St. Clair. General Wayne used no patrols, no picket guards. In Indian warfare they would always be cut off; and if that were not the case, they would afford no additional security to the army, as Indians do not require roads to enable them to advance upon an enemy. For the same reason (that they would be killed or taken), patrols were rejected, and reliance for safety was entirely placed upon keeping the army always ready for action. In connection with this system for constant preparation, there was only a chain of sentinels around the camps, furnished by the camp guards, who were placed within supporting distance."

The outline and adoption of this system of tactics shows that both Washington and Anthony Wayne were fully aware of the dangerous nature of their savage adversaries; that they had a wholesome respect for both their woodcraft and military discipline, and that they regarded the conquest of the western wilderness as a task requiring great circumspection and military genius.

CHAPTER VII

REAL SAVAGES

– The savage painted in his true colors from the standpoint of the frontiersman.

The poets and philosophers who dwelt in security far from the frontier posts of danger, have been much disposed in the past to extol the virtues of the savage and bewail his misfortunes, at the expense of the rugged pioneer who had to face his tomahawk and furnish victims for his mad vengeance. They went into rhapsodies when speaking of the "poor Indian," assuming that in his primitive state, before he was corrupted by contact with the manners and customs of the white man, he represented all that was pure, good and simple, and that only after the European came, did this child of nature take on that ferocity and savagery that made his name the terror of the wilderness. They said that he was cruelly and unjustly despoiled of his lands and possessions; driven like a wild beast before the face of the settlements, and by fraud and force deprived of every right that he had enjoyed. These philosophers, while thus impeaching civilization, were always ready to condemn what they termed as the "rude frontiersmen," the men who originally made it possible that the land might be inhabited, the soil brought to a state of cultivation, and the arts and sciences brought to bear upon the wild forces of nature. They were especially severe in their animadversions upon the Kentuckians. They denounced their raids upon the Indian towns and villages along the Scioto and the Wabash as barbarous and uncalled for. They pointed to the fact that the Kentuckians pursued the Indians with a fierce and relentless hatred, using the scalping knife, and burning down their cabins and corn fields, forgetting at the same time the thousands of Kentuckians cruelly slain, the carrying away into captivity of pregnant women and innocent children, and the horrible tortures ofttimes inflicted on the aged and the helpless.

It must never be forgotten that despite his stoicism in facing danger, his skill in battle, his power to endure privation, and his undoubted valor and bravery, that the Indian was a savage, and entertained the thoughts of a savage. Toward those who, like the French, pampered his appetites and indulged his passions to secure his trade, he entertained no malice. The lazy, fiddling Canadians who dwelt in Kaskaskia and Vincennes, had no ambition to absorb the soil or build up a great commonwealth. The little land they required to raise their corn, their vines and their onions on, aroused no savage jealousies. But from the first moment that the Americans came through the gaps and passes of the Blue Ridge, and swept down the waters of the Ohio, with their women and children, their horses and cattle, the savage scented danger. These men were not traders; they came to set up their cabins and to build homes. The wild dwellers in the wilderness must be tamed or swept back. Conflict was inevitable; war certain. On the one hand was a grim determination to advance civilization; on the other, just as grim a determination to resist it. The savage, employing the same arts in his wars with the white man as he did in his wars with his fellow savage, used stealth and cunning, the ambuscade, the scalping knife, and the tomahawk, and tortured his victims at the stake. A terrible hatred was engendered, that meant death and extermination. In the sanguinary struggles that followed, many outrages were no doubt perpetrated by lawless white men upon the Indians. Such men as Lewis Wetzel are no credit to a race. But there is no sufficient ground either for the exaltation of the savage, or the condemnation of men like Boone, Kenton, Hardin and Scott, who stoutly fought in the vanguard of civilization. It was a war for supremacy between white man and red, and the fittest survived. The wild hunters of the forest and river, gave way to farmers and woodsmen, who made the clearings, built their cabins, and laid the foundation for the future greatness of the west. The passing of the tribes was a tragedy, but it would have been a deeper tragedy still, had savagery prevailed.

Among the Indians of the northwest there was one tribe that attained a considerable fame. In all their forays into Kentucky and Virginia the Wyandots fought with the most fearless bravery and the most disciplined skill. Their conduct at the battle of Estel's Station met with many words of praise from Mann Butler, the Kentucky historian. It was well known among the settlements that the Wyandots treated their captives with consideration, and that they seldom resorted to torture by fire. Though few in numbers, they acquired the acknowledged supremacy in the confederation of the northwest, were intrusted by Wayne at the treaty of Greenville with the custody of the great belt, the symbol of peace and union, and were given the principal copy of the treaty of peace. Between the Wyandot and the Ottawa, however, and the Wyandot and the Potawatomi, there was a striking divergence. If the Wyandot represented the highest order of intelligence among the savages of the northwest, the Potawatomi represented one of the lowest. He was dark, cruel, treacherous and unattractive, and proved a willing tool for murder and assassination in the hands of the English. There was no place on earth for the chivalrous Kentuckian and the treacherous Potawatomi to dwell in peace together, and the imparting of some idea of the true nature of this Indian will now engage our attention.

When the Dutchman put flint-locks and powder into the hands of the Iroquois, one of the tribes that he drove around the head of the great lakes was the Potawatomi. Where did they come from? The Jesuit Relation says, from the western shores of Lake Huron, and the Jesuit Fathers knew more about the Algonquin tribes of Canada and the west than all others. All accounts confirm that they were of the same family as the Chippewas and Ottawas. From the head of Lakes Huron and Michigan they were forced to the west and then driven to the south. In 1670 it is known that a portion of them were on the islands in the mouth of Green bay. They were then moving southward, probably impelled by the fierce fighting Sioux, whom Colonel Roosevelt so appropriately named the "horse Indians," of the west. At the close of the seventeenth century they were on the Milwaukee river, in the vicinity of Chicago, and on the St. Joseph river in southern Michigan. They had gone entirely around the northern, western and southern sides of Lake Michigan, and were now headed in the direction of their original habitations.

According to Hiram W. Beckwith, the Potawatomi were the most populous tribe between the lakes and the Ohio, the Wabash and the Mississippi. Their debouch upon the plains of the Illinois has already been mentioned. This was about the year 1765. The confederacy among them, the Kickapoos and the Sacs and Foxes, resulted in the extermination of the old Illinois tribes, and after that extermination, the Kickapoos took possession of the country around Peoria and along the Vermilion river, the Potawatomi of eastern and northern Illinois, while the Sacs and Foxes went farther to the west. After the treaty of Greenville in 1795, the Potawatomi rapidly absorbed the ancient domain of the Miamis in northern Indiana, swiftly pressing them back to the Wabash, and usurping the major portion of the small lake region in the north end of the state. They had now become so haughty and insolent in their conduct as to refer to the Miamis as "their younger brothers," and the Miamis, by reason of their long wars, their commingling with the traders, and their acquisition of degenerate habits, were unable to drive them back. In 1810 and 1811, Tecumseh and the one-eyed Prophet were eagerly seeking an alliance with their treacherous chiefs. A demand was made upon Tecumseh for the surrender of certain Potawatomi murderers and horse thieves who had invaded the Missouri region and committed depredations, but Tecumseh replied that he was unable to apprehend them, and that they had escaped to the Illinois country. The Potawatomi were now living in mixed villages west of the present sites of Logansport and Lafayette, and the southern limits of their domain extended as far down the Wabash as the outlet of Pine creek across the river from the present city of Attica.

The Potawatomi loved the remoteness and seclusion of the great prairie, and many of their divisions have been known as the "prairie" tribes. They seem to have lived for the most part in separate, roving bands, which divided "according to the abundance or scarcity of game, or the emergencies of war." Encouraged by the English, they joined in the terrible expeditions of the Shawnees and Miamis against the keel-boats on the Ohio, and against the settlements of Kentucky. They were inveterate horse-thieves. Riding for long distances across plain and prairie, through forests and across rivers, they suddenly swooped down on some isolated frontier cabin, perhaps murdering its helpless and defenseless inmates, taking away a child or a young girl, killing cattle or riding away the horses and disappearing in the wilderness as suddenly as they emerged from it. In the later days of Tecumseh's time, these parties of marauders generally consisted of from four or five, to twenty. They were still striking the white settlements of Kentucky, and even penetrated as far west as the outposts on the Missouri river. Their retreat after attack was made with the swiftness of the wind. Pursuit, if not made immediately, was futile. Traveling day and night, the murderous riders were lost in the great prairies and wildernesses of the north, and the Prophet was a sure protector. The savage chief, Turkey Foot, for whom two groves were named, in Benton and Newton Counties, Indiana, stealing horses in far away Missouri, murdered three or four of his pursuers and made good his escape to the great plains and swamps between the Wabash and Lake Michigan.

There was nothing romantic about the Potawatomi. They were real savages, and known to the French-Canadians as "Les Poux," or those who have lice, from which it may be inferred that they were not generally of cleanly habits. In general appearance they did not compare favorably with the Kickapoos of the Vermilion river. The Kickapoo warriors were generally tall and sinewy, while the Potawatomi were shorter and more thickly set, very dark and squalid. Numbers of the women of the Kickapoos were described as being lithe, "and many of them by no means lacking in beauty." The Potawatomi women were inclined to greasiness and obesity. The Potawatomi had little regard for their women. Polygamy was common among them when visited by the early missionaries. The warriors were always gamblers, playing heavily at their moccasin games and lacrosse.

Nothing, however, revealed their savage nature so well as their rapid decline under the influence of whiskey. As we shall see hereafter, one of the great motives that impelled their attacks on the flat boats of the Ohio river, was their desire not only for plunder, but for rum. The boats generally contained a liberal supply. Nothing was more common than drunkenness after the greedy and avaricious traders of the Wabash got into their midst and bartered them brandy for their most valuable peltries. Potawatomi were found camping about Vincennes in great numbers and trading everything of value for liquor. In General Harrison's day, he endeavored time and time again to stop this nefarious traffic. On all occasions when treaties were to be made, or council fires kindled, he issued proclamations prohibiting the sale of liquor to the Indians. These proclamations were inserted in the Western Sun, at Vincennes, on more than one occasion, but they were unavailing. The temptation of a huge profit was too strong. Carousals and orgies took place when the Indians were under the influence of "fire-water." Fights and murders were frequent. At the last, whiskey destroyed the last vestige of virtue in their women, and valor in their warriors.

After the crushing of the Prophet in 1811, and the destruction of British influence in the northwest, consequent upon the war of 1812, the decline of the Potawatomi was swift and appalling. The terrible ravages of "fire-water" played no inconsiderable part. Many of their principal chieftains became notorious drunkards reeling along the streets of frontier posts and towns and boasting of their former prowess. Even the renowned Topenebee, the last principal chief of the tribe of the river St. Joseph was no exception. Reproached by General Lewis Cass, because he did not remain sober and care for his people, he answered: "Father, we do not care for the land, nor the money, nor the goods; what we want is whiskey! Give us whiskey!" The example set by the chiefs was not neglected by their followers.

Nothing can better illustrate the shocking savagery and depravity of some of their last chieftains, after the tribe had been contaminated by the effect of strong liquors, than the story of Wabunsee, principal war chief of the prairie band of Potawatomi residing on the Kankakee river in Illinois, and in his early days one of the renowned and daring warriors of his tribe. When General Harrison marched with his regulars and Indiana and Kentucky militia, on the way to the battlefield of Tippecanoe, he ascended the Wabash river, erecting Fort Harrison, near the present site of Terre Haute, and christening it on Sunday, the 27th day of October, 1811. From here, the army marched up the east bank of the river, crossing the deep water near the present site of Montezuma, Indiana, and erecting a block house on the west bank, about three miles below the mouth of the Vermilion river, for a base of supplies. Corn and provisions for the army were taken in boats and pirogues from Fort Harrison up the river, and unloaded at this block house. On Saturday, the 2nd day of November, John Tipton recorded in his diary that, "this evening a man came from the Garrison (Fort Harrison) said last night his boat was fired on – one man that was asleep killed dead." Beckwith records that the dare-devil "Wabunsee, the Looking-Glass, principal war chief of the prairie bands of Potawatomis, residing on the Kankakee river, in Illinois, distinguished himself, the last of October, 1811, by leaping aboard of one of Governor Harrison's supply boats, loaded with corn, as it was ascending the Wabash, five miles above Terre Haute, and killing a man, and making his escape ashore without injury." Allowing a slight discrepancy in dates, this was probably the same incident referred to by John Tipton, and taking into consideration that the boats were probably guarded by armed men, this was certainly a daring and adventurous feat.

Yet it is recorded of this chief, that he always carried about with him two scalps in a buckskin pouch, "taken from the heads of soldiers in the war of 1812, and when under the influence of liquor he would exhibit them, going through the motions of obtaining those trophies." Schoolcraft, whose attention was especially drawn towards this chieftain on account of his drunken ferocity, and who paints him as one of the worst of many bad savages of his day, says: "He often freely indulged in liquor; and when excited, exhibited the flushed visage of a demon. On one occasion, two of his wives, or rather female slaves, had a dispute. One of them went, in her excited state of feeling, to Wabunsee, and told him that the other ill-treated his children. He ordered the accused to come before him. He told her to lie down on her back on the ground. He then directed the other (her accuser) to take a tomahawk and dispatch her. She instantly split open her skull. "There," said the savage, "let the crows eat her." He left her unburied, but was afterwards persuaded to direct the murderess to bury her. She dug the grave so shallow, that the wolves pulled out her body that night, and partly devoured it."

The cold, cruel treachery of this tribe is without a parallel, save in the single instance of the Shawnees. It has been admitted by Shaubena, one of their best chiefs, that most of the depredations on the frontier settlements in Illinois during the Black Hawk war, were committed by the Potawatomi. The cowardly and brutal massacre at Chicago, August 15, 1812, was the work principally of the Potawatomi, "and their several bands from the Illinois and Kankakee rivers; those from the St. Joseph of the lake, and the St. Joseph of the Maumee, and those of the Wabash and its tributaries were all represented in the despicable act." In that massacre, Captain William Wells, the brother-in-law of Little Turtle, was killed when he was trying to protect the soldiers and refugees. He was discovered afterwards, terribly mutilated. His body lay in one place, his head in another, while his arms and legs were scattered about over the prairie. The warriors of this tribe, stripped to the skin, except breech-cloth and moccasins, and with bodies painted with red stripes, went into battle with the rage of mad-men and demons and committed every excess known to human cruelty.

Looking at the Potawatomi in the true light, and stripped of all that false coloring with which he has been painted, and the facts remains that he was every inch a wild and untamed barbarian. And while we must admire him for his native strength, his wonderful endurance through the famine and cold of the northern winters, and his agility and ingenuity in the chase or on the warpath, it is not any wonder that the children of that time, as Judge James Hall relates, "learned to hate the Indian and to speak of him as an enemy. From the cradle they listened continually to horrid tales of savage violence, and became familiar with narratives of aboriginal cunning and ferocity." Nor is it any wonder that when General Harrison crossed the Wabash at Montezuma and gave an order to the advance guard to shoot every Indian at sight, that the rough frontiersman, John Tipton, entered in his diary, "Fine News!"

CHAPTER VIII

OUR INDIAN POLICY

– The Indian right of occupancy recognized through the liberal policy of Washington and Jefferson.

By the terms of the definitive treaty of 1783, concluding the war of the revolution the territory northwest of the river Ohio passed forever from the jurisdiction of the British government, over to the new born states of the United States. By the first article of that treaty, the thirteen former colonies were acknowledged to be free, sovereign and independent powers, and Great Britain not only relinquished all her rights to the government, but to the "proprietary and territorial rights of the same, and every part thereof." At the time of that treaty, the northwest territory was occupied by a number of powerful and warlike tribes of savages, yet no reservation of any kind was made in their favor by the English negotiators. The Iroquois confederacy of New York, and more particularly the Mohawks, had stood out stoutly on the side of the king, but they were wholly forgotten in the articles of peace. Of this action, Joseph Brant, the Mohawk leader, in his communications with Lord Sidney, in 1786, most bitterly complained, expressing his astonishment "that such firm friends and allies could be so neglected by a nation remarkable for its honor and glory." Yet if Brant had been better acquainted with the policy and usage of European nations, he would have known that England had granted away not only the sovereignty, but the very soil of the territory itself, subject only to the Indian rights of occupancy. In all the ancient grants of the crown to the duke of York, Lord Clarendon and others, there passed "the soil as well as the right of dominion to the grantee." France, while adopting a liberal policy toward the savages of the new world, claimed the absolute right of ownership to the land, based on first discovery. Spain maintained a like claim. The war for supremacy in the Saint Lawrence, the Mississippi and the Ohio valleys between Great Britain and France, terminating in the peace of 1763, was a war waged for the control of lands and territory, notwithstanding the occupancy of the Indian tribes. If a country acquired either by conquest or prior discovery, is filled with a people attached to the soil, and having fixed pursuits and habitations, the opinion of mankind would seem to require that the lands and possessions of the occupants should not be disturbed, but if the domain discovered or conquered is filled with a race of savages who make no use of the land, save for the purpose of hunting over it, a different solution must of necessity result. There can be no admixture of races where the one is civilized and the other barbarous. The barbarian must either lose his savagery and be assimilated, or he must recede. The North American Indian was not only brave, but fierce. In the wilds and fastnesses of his native land, he refused to become either a subject or a slave. No law of the European could be formulated for his control; he obeyed only the laws of nature under which he roamed in freedom. He knew nothing of fee or seisin, or the laws of conveyancing, as his white brother knew it. He knew only that the rivers and the forests were there, and that he gained his subsistence from them. With him, the strongest and the fiercest had the right to rule; the right to hunt the buffalo and elk. The European put fire arms into the hands of the Iroquois warrior, and that warrior at once made himself master of all north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, without regard to the prior claims of other tribes. To expect that a savage of this nature could be dealt with under the ordinary forms and conventions of organized society, was to expect the impossible. To him, the appearance of a surveyor or a log cabin was an immediate challenge to his possession. Today he might be brought to make a treaty, but on the morrow he was filled with a jealous hate again, and was ready to burn and destroy. On the other hand, to leave him in the full possession of his country was, as Chief Justice Marshall said: "To leave the country a wilderness." To stop on the borderland of savagery and advance no further, meant the retrogression of civilization. The European idea of ownership was founded on user. The inevitable consequence was, that the conqueror or discoverer in the new world claimed the ultimate fee in the soil, and the tribes receding, as they inevitably did, this fee ripened into present enjoyment. When Great Britain, therefore, owing to the conquests of George Rogers Clark, surrendered up to the United States her jurisdiction and control over the territory north and west of the Ohio river, she did, according to the precedent and usage established by all the civilized nations of that day, pass to her grantee or grantees, the ultimate absolute title to the land itself, notwithstanding its savage occupants, and the right to deal with these occupants thenceforward became a part of the domestic policy of the new republic, with which England and her agents had nothing to do. "It has never been doubted," says Chief Justice Marshall, "that either the United States, or the several states, had a clear title to all the lands within the boundary lines described in the treaty, subject only, to the Indian right of occupancy, and that the exclusive power to extinguish that right was vested in that government which might constitutionally exercise it." These facts should be kept in mind when one comes to consider the equivocal course that England afterwards pursued.

But how were the savage wards occupying these lands, and thus suddenly coming under the guardianship of the republic, to be dealt with? Were they to be evicted by force and arms, and their possessory rights entirely disregarded, or were their claims as occupants to be gradually and legitimately extinguished by treaty and purchase, as the frontiers of the white man advanced? In other words, was the seisin in fee on the part of the states, or the United States, to be at once asserted and enforced, to the absolute and immediate exclusion of the tribes from the lands they occupied, or was a policy of justice and equity to prevail, and the ultimate right to the soil set up, only after the most diligent effort to ameliorate the condition of the dependent red man had been employed? The answer to this question had soon to be formulated, for on March 1st, 1784, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee and James Monroe, delegates in the Continental Congress on the part of the State of Virginia, in pursuance of the magnanimous policy of her statesmen, executed a deed of cession to the United States, of all her claim and right to the territory northwest of the Ohio, the same to be used as a common fund "for the use and benefit of such of the United States as have become, or shall become, members of the confederation or federal alliance of the states." The only reservations made were of a tract of land not to exceed one hundred and fifty thousand acres to be allowed and granted to General George Rogers Clark, his officers and soldiers, who had conquered Kaskaskia, Vincennes, and the western British posts under the authority of Virginia, said tract being afterwards located on the Indiana side of the Ohio, adjacent to the falls of that river, and known as the "Illinois Grant," and a further tract to be laid off between the rivers Scioto and Little Miami, in case certain lands reserved to the continental troops of Virginia upon the waters of the Cumberland, "should, from the North Carolina line, bearing in further upon the Cumberland lands than was expected," prove to be deficient for that purpose. The cession of Virginia was preceded by that of New York on the first day of March, 1781, and followed by that of Massachusetts, on the 19th day of April, 1785, and that of Connecticut on the 14th of September, 1786, and thus the immense domain now comprising the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, with the exception of the reservations of Virginia, and a small reservation of the state of Connecticut in northeastern Ohio, passed over to the general government, before the adoption of the federal constitution, and before George Washington, the first president of the United States, was sworn into office, on the 30th day of April, 1789.

But the wisdom and the broad national views of the leading Virginia law-makers and statesmen, had already, in great measure, pointed the way to the Indian policy to be pursued by Washington and his successors. No state, either under the old confederation or the new constitution, presented such a formidable array of talent and statecraft as Virginia. Washington, Jefferson, John Marshall, and Madison, stood pre-eminent, but there was also Edmund Randolph, Patrick Henry, James Monroe, George Mason, William Grayson and Richard Henry Lee.