1794] WAYNE'S CAMPAIGN. 413 Simcoe asked how far the military arrangements affecting Canada might be considered to be provincial in their character. * Dorchester replied that so far as the military force was concerned, operations connected with it were to be carried on in accordance with the practice followed, with the approval of the officer in chief command and under his special orders. In June, 1794, Wayne entered upon his campaign, which was to end in the total defeat of the Indians. He advanced with his main force to the scene of Saint Clair's defeat, where fort Recovery had been built. Here he was attacked by the Indians. The fight lasted two days, and his assailants were driven off, but not before they had possessed themselves of 300 pack mules, and they had attacked a provision train, to inflict a loss of fifty men upon its guard. Wayne's force was originally in excess of 2,000 men, but he had been reinforced with 1,500 volunteers from Kentucky. Thus strengthened, he moved forward with all possible haste to the Indian villages at the junction of the Glaize and the Maumee. The Indians were taken by surprise, and offered no resistance. The villages and crops were destroyed, and Wayne established a stockade fort on the ground. The Indians hastily retreated down the Maumee, and established themselves in the neighborhood of the fort held by the British. When at this spot, they received a message from Wayne, with the proposal that they should cease further resistance and enter into a treaty. They asked for ten days to consider the proposition. Wayne consequently continued his march for two days, when his scouts reported the Indians to be established in a wooded elevation, their left protected by the bank of the river. Wayne advanced with his troops disposed in order, that he might carry out the design of attacking the Indians in their position. McKee described them as numbering no more than 1,300. He estimated Wayne's force at 4,000, plainly in excess of their number. As the foremost detachment came * [3rd March.] upon the encampment, the Indians attacked it. The advance force fell back to the main body of the United States troops about a mile in its rear. The left of the United States force took ground to assail the Wyandots and Ottawas, with the design of outflanking and enfilading them. As this movement succeeded, the Indians made little resistance and fled. The whole force, in a brief time, accepted their defeat, and broke, only to make a halt at six miles distant. No attempt was made at pursuit. The loss of the Indians did not exceed nineteen, of whom ten were chiefs, eight being of the Wyandots and two of the Ottawas. The United States authorities give the loss of the United States troops at 107, killed and wounded. Simcoe represented the casualties, as officially reported, to have been 114 killed and 130 wounded. They had been subjected to a heavy loss, early in the action, from the well directed fire of the Indians. * After the action Wayne placed himself in the neighbourhood of the British fort, as if determined to attack it. It was well garrisoned and defended by cannon and protected by abatis. Wayne had no guns and was in no way provided with provisions. Indeed, he was unable to remain on the ground more than forty-eight hours, when he retreated to his [There is a passage in the "Life and Letters of the late Hon. Richard Cartwright" that I am impelled to mention. It is contained in a letter to Isaac Todd, dated Kingston, 8th of October, 1794, p. 63. Cartwright informs his correspondent that some of the Detroit militia, with Colonel Caldwell at their head, "very imprudently joined the Indians" in their action. Four were killed and several wounded,-among them, one McKillop-and Charles Smith, Clerk of the Court in Detroit. The fact is not mentioned by McKee, or by Campbell, in his confidential correspondence with his commanding officer at Detroit, Col. England, or in any letter of Simcoe. Moreover, there is not the slightest allusion to such a circumstance by Wayne or any United States writer. There was possibly some report of this character at Kingston, but it is unauthenticated, and I consider unfounded. Even if it could be shewn that white men were present in the action, they were in no way connected with the garrison, but present only in their individnal capacity to take their chance with the Indians. We know this fact by the report of the desertion of a drummer named Bevan. He is represented as having gone down to the river to wash his shirts, and, having "crept through the abatis," he got away. It is not every deserter who aids in establishing an historic fact. 1794] MAJOR CAMPBELL OF THE 24TH. 415 base. Had Wayne made an attempt upon the fort it could only have been by a coup de main, and he would have brought the Indians upon his rear. It is now known that he had strict orders to avoid everything in the form of hostility with any British garrison, and, however strong his language, he could not enforce his demand, however arrogantly worded. * He contented himself with calling upon the commander, major Campbell, of the 24th, to withdraw from the post as being within United States territory. The reply, as might have been expected, was that the post could not be abandoned until the commandant had received orders to that effect from those he served under, and there the matter rested.+ The Indians were entirely routed in the action and did not *The duke of Portland to Hammond chargé d'affaires at Philadelphia, 17th of July, 1794. [Simcoe papers, III., p. 318.] "He (Jay) gave me the most explicit assurances that general Wayne had no orders, that could authorise his attacking any of the posts held by his majesty since the peace." + These letters are given by Jacob Burnet in his "Notes on the Early Settlement of the North Western territory." New York and Cincinnati, 1847" [pp. 175-179]. They are only imperfectly known in the United States, and I believe have never been published in England. Under any aspect I consider that they should have a place in this history, and they are appended at the end of this chapter. Burnet describes the fort to have been a regular military work of great strength, in front protected by a wide river, with five guns mounted. The rear, which was most open to attack, had two regular bastions, furnished with eight pieces of artillery; the whole surrounded by a deep ditch, with horizontal pickets projecting from the parapet over the ditch. From the bottom of the ditch to the top of the parapet the height was about twenty feet perpendicular. The works were also surrounded by an abatis, and defended by a strong disciplined garrison. Nevertheless, Burnet states that Wayne manifested a strong desire to storm the fort, and it was the opinion of those who were with him that he sought to provoke the British commander to some hostile step that would have justified such a movement. These conclusions are unwarrantable. I have mentioned that Jay informed the duke of Portland that Wayne's orders debarred him from any such proceed. ing. Had he made the attempt, there were in the garrison four companies of the 24th, about 200 men, a detachment of Rangers, and some U. E. Loyalist Upper Canada militia, the whole amounting to 400 men. Wayne was without artillery, without provisions, his force lately enlisted, and imperfectly disciplined, and any offensive operations against the British garrison would have brought the Indians on his rear. The storming of such a place could only have been undertaken by a further oppose in the field the forces sent against them. The following year they made peace with Wayne by the treaty of Grenville. The boundary line assigning the limit to the Indian territory started from the Ohio, nearly opposite to the mouth of the river Kentucky, whence a line was run to fort Recovery on the sources of the Wabash, south of the 41st parallel. The line then took a due easterly course to the Cayahoga creek, the waters of which it followed to lake Erie.* This demarcation left to the Indians the southern shore of lake Erie north of this line, the valley of the Maumee river, and the peninsula of Michigan. The country north of the Ohio, south of this demarcation, was recognized as United States territory. It has been stated, even in a late work, that Simcoe was recalled owing to the complaints made by the United States government, that he had excited the western Indians to hostility. I am at a loss to know on what ground this statement has been advanced, and repeated, for it is baseless. highly disciplined body, accustomed to war. Had the attempt been made, the fate of Wayne's force would have been annihilation. His operations were accordingly limited to destroying the crops around McKee's residence. Simcoe reported to Dundas, Campbell's "most wise, firm, and temperate conduct in his very peculiar and difficult situation,” and recommended him to Dundas' attention "as worthy of his Majesty's approbation." Dorchester wrote to Simcoe that his high sense of Campbell's service should be made known to him. By a letter of Simcoe to Portland it would appear that Campbell's reward was the publication in the official gazette of an extract of the despatch of Simcoe "respecting the good conduct of lieutenant-colonel Campbell on the Miami."+ So far as I can learn, this was the sole recognition of the admirable service rendered by him; but these were the days when the British soldier "conquered in the cold shade of an aristocracy." Posterity will more worthily bear testimony to his deserts. At the mouth of this creek the important city of Cleveland in the state Ohio has been established. + [Simcoe papers, IV., p. 106, Kingston, 17th of March, 1795.] "Napoleon's troops fought in bright fields where every helmet caught some gleams of glory, but the British soldier conquered in the cold shade of an aristocracy. No honours awaited his daring, no despatch gave his name to the applauses of his contrymen, his life of danger and hardship was uncheered by hope, his death unnoticed." Napier's Peninsular War, Vol. III., p. 260, Book V., chapter III. 1794] SIMCOE'S OPINIONS. 417 It displays, moreover, a want of acquaintance with history. Simcoe remained governor of Canada to July, 1796. Jay's treaty was passed in 1794, and although signed by Washington in 1795, it continued to be a source of attack in the house of representatives during 1796. In 1794 Wayne defeated the Indians on the Miami, and peace was declared with them in 1795, after which they ceased to be actively hostile. Moreover, the United States authorities did not recognise Simcoe as holding more than a secondary position. Dorchester was the one person they regarded as possessing power. It was his address to the Miami Indians in February, 1794, that called for their remonstrances to the British minister Hammond, and excited the activity of hostile feeling, encouraged by the politicians opposed to Washington's government. The truth is, Simcoe became early discontented with his position. It is plain that he accepted office with the conviction he would have power to carry out, uncontrolled, the policy he conceived desirable. He had not taken the position from the necessity to live. He was in affluent circumstances and in a good social position. He was present in Canada from motives of patriotism, abandoning much that was agreeable in life to accept the rough existence of a governor in a newly settled colony. He had a keen sense of personal honour and a high standard of duty. With perfect singleness of purpose, he strove to establish on a sure basis the newly founded. province entrusted to him. He had formed the same opinion as had forced itself upon Dorchester: that the publicly expressed hostility to Great Britain threatened to make war inevitable. War would, in his view, have had this merit, that it would admit of a revision of the frontier, so that the possessions of the Indians could be defined and secured. Accepting the provisions of the treaty as they were, he had formed the opinion that, although they limited the geographical extent of Canada, they did not transfer the Indian possessions to the United States. He regarded the Ohio as the boundary of their hunting grounds, and he held 2B |