Historic Highways of America Volume VIII Part 3

General St. Clair left Philadelphia March 28 for the Ohio, to superintend affairs at the point of rendezvous. With "a degree of pain and difficulty that cannot well be imagined," St. Clair, already a sick man, pushed on to Pittsburg and Lexington, Kentucky, reaching Fort Was.h.i.+ngton on the fifteenth of May. One week later (May 22) General Butler reached Pittsburg, to receive the army and the stores and ammunition and hurry all on to Fort Was.h.i.+ngton. But every rod became a mile and every hundredweight a ton. It was not until the fifth of June that the troops from the East reached Fort Pitt--eight hundred and forty-two soldiers of the twelve hundred Secretary Knox had promised May 19. And yet, few as they were, no boats had been prepared to carry them south, and indeed very few in which to transport the slowly acc.u.mulating stores and ammunition. Contractor Duer and Quartermaster Samuel Hodgdon seemingly believed that barges grew on the rich banks of the Ohio and flat-boats were to be picked from the trees. The congestion of troops and stores which now resulted at Pittsburg was quite as appalling as the former scarcity of every needful thing. As rapidly as conditions permitted, General Butler wrought a certain kind of order out of the chaos, but not a kind that augured well for the future. That could hardly have been expected. In one way or another various craft were knocked together, filled, and set afloat in good hope of reaching Fort Was.h.i.+ngton. June dragged by, and July. August found Butler and Quartermaster-general Hodgdon still at Pittsburg, and it was not until the twenty-sixth of that month that the last of the army began the voyage southward--sixty precious days late.

On July 21 Secretary Knox wrote St. Clair at Fort Was.h.i.+ngton: "The president is greatly anxious that the campaign be distinguished by decisive measures." A letter of August 4 reads: "The president still continues anxious that you should, at the earliest moment, commence your operations;" and another under the date of September 1 reads: "[The president] therefore enjoins you, by every principle that is sacred, to stimulate your operations in the highest degree, and to move as rapidly as the lateness of the season, and the nature of the case will possibly admit." It is a matter of record that at the time this letter was written neither General Butler or Quartermaster-general Hodgdon had so much as reached the rendezvous. The latter's delay was never explained and General Butler was utterly dependent upon quartermaster and contractor. Butler was at last ordered to Fort Was.h.i.+ngton by Secretary Knox in the following peremptory words, which implied neglect and carelessness--a rebuke which was, perhaps, as undeserved as it was sharp: "I have received your letter of the 18th instant, which has been submitted to the President of the United States, and I am commanded to inform you that he is by no means satisfied with the long detention of the troops on the upper parts of the Ohio, which he considers unnecessary and improper. And it is his opinion, unless the highest exertions be made by all parts of the army, to repair the loss of the season, that the expenses which have been made for the campaign, will be altogether lost, and that the measures, from which so much has been expected, will issue in disgrace."[92] However the quartermaster-general had been ordered as early as June 9 to "consult Major General Butler upon all objects of the preparations and as soon as possible repair to headquarters."[93]

Yet, had the army been a.s.sembled at Fort Was.h.i.+ngton July 15 instead of September 5, there would have been no such thing as moving northward for weeks. No sooner had the first of the troops reached St. Clair than it was clear that he had made no mistake in hurrying to the point of rendezvous. For instance the carriages of the guns used in Harmar's campaign were ruined and had not been replaced. There was no corps of artificers and drafting was resorted to in order to secure smiths, carpenters, harness-makers, wheelwrights, etc. With the arrival of Major Ferguson, June 20, it became clear that nearly all the ammunition had yet to be properly prepared; a laboratory had to be built; the sh.e.l.ls had to be filled with powder, likewise the artillery cartridges, the sh.e.l.ls for howitzers and musket cartridges. Not only did enough of this work have to be done for the immediate use of the army, but a sufficient supply had to be prepared for each of the posts to be erected between Fort Was.h.i.+ngton and the Maumee, and to supply the main fort on the Maumee and its defenders until spring. The carriages of the guns that arrived from Philadelphia were rendered useless and new ones had to be made. Almost all arms which the troops brought to Fort Was.h.i.+ngton were out of repair. An armory had to be built, and, says General St. Clair, "so fast did the work of that kind increase upon our hands, that at one time it appeared as if it would never be got through with."[94]

An indeterminate amount of powder s.h.i.+pped from Philadelphia was practically ruined before it reached Fort Was.h.i.+ngton; one boatload was entirely submerged on the way from Fort Pitt. The officers attempted to keep this from the men but the news leaked out. "The powder was very bad," records Ensign Pope of the militia, "I fired at a tree several times and hit but seldom; it would not force the ball." Such of the powder as was good stood little chance of remaining so in the wretched tents that were palmed off on the quartermaster-general. Colonel Mentgetz, inspector, is our authority for the fact that, with the exception of two companies, the tents would not keep out rain at either front or back. General Harmar said the flanks of the tents were of Russian sheeting and the ends were of crocus or osnaburg and would not, in his opinion, keep out rain. According to Major Zeigler the tents were infamous and "many hundred dozen of cartridges were destroyed, and the troops, not being kept dry were sick in great numbers."[95] The packsaddles were too big--"big enough for elephants," said an officer; the axes sent from Philadelphia were useless--"would bend up like a dumpling," according to Major Zeigler. In fact Fort Was.h.i.+ngton was transformed into a manufacturing city, and there was almost no kind of work that was not done--though often the necessary tools had first to be made. Two traveling forges had been sent west of which only the anvils were missing!

It is not to be wondered that St. Clair, as General Harmar afterward said, was often the first up in the morning and went the rounds of the shops and laboratories greatly disturbed over the vast amount of work to be done, the difficulty in the doing of it, and the ominous delay. For, with the heat of the summer's end, the gra.s.s was fast withering, which meant that feed for the horses must be transported--an item of great magnitude.

The failure of the quartermaster-general to come forward, even when ordered to do so, compelled St. Clair to bear the brunt of all the results of mismanagement and delay. As noted, the delay of the quartermaster was never explained. His very appointment occasioned an outcry among officers who had known him; the soldiers laughed many of his measures to scorn. One of his employees who arrived at Fort Was.h.i.+ngton in charge of horses had, seemingly, no knowledge whatever of frontier life. The horses were not provided with hopples or bells; released from their long confinement in the barges they broke for the woods and many were never again secured. St. Clair facetiously hinted that their master would have had to wear a bell, had he gone to seek them, in order to be secure from becoming lost. It was found later that the horses had been fed, not from troughs, as ordered, but from the sandy river beach, where their grain was strewn and much wasted, the horses also injuring each other in an attempt to eat it.

But patience is exhausted before one half of the miserable story is told. More than enough has been suggested to show the condition of the "grand army" that had gathered and was now about to march northward. It is almost needless to add that an eternal jealousy between militia and regulars existed; that the troops were wretchedly clad; that nothing was known of the country through which the march was to be made, and less than nothing of the foe that was to be met and conquered. The camp of the army (except artificers) was moved by St, Clair on August 7 six miles northward from Fort Was.h.i.+ngton to Ludlow's Station,[96] where the pasturage was better and where the troops were not under the influence of the dramshops at the little settlement about the fort.

On the arrival of General Butler and Quartermaster Hodgdon, September 7, a slight delay occurred through Butler's being appointed president of a court-martial which General Harmar had demanded and by which he was honorably acquitted. It was September 17 before the advance was begun from Ludlow's Station northward.

When the army, twenty-three hundred strong, at last filed out from Ludlow's Station, the plan seems to have been to build two forts between Fort Was.h.i.+ngton and the proposed fort on the Maumee, the first at the ford, twenty-three miles north, on the Great Miami, and the second about the same distance in advance and twice as far from the Maumee.[97]

The army marched from Ludlow's Station under the command of General Butler and reached the Miami September 17. St. Clair returned to Fort Was.h.i.+ngton to hurry up the contractor's agents and muster in the militia he had called from Kentucky. From September 17 to October 4 the army was busy building a fort at "Camp Miami," which St. Clair named Fort Hamilton.[98]

On October 3 Butler made the last preparations for the march, Fort Hamilton being nearly completed. All the artillery cartridges (except sixty rounds) were distributed, and one half of the stock of musket cartridges. A body of contractor's stores was thrown across the Miami, under cover, to join the army on its march.

Concerning the route and the road, little was known. At the outset of the campaign St. Clair in his instructions was ordered "to appoint some skillful person to make actual surveys of your march, to be corrected, if the case will admit of it, by proper astronomical observations, and of all posts you may occupy."[99] The first settlers in the Miami purchase[100] had spread inland a few miles at this time; one settlement, Ludlow's Station, was made five miles up Mill Creek and another twelve miles up the Great Miami. Butler's route from Ludlow's Station to the site of Fort Hamilton was undoubtedly already an open trail that far. The day before he advanced from Fort Hamilton, Butler wrote St. Clair: "I have just received a verbal report from Captain Ginnon, the surveyor, who is returned. He has been seven miles, and says the face of the country is level but very brushy, and in his opinion it is impracticable for loaded horses to get on without a road.[101] Of this I will be a better judge as I advance and try the present order of march, &c. Should I find it impracticable to execute, I feel confident that any directions that may be necessary to facilitate the movements will meet your approval. The road is cut one and a-half miles to a good stream of water and ground to encamp on. Five miles advanced of that is a large creek, which is three feet deep at the place he crossed, but a little below is a ford, ..."

On the fourth of October, with enough provisions to last a few days, without its commander, who was at Fort Was.h.i.+ngton hurrying on three hundred militia, the army under Butler crossed the Miami River and entered the shadows of the Indian land. We have no definite record of the first days' marches. It would not seem that more than five miles a day were accomplished. The route was in alignment with the Eaton Road between Hamilton and Eaton, Preble County. Four Mile (from Hamilton) Creek--then known as Joseph's Creek--was crossed near the old "Fearnot Mill," and the first encampment was made near what was afterward known as Scott's tanyard on Seven Mile Creek--then called St. Clair's Creek.[102] The line of march was up Seven Mile Creek, west of Eaton, where the creek was forded. "The trace cannot now be definitely located," wrote a Preble County annalist, a generation ago. "It was not cut to as great width as most of the military roads, and the line has been almost wholly obscured by the growth of the forest and the action of the weather upon the soil."[103]

Narrow as the road here was, it was cut wider than St. Clair intended.

After the first day or two General Butler, as he suggested in his letter of October 3, decided that St. Clair's tri-track plan of march was impracticable, and gave orders that but one road should be cut, and that the army march in a body.

On the seventh St. Clair came hurrying on from Fort Was.h.i.+ngton to join his army. The militia had gone on on the fifth, but in bad temper.

Several deserted even upon arriving at Fort Was.h.i.+ngton. A sergeant and twenty-five men deserted on the night of the third. A score of men deserted from Fort Hamilton the night before the army marched. The anxiety of the officers, and the herculean efforts to get the army into fighting trim, had not created a very loyal spirit in the men who marched. A little more chicanery and misjudgment and the entire army would have mutinied. St. Clair, before mounting his horse, wrote Knox that his troops amounted in all to twenty-three hundred. "I trust I shall find them sufficient," he added. The words remind one of Braddock's last letter to the British Ministry before leaving Fort c.u.mberland for the death-trap on the Monongahela in 1755. Major Ebenezer Denny traveled with St. Clair as aide-de-camp and has left us the official account of the army's march. Denny was not anxious to serve.

"You must go," General Harmar declared, "some will escape and you may be among the number."[104]

St. Clair and Denny reached Fort Hamilton on the seventh, and on the day following pushed on after the army over the narrow course it had made; this was running "north sixteen degrees." Four encampments were pa.s.sed and the militia, and St. Clair reached his army that evening. There was full need of him. The army was making but five miles a day; and at that disastrously slow pace the stores were not keeping up. Tonight (the eighth) St. Clair wrote a stinging letter to Israel Ludlow. Instead of having ninety thousand rations, as was promised, St. Clair had to write "by day after tomorrow I shall not have an ounce unless some arrives....

If you found the transportation impracticable, you ought to have informed me, that I might have taken means to have got supplies forward, _or not have committed my army to the wilderness_.... No disappointment should have happened which was in the power of money to prevent; and money could certainly have prevented any here.... Want of drivers will be no excuse to a starving army and a disappointed people."[105]

Another exceedingly unfortunate affair demanded St. Clair's attention, in his opinion, that night. He had given carefully studied and explicit orders by which the army should march. As noted, General Butler changed the order of march as he threatened to do in his letter to St. Clair from Fort Hamilton. The reasons for the change did not appeal to the commander-in-chief; Butler was called to account for his action, apologized, and stated his reasons. St. Clair had ordered that the army march in three lines, contending that it was far more easy to cut three roads, ten feet in width each, than to cut one road of thirty or forty.

St. Clair's method was that pursued by the wisest and most successful generals--Forbes and Bouquet--in hewing the first roads across the Alleghenies. "The quant.i.ty of timber," St. Clair records, "increases in a surprising proportion, as the width of the road is increased;"[106]

the veteran conqueror of Fort Duquesne, General Forbes, wrote his right-hand man Colonel Bouquet under the same circ.u.mstances, urging the cutting of several paths, saying, "I don't mean here to cut down any large trees, only to clear away the Brushwood and saplins...."[107]

Temporarily, St. Clair allowed Butler's alteration to stand, but insisted that it should soon be corrected as the army pushed on.

The result was that Butler conceived an intense dislike for St. Clair.

The latter has placed it on record that, upon Butler's arrival at Fort Was.h.i.+ngton, "he was soured and disgusted, and I suppose it was occasioned by the fault that had been found with the detention of the Troops up the river;"[108] Knox's rebuke, previously quoted, would make plain the reason of any disinterest on the part of General Butler. St.

Clair's reproof here and now seemed to increase it; "from that moment,"

St. Clair said, "his coolness and distance increased, and he seldom came near me. I was concerned at it, but as I had given no cause, I could apply no cure."[109] As the half mutinous, because half fed, army blundered on, it might seem that lack of provisions was its most serious menace; yet it becomes pretty clear that the estrangement of Butler and St. Clair was even more serious.

On the ninth of October, the army pushed on nine miles, and the horses being tied up at night an eight o'clock start was achieved on the morning of the tenth, but only eight miles were traversed. At two o'clock on the afternoon of the eleventh the army drew out into the low prairie land which lies six miles south of Fort Jefferson, Darke County, Ohio, and halted for the night to search for a safe path through it. On the day after, a party led by General Butler found a "deep-beaten"

Indian trail which skirted the lower levels "avoiding the wet land," and this was followed for five and a half miles. There is no record that St.

Clair followed an Indian trail until near the center of Darke County.

The course heretofore had been run by the compa.s.s.[110]

From this night's encampment St. Clair rode forward a short mile and chose the site for the next fort on the line from the Ohio River to the Maumee. The spot chosen was near the present site of Fort Jefferson, Ohio--lat.i.tude 50 4['] 22[''] N. The work of erecting the new post was undertaken with alacrity by many of the soldiers and officers--the latter working in the mud with the men. Major Ferguson found the lack of axes a serious handicap, there being but one ax to three workmen.[111] Yet these discouragements were not as disheartening as the continual dearth of provisions. This undermined discipline, perseverance, loyalty, and honor. Desertions became more alarmingly frequent, but men who were not fed could not work and would not march.

As half-rations, and those exceedingly poor, became the necessary order of the day, the army slowly melted from under the discouraged St. Clair.

Every night found the army smaller and yet more discouraged.[112] In vain St. Clair beseeched Hodgdon to hurry on provisions.[113] But the contractor's horses were lacking and those to be had were unfit for the heavy loads bound to them.

And here at Fort Jefferson another and more pitiful estrangement between St. Clair and Butler occurred. While the fort was being erected, the latter officer came to St. Clair's tent and, in view of the slow advance of the army and the lateness of the season, asked St. Clair for a thousand picked men with permission to hurry on by a forced march to the Maumee and begin the erection of the fort there to be built. "I received the proposal," records St. Clair, "with an astonishment that, I doubt not, was depicted in my countenance, and, in truth, had liked to have laughed in his face, which he probably discovered. I composed my features, however, as well as I could, told him, though it did not appear to me, at first view, as a feasible project, nevertheless, it deserved to be considered; that I would consider it attentively, and give him an answer in the morning, which I accordingly did, with great gravity: and from that moment, his distance and reserve increased still more sensibly."[114] Butler seems to have considered himself treated with contempt in this instance. It cannot be supposed that such a brave veteran officer as Butler could have asked a thing which it was out of St. Clair's power to grant; yet from the records of the condition of affairs it is difficult to see how St. Clair could have risked dividing his army which, for the whole week following, was on half-rations, and men deserting by twos and threes and even scores every night. Pa.s.sing the question--which in no way can be decided--of the propriety of Butler's plan, the circ.u.mstance seems to have deeply embittered a brave and good man with whom Fate had been dealing most unkindly since the very beginning of the present campaign. As will be seen, it were a kindness to Butler to believe that continued untoward fortune rendered him mentally incapable of acting henceforward in a sane manner toward General St. Clair.

Explorations were carried on throughout the twenty-third and the line of march on the Indian trail, previously discovered, was renewed on the twenty-fourth; the army stumbled helplessly on to Greenville Creek, where the city of Greenville, Ohio, now stands. This small effort to advance was more than the hungry army could endure and one whole dark week was spent here waiting for provisions. The condition of army discipline was probably indescribable. The Kentuckians, who formed the large portion of the militia, were not afraid of the savages but the lack of food completely demoralized them. On the last day of October a large party numbering at least sixty deserted, and, hastening down the roadway which the army had cut, threatened to seize the provision train that was supposed to be slowly nearing the sorry army. The threat cast a gloom over the army and St. Clair was compelled to order out the First Regiment, not so much in pursuit of the deserters,[115] as for the protection of the needed provisions. The army, weakened by the absence of this regiment, marched on--following an Indian trail that ran north from Greenville on the general alignment of the present Fort Recovery Road. St. Clair states the direction of the path as "north 25 west."[116]

Added to St. Clair's many discouragements and Butler's disaffection, was physical ailment. The touch of gout experienced on the journey over the Alleghenies did not leave him. In his meager _Journal_ he records on October 24: "So ill this day that I had much difficulty in keeping with the army."[117] November dawned wet and cold but on the first his "friendly fit of gout" was growing better.

On the third of November the army made its last day's march--little dreaming that it was the last or that just ahead lay the bloodiest battlefield in American pioneer history. The Thomas Irwin ma.n.u.script, previously quoted,[118] gives us a glimpse of the day that is of singularly pathetic interest. "In the afternoon of the 3^d Something Broke which Caused a general halt Nearly one hour the Day was Cold us waggoners in front had a very handy way of making fire we made up a Large fire Several of the officers Collected around to warm themselves Gen^l St Clair was Brought and took a Seat he not Being able to walk they Discoursed on Different Subjects one was where they thought we were the general oppinion was that we had pa.s.sed over the Dividing ridge Between the Miamie waters and was then on the waters of St. Marys Col Serjant Came up at the time Stated the advance gard had Chased 4 or 5 Indians from a fire out of a thicket & got part of a venison at it he Likewise stated there had Been more Indians Seen that Day than any Day previous The General observed that he Did not think the Indians was watching the motions of the army with a view to attack them other than Steal horses or Catch a person if they had a Chance We all Coincided [?]

in that oppinion." Poor St. Clair! Was ever a general more terribly mistaken? Just beyond lay Little Turtle, now closing swiftly in on the doomed army.

"The army moved about two miles," continues Irwin, "from there Halted to Encamp at a good place But Scarce of Water an Express Came up from the advance gard give information that they had arrived at a fine running Stream of water and a good place to Encamp the army moved to S^d Creek got there a Little after Sunset. it was Between 8 & 9 oclock Before the army got fixed to Rest." Then follows the ominous sentence: "this was on the 3^d of November 1791."

Happy it is that the b.l.o.o.d.y promontory to which St. Clair's army hobbled late on that cold November night can forever bear the cheerful name which another and more successful campaigner--whose soldiers were not always half-famished--gave it. And still no thoughtful student can look upon the slow-moving Little Wabash from the present site of Fort Recovery, Ohio, without remembering that here Camp Destruction was pitched before ever Fort Recovery was erected. A fine high plateau or promontory thrusts itself out into the lower flats through which the river curves. At its extreme point the river approaches on the left and in front. On the right are extensive fields where the sunlight plays so tenderly that it is difficult to picture the rank swamp which lay there a century ago. Beyond the river, level flats extend half a mile and more to the foothills beyond.

Major Denny had accompanied the advance guard and quartermaster to this spot, and though "it was farther than could have been wished," word was sent back to the army advising that the march be continued to that point. It being "later than usual when the army reached the ground this evening," records Denny, "and the men much fatigued prevented the General from having some works of defense immediately erected." The army camped in a hollow square on the summit of the promontory; General Butler commanded the right and front and his troops under Majors Butler, Clarke, and Patterson lay in two lines along the edge of the high ground near the Wabash. The left was composed of the battalions under Bedinger and Gaither, in the first line, and Lieutenant-colonel Darke's troops in the second. "The army was Encamped in a hollow Square," says Irwin, "allong the Bank of s^d Creek perhaps 50 yards Between the Lines so that the rear Could go to the Creek for water." The militia was sent forward across the Wabash and encamped about one-fourth of a mile in the bottoms. The tired men fell to work gathering wood, and soon two rows of fires were brightly blazing in the narrow avenue between the troops of Butler on the left and Darke on the right. The rain had turned to snow. Many of the exhausted men sank instantly to sleep.

As if half conscious of the doom hanging over the army, certain of the officers were given to pondering on the number of Indians seen that day.

"Fresh signs," writes Denny, "... appeared today in several places; parties of riflemen detached after them, but without success." The Irwin MS. reads: "The advance gard Seen they Supposed about 30 Indians in the Bottom on the other Side of s^d Creek [Wabash] when they arrived at it in the Evening and had Seen Considerable Sign that Day." The premonition of disaster intensified as the camp became quiet and the blazing fires were brightly reflected in the light snow. Among certain officers the premonition took shape, and it was determined to send out a party to reconnoiter. Captain Butler at first resolved to lead the party, but soon thought it improper to leave the camp. Accordingly, Colonel Gibson went to Captain Slough of the first battalion of levies carrying a racc.o.o.n in his hand; finding Slough, he invited him to his tent to see "how to dress a rac.o.o.n Indian fas.h.i.+on."[119] Captain Butler joined them, and the three went to General Butler's tent where wine was served.

Slough agreed to go out with a party of volunteers, nominally to catch "some of the rascals who might attempt to steal horses." It is plain, whatever the officers may have given as a reason for the scouting expedition, that Slough was sent to feel of the woods--to guard against surprise. His line of men paraded in the firelight before Butler's tent before stealing out beyond the lines. Pa.s.sing Colonel Oldham's tent, Slough stopped and informed that officer of the detachment and its mission. Colonel Oldham "was lying down with his clothes on" and "requested me not to go, as he was sure my party would be cut off, for, says he, I expect the army will be attacked in the morning; I replied, that as I had received my orders I must go."

Slough led his party through the militia camp and onward about a mile on the Indian trail. Here they were divided, each party hiding on opposite sides of the path. Soon a party of Indians pa.s.sed each hiding company; one company opened fire. It was not long before the men realized that something extraordinary was on hand. A larger body of Indians soon came near Slough's band on the left of the trace, paused, and coughed as if to attract another volley, and then pa.s.sed on. The scouting party came together on the trail and agreed that an Indian army was advancing; a hurried march to camp followed. On the way "every fifteen or twenty yards we heard something moving in the woods on both sides of the path, but could not see what it was," wrote Slough. It was a thrilling moment when these men heard Little Turtle's quiet lines worming their way through the underbrush--an army making so strange a noise in the night that even frontiersmen could not recognize it. Yet an unrecognized sound brought utmost alarm; "we pushed on," said Slough, "and gained the militia camp as soon as possible."

Slough's first thought was to send word immediately to St. Clair. He hurried to Colonel Oldham's tent. "I was just going to dress myself,"

says Oldham, "and go and inform the commander in chief about it; I will thank you [Slough] to inform the general that I think the army will be attacked in the morning."

Slough hastened to General Butler's tent, but, seeing no one but the sentry, pa.s.sed on to Colonel Gibson's tent. Here he aroused Gibson and Doctor M'Croskey, and repeated his alarming story. He asked Gibson to go with him to General Butler. Colonel Gibson was not dressed, and urged Slough to go alone and arouse Butler. He obeyed, and as he returned to General Butler's tent the latter walked out of it and went to the fire.

Calling Butler aside, that the sentry should not overhear the news, "I told him what colonel Oldham had said, and that, if he thought proper, I would go and make the report to general St. Clair. He stood some time, and after a pause, thanked me for my attention and vigilance, and said, as I must be fatigued I had better go and lie down. I went from him and lay down...." It was five days before General St. Clair heard of Slough's scouting episode of the night of November 3.[120]

All that Slough and Oldham suspected was true and more. All night long the Indians crept around the army, ready for an attack at sunrise. The army began stirring at an early hour; some there were, it is sure, who anxiously awaited the dawn. The troops paraded under arms, as usual, before sunrise. Ranks had just been broken when a scattering fire was heard in the militia camp, and soon the Indian yell. The militia stood a moment and then fell back to the river, crossed it, and were upon Major Butler's and Clark's battalions, throwing the latter into a confusion that was never remedied despite the energy of those officers. The Indians were upon the heels of the militia, but were repulsed by the fire of the first line. With well-timed accuracy the Indians charged the opposite side of the square, where, too, they were at first repulsed.

The American army was now practically surrounded--the savages lying hidden in the brush, forests, and high gra.s.s on the low ground which surrounded the promontory on three sides and in front. The artillery was placed at the center of the two sides of the square and here the battle raged most fiercely. For some time, it would seem, the honors of the conflict were evenly divided. But from the position of the two armies it can readily be seen that the American fire was not so effective as that of the savages whose firmness and audacity was unparalleled. From their concealed position it required little marksmans.h.i.+p to pick men off rapidly on the high ground just beyond and hidden only by a low-lying cloud of smoke from their own guns. The officers, hurrying back and forth, offered conspicuous targets. From St. Clair (who had to be a.s.sisted to mount his horse) down, the officers were brave and efficient. As St. Clair pa.s.sed down one line, Butler pa.s.sed up the other. They never met, though St. Clair frequently asked for Butler as the battle wore away.

At last it was agreed that things were going badly and that a bayonet charge, only, would dislodge the enemy, who were rapidly cutting down the efficient strength of the army--making particular havoc among the officers. Colonel Darke was thereupon ordered to turn the left flank of the enemy, which he accomplished with firmness and success--driving the savages several hundred yards. Yet soon they swarmed back, not being held where they were, and, in turn drove the troops backward. About the cannon, which the Indians were taught to dread, the battle ebbed and flowed bloodily. As fast as the gunners were shot down others took their places. Now and again the red line swept up to the guns and the piles of slain were scalped, amid the smoke, in the very face of the army. On the left flank, too, the savages were beginning to overpower and gain the summit of the promontory and enter the lines. They were charged fiercely but after each charge there was a sudden dearth of officers, and the lines returned very thin. The army was now attacked from every side, though not until late in the long three hours of conflict did the Indians take the initiative. Their settled plan was to get the troops in range, lie low, make no noise save with their guns, retire when a.s.saulted, but follow back eagerly. Such tactics were all that were necessary. As in Braddock's battle beside the Monongahela, so here, the white army on higher ground in plain sight could not do such fatal execution, by any means, as the Indian army strewn among the standing and fallen trees, the brush and rank gra.s.ses of the lower ground, and on the sloping sides of the promontory.

By nine o'clock the army had been exposed for three hours to the merciless Indian fire. Hundreds had fallen; the ground was literally covered with dead and dying. The only question was, Could the remainder escape? The army was cut off from the road. Benjamin Van Cleve, a young man, has left record of this memorable break for the road when order to retreat was at last given: "I found," he says, "the troops pressing like a drove of bullocks to the right. I saw an officer ... with six or eight men start on a run a little to the left of where I was. I immediately ran and fell in with them. In a short distance we were so suddenly among the Indians, who were not apprised of our object, that they opened to us and ran to the right and left without firing. I think about two hundred of our men pa.s.sed through them before they fired."[121] An opening being made, the army poured heedlessly along. No order or semblance of order existed, save in a remnant of Clark's command which essayed to cover the rear. In the very rear, on a horse which could not be p.r.i.c.ked out of a walk, came St. Clair, unmindful of the b.l.o.o.d.y tumult behind him where the old men and wounded were being killed.

This awful battle was a fitting close for such a campaign. In almost every sense it was the greatest defeat suffered by white men on this continent at the hands of aborigines. St. Clair's army numbered on the eve of November 3 one thousand four hundred and eighty-six men and eighty-six officers. Of these, eight hundred and ninety men and sixteen officers were killed or wounded. The army poured back to Fort Jefferson and then on to Fort Was.h.i.+ngton. The path hewn northward became, like Braddock's Road, a route for the hordes of Indians toward the frontiers.

Their victory, so b.l.o.o.d.y, so overwhelming, gave confidence. Perhaps never before nor afterward did any battlefield present a scene equal to that Wabash slaughter field. The dying were tortured and the dead frightfully mutilated. On the theory that the army sought to conquer the Indian land, sand was crushed into the eyes of the dead in cruel mockery. Several scores of women followed the army--though contemporary records are singularly silent on this point.[122] Many of them, it is sure, fell into the hands of the savages and the first white visitors to the battleground found great stakes driven through many corpses.[123]

The two underlying causes for this terrible reverse of American arms were the long delay in getting the army on its feet, properly supplied; and the undisciplined condition of the troops. The immediate cause of the defeat was, without question, the failure of all the officers who knew of Captain Slough's discoveries on the night of November 3 to communicate them to General St. Clair. Colonel Oldham ordered Slough to St. Clair; he went only to General Butler who dismissed him without acceding to his spoken request to be allowed to take the news to the commander-in-chief. The words of the standard authority on St. Clair's defeat are perhaps severe, but no new information has come in half a century to give ground for altering them; Albach says: "The circ.u.mstances under which the omission occurred, would favor an inference that he [Butler] sacrificed the safety of the army to the gratification of his animosity against St. Clair. The evidence given before the committee of Congress is conclusive that he failed, at least to perform his whole duty in the premises."[124] Butler's side of the story could never be told; fatally wounded while heroically exhorting his men, the poor man was carried to his marquee under an oak, by his brother, Captain Edward Butler. Propped up on his mattress, a loaded revolver placed in each hand, the old veteran was left to his fate. As his friends left the tent by the rear, the Indians surged in at the front.[125]

St. Clair's road northward was the main thoroughfare to Fort Hamilton and Fort Jefferson from the Ohio and, though superseded by another route soon built parallel to it, was ever of importance in the burst of population from Pennsylvania and Kentucky into the Old Northwest. But the soldiers of St. Clair's successor were too superst.i.tious to follow that ill-starred track. And, as Forbes came successfully to Fort Duquesne over a new route built parallel to Braddock's, so the second conqueror of the Old Northwest cut a new road parallel to St. Clair's.