Tag: Indiana

Tippecanoe Battlefield

On By Eric SternerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

During a recent trip following VA Militia Colonel George Rogers Clark and his Illinois Campaign, my brother and I stopped off at the Tippecanoe Battlefield Interpretive Center in the appropriately-named Battlefield, Indiana, not far from Lafayette.  The battlefield park encompasses the site of a clash between American soldiers and a multinational coalition of Native Americans led by Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, more widely known as “The Prophet.”  It is a gem of a battlefield from America’s founding era.  The Treaty of Paris ceded British “authority” over the Northwest Territory to the new United States.  Of course, it did so without consulting the Native Americans who actually lived there.  That imposition of a European concept naturally led to resistance and involved the United States in some of its earliest wars as a country, notably the War for the Northwest Territory during the Washington Administration and then Tecumseh’s resistance movement and the War of 1812, in which Native Americans in the area primarily sided with the British.  Like St. Clair’s Defeat (1791), the Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794), and the Battle on the Thames (1813), Tippecanoe (1811) became a milestone among those conflicts.  

Harrison Monument at Tippecanoe in Battlefield, IN. The hilltop stretches into the distance. Some of the trees visible were present during the battle, but are dying from the afflictions that affect aging trees.

Concerned by growing nativist sentiment and alliances among the Indians from several different tribes, Indiana Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison led nearly 1,000 infantry, militia, and cavalry north from Vincennes to a growing Indian Settlement known as Prophetstown established by the Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and the Prophet.  Expecting a parlay with Tenskwatawa on November 7, Harrison made camp on a hill near Tippecanoe creek the night of November 6, 1811.  Tecumseh, an experienced war captain and diplomat, was away from Prophetstown at the time, leaving his brother nominally in charge, although various war captains and chiefs from tribes interested in The Prophet’s message were at Prophetstown as well.  

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Hamilton Recaptures Fort Sackville: Norman MacLeod’s Campaign Journal, December 17, 1778

On By Eric SternerIn Armies, Battles, British Leadership, Emerging Revolutionary War, Militia (Patriot) Leadership, Personalities, Revolutionary War, Uncategorized2 Comments

(An occasional series highlighting British Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton’s march south from Detroit to recapture Vincennes (Indiana) on its 240th anniversary through the entries in Captain Norman MacLeod’s diary.)

Fort Sackville Map Inset, (Nova Scotia Archives and Record Management, Wikimedia Commons)
Fort Sackville Map Inset, Nova Scotia Archives and Records, (Wikimedia Commons)

As Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton’s army arrived on the lower Wabash, the river widened and deepened, enabling his much-fatigued army to spread out and make better progress to Vincennes and Fort Sackville.  All along the way, the governor’s efforts to grow his army through the addition of Indian allies had largely succeeded, not only increasing his numbers but improving his intelligence about the American forces awaiting him.  Those were paltry, indeed.

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Norman MacLeod’s Campaign Journal, November 27, 1778

On By Eric SternerIn British Leadership, Campaigns, Personalities, Uncategorized1 Comment

(An occasional series highlighting British Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton’s march south from Detroit to recapture Vincennes (Indiana) on its 240th anniversary.)

As fall progressed, cold set in and the weather began to catch up with Hamilton’s advancing army.  By November, it regularly dealt with freezing rain, snow, mud, and ice on the river and nearby trails.  MacLeod’s November 27th entry alludes to a few of those logistical challenges and the rather low opinion that the captain had of American soldiers, which began to place higher in MacLeod’s thinking as the army neared the territory so recently conquered by George Rogers Clark.

“Embarked at eight as usual, met with Great fields of ice this day But pretty good water.  So that we made us of our Oars only in two Rapids where most of the men was obliged to drag especially those in Boats because they draw more water than the Perogues, besides this the channels in the River are as if cut Purposely for no other Craft than Perogues.  We arrived at K [one or two words illegible] at 4 oClock called [sic; camped?] 10 miles from Weatono.  Us as our tents were Pitched five Savages from that Plase Arrived in camp, who acquainted us that there was no less than 200 of their nation ready to Join us the moment we arrived at the above Place.  They further told us that the Rebels had abandoned Au Post.  How true this is alittle more time we discover.  But it agrees with my own opinion for I never once thorough they would make a Stand either there or at the Illinois with So numbers especially on hearing that the Lieut. Govr. was coming who they know had all the Indians read at [hi]s call.”

William A. Evans and Elizabeth S. Sklar, eds., Detroit to Fort Sackville, 1778-1779: The Journal of Norman MacLeod, (Detroit: Friends of the Detroit Public Library/Wayne State University Press, 1978), 87.  The spelling and grammar errors are all from the original as transcribed by Evans and Sklar.  Evans and Sklar suspect “Weatono” is MacLeod’s reference to “Ouiatenon.”

Norman MacLeod’s Campaign Journal, November 7-14, 1778

On By Eric SternerIn British Leadership, Campaigns, Uncategorized1 Comment

(An occasional series highlighting British Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton’s march south from Detroit to recapture Vincennes (Indiana) on its 240th anniversary through the entries in Captain Norman MacLeod’s diary.)

Lieutenant Governor Hamilton’s army continued its progress towards Vincennes, but it was slow and backbreaking work.  Building dams to raise river levels did not work everywhere and his army often had to resort to the simple and monotonous task of unloading its vessels, dragging them through the shallows, carrying supplies forward, and then reloading boats to continue making progress the next day.  MacLeod’s diary entries for November 7th and 14th highlight the sheer fatigue involved in moving supplies on the frontier.

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Norman MacLeod’s Campaign Journal, October 31, 1778

On By Eric SternerIn British Leadership, Campaigns, Revolutionary War, Uncategorized1 Comment

(An occasional series highlighting British Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton’s march south from Detroit to recapture Vincennes (Indiana) on its 240th anniversary through the entries in Captain Norman MacLeod’s diary.)

This year marked the 240th anniversary of George Rogers Clark’s “conquest of the Illinois country” in modern-day Illinois and Indiana.  During the summer, he led a small force of Virginia militia down the Ohio River and eventually captured the towns of Vincennes in modern-day Indiana as well as Cahokia and Kaskaskia in modern-day Illinois.  The British Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, Henry Hamilton, could not abide such American audacity and set out to recapture the town of Vincennes and the British fort that had ostensibly protected it, Fort Sackville.  On his march south from Detroit, he prodded, pleaded, and encouraged Native American tribes to join his force, significantly swelling his numbers for the late-fall offensive.  By October, Hamilton’s army was regularly struggling with low water and ice on the rivers it needed to move supplies while freezing rain, snow, and falling temperatures plagued men on the march.

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Norman MacLeod’s Campaign Journal, October 13, 1778

On By Eric SternerIn British Leadership, Campaigns, Militia (Loyalist) Leadership, Personalities, Revolutionary War, Uncategorized2 Comments

Sketch of Wabash River, 1778
Sketch of the Wabash River Made During Hamilton’s 1778 Campaign (Wikimedia Commons)

In the summer of 1778, Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark of the Virginia militia launched one of the most daring American military operations of the Revolutionary War when he invaded the “Illinois country” and captured Cahokia and Kaskaskia in modern-day Illinois and Vincennes in southern Indiana, effectively neutralizing British power on the Illinois, Wabash, and Mississippi Rivers.  Henry Hamilton, Lieutenant Governor of Quebec and Britain’s Superintendent for Indian Affairs in Detroit, could not allow such audacity to succeed, lest Britain’s influence with the western Indian nations wane.  Learning of Fort Sackville’s fall at Vincennes on the Wabash River, he set out to recapture it.

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Northwest Territory: Setting a Precedent

On By Phill GreenwaltIn Emerging Revolutionary War, Memory, PoliticsLeave a comment

A precedent was set in early July for the young and aspiring American republic. A date other than July 4th and in fact, nine days and eleven years later.

July 13, 1787.

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Northwest Ordinance (courtesy of OurDocuments.gov)

On that date, the United States Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance which set in motion the precedent for how new states would enter the burgeoning United States of America. In 1784 the groundwork for the Northwest Ordinance was laid, rejecting a proposal that new territories, carved from ceded land of current states, would enter as colonies. Congress set up the following parameters.  Continue reading “Northwest Territory: Setting a Precedent” →