The frontier is inextricably tied to the early development of the United States under its 1789 Constitution. In The Treaty of Paris ending the Revolution, Britain legally ceded its territories north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi Rivers up to the borders of Canada to the United States—the very same territory it had claimed from France at the end of the Seven Years War. While European states might redraw borders, they did not consult the people actually living in the area. Congress proclaimed the area the Northwest Territory and in the following years, native people, particularly the Native nations living in modern Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan fought a lengthy war with the new Unites States, inflicting one of its worst defeats on the United States Army and coming closer than any other Native American coalition to halting, or at least slowing, the spread of white society beyond the Appalachians.
Steven P. Locke, in his new book, War Along the Wabash, chronicles the first major campaign of the United States Army in what has become known as the War of the Northwest Territory. In 1791, frustrated by Indian attacks on frontier settlements that had not stopped after the American Revolution, Congress authorized the Washington Administration to raise an army and conduct a campaign against the Ohio Indians, the Miami, Seneca/Cayuga, Shawnee, Wyandot, Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Delaware. Major General Arthur St. Clair, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, was Governor of the Northwest Territory and took personal command of the army created for the campaign. His objective was simple enough, to launch his army from Fort Washington in modern Cincinnati to Kekionga, a cluster of Native American villages at the portage between the Maumee and Wabash Rivers in modern Fort Wayne. Presumably, Americans ensconced in such a fort would be able to readily overawe the local tribes in their homes, force a Native American recognition of American “ownership” of the Ohio Country, and stop Indian raids along and across the Ohio River. St. Clair received command on March 4, 1791 and was expected to march out of Fort Washington by July 10, hardly sufficient time to recruit, organize, train, and equip an army large enough for the task before him, particularly on the sparsely populated frontier. Federal troops and supplies had to come all the way from the east coast by way of Pittsburgh and the Ohio River, while Kentucky provided militia and filled out some provisional levies.
Despite his intimate experience with the connection between military operations and logistical support, Secretary of War Henry Knox pressed St. Clair all summer to get his troops moving. St. Clair, of course, could not. The Americans had already launched mounted raids into Native American territory, which generally resulted in burned villages and despoiled crops. According to Locke, the speed with which those raids proceeded highlights the cross-purposes under which St. Clair’s campaign would take place. He could either move quickly with a largely mounted force over existing trails or take a more deliberate, plodding approach through the wilderness by building a road, which necessitated infantry and engineers. St. Clair chose the latter, but the pressure from Knox and President Washington never ceased. St. Clair responded by marching the army out of Fort Washington in September and slowly moving northward, building a road, camps, and forts as it moved a little over two miles a day, even before the army had fully assembled at Fort Washington. Indeed, in the first month, St. Clair was not usually with the army, consumed by logistical duties as he shuttled back and forth from Fort Washington or Kentucky gathering supplies and militia and then moving them forward over the newly built, yet still primitive, road.
By November 3, 1791, St. Clair had rejoined his army and reached the headwaters of the Wabash River with one regular infantry regiment, two levy regiments, and assorted militia, artillery, dragoons, teamsters, and camp followers. Altogether, it was about 1,400 men. Mistakenly believing he was closer to Kekionga than was the case and that the Indians would not attack, he did not build breastworks that night, but deployed his army in two lines with some militia thrown across a creek and various outposts scattered around his position. He had detached his best federal regiment and sent it back down the trail to escort a supply train coming up to feed the army. Thus, the United States Army was at its weakest point during the campaign when the Indians of the emerging Ohio Indian Confederacy struck early the next morning.
The Confederacy force of 1,100 warriors applied traditional tactics, quickly routing the forward militia and then moving along the flanks to the rear, essentially surrounding St. Clair and then pressing ever tighter. Sniping from cover, the Indians seemed immune to American fire while inflicting heavy losses on the defenders. St. Clair launched two bayonet charges to restore his lines. As usual, the Native Americans gave way to the bayonet charges and then moved around the charging unit’s flanks as it separated from the main army, bringing each under a withering cross-fire. In a sense, St. Clair carved up his own army and dished out pieces for the Confederacy to consume. By the time St. Clair launched a third bayonet charge to clear his route of retreat, his army had collapsed. He escaped with 500 men, leaving 900 dead, dying, or wounded on the battlefield, including dozens of women and children among his camp followers. (Estimates of American losses vary widely among historians.) The disaster was worse than General Braddock’s defeat on the Monongahela in 1755, or Custer’s in 1876. War Along the Wabash is at its strongest when relating and analyzing the battle.
Locke tells the entire tale well, discusses the difficulties of raising an army from virtually nothing, includes small biographies of major “characters” as he introduces them, pays careful attention to logistics, which are often overlooked in campaign histories and were critical in the unfolding of St. Clair’s campaign, analyzes decisions and strategies, and discusses the fallout after St. Clair returned to Philadelphia to defend his decision-making. While most of the story is from the American perspective, which is better documented, Locke makes a serious effort to address Native American perspectives and experiences as they assembled and fought the American army.
All that said, he lapses into odd, avoidable errors from time to time. In my Kindle edition, Locke writes on page 397 that there were approximately 400 commissioned officers in the army (nearly 1 in 3 of the total force) at the beginning of the battle, just 150 of whom remained at the end, meaning 250 commissioned officers were killed during the battle. Yet, on page 429 he notes 69 out of 124 commissioned officers being killed or wounded during the three-hour battle. Collectively—and there are more eyebrow-raising moments—such errors or inconsistencies distract from the book’s overall strengths, which are considerable.
In 1793, during his campaign against the Ohio Indian Confederacy, Major General Anthony Wayne led his army up St. Clair’s trace and built a fort near the battlefield, identifiable by the large number of human remains and camp detritus, which he named Fort Recovery. A town, still named Fort Recovery, grew up there, and the site of the battle largely lies under Wayne Street. (Museums and parks around town commemorate both St. Clair’s defeat and Wayne’s subsequent campaign). War Along the Wabash is an excellent starting point to understand St. Clair’s campaign and the defeat that often bears his name. It will not be the last word, but it sets a high bar that future historians will have to work hard to surpass.
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 