Wabash Cannon Ball (pages 81-102)
(page 83, par. 1, line 1) Virginian George Rogers Clark’s surprise victory at Fort Vincennes George Rogers Clark (1752-1818). is best known for the 1778 American victory at Vincennes over the British in the Illinois territory astride the upper Mississippi River. Recent biographies include Clark’s involvement on behalf of French intrigues in the West and controversies later in his life. See: Nester, William R. 2012. “I Glory in War” and Carstens, Kenneth C, and Nancy Son Carstens, The Life of George Rogers Clark, 1752–1818: Triumphs and Tragedies.
(page 84, par. 5) three broad groupings of Indians emerged in the 1780s See Calloway, Colin G, The Indian World of George Washington, p. 381. The Miami war chief Little Turtle and the Shawnee war chief Blue Jacket took a more militant stand than Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant, who was willing to compromise on the Muskingum River as the boundary between Indian and American land. Three broad tribal groupings held firm on the Ohio River as a boundary: Iroquois; Miami, Shawnees, and Kickapoos; and Chippewas (largest and most populous at 50 villages around Great Lakes), Ottawas, and Potawatomis.
(page 86, par. 2) “loose and fragile coalition of villages” Calloway, Colin G. The Victory With No Name, p. 95. “leadership, collective vision, and intertribal consensus” White, The Middle Ground, pp. 435, 441; and Eid, American Indian Military Leadership” as cited by Calloway.
(page 86, par. 5, lines 1-3) Mishikinaakwa, Little Turtle’s name in his native language Native American parents often put a great deal of thought into the names of their offspring, which might include considerations of clan identification, hereditary family roles, animal spirits of special religious significance, geographies, or iconic objects. Such names could confer a touchstone for the boy or girl’s aspirations when growing up. Their name could become their brand, to conjure a modern concept, among their tribe, other Native peoples, and even their enemies. Another layer of meaning accreted over time, when the names, often incomprehensible to pioneers and settlers in their original languages and in the absence of Native alphabets before the 19th century, were translated into English equivalents. It is by these names that most Indian leaders of history are known today outside of Native American communities, and often-times within them. For what little is known about the Turtle’s origins and naming, see: Carter, Harvey L. The Life and Times of Little Turtle, p. 42-44.
An allied chief opined with a sentiment probably identical to the opinion of Little Turtle at the time: “I do not yet see the means of obtaining peace but by war” as quoted in Calloway, Colin G. 2018. The Indian World of George Washington, Op. cit., pp. 151-152, 175. I am indebted to Prof. Calloway for his crisp description of Little Turtle, as gathered from scant primary sources, and written engagingly. The quote “obtaining peace by war” is attributed to Ottawa Chief Egushawa, who fought alongside Miami warriors as part of the Northwest Indian Federation at the Battle of the Wabash.
Little Turtle could be dramatic, even without words, when making a point in council. In an incident described by Calloway, a chief advocating a policy of accommodation to the settlers
“ceremoniously draped a large wampum belt” on Little Turtles shoulder, in a bid to share a peaceful approach. Little Turtle did not contradict any of the discussion, but rather silently allowed the white wampum belt to slide off his shoulder and fall to the ground. Carter, Territorial Papers, 2:362 Smith, St Clair Papers, 2: 95-96 as quoted by Calloway, The Victory With No Name, Op. cit., p. 98 note 12.
(page 87, pars. 3-6) Buckongahelas (Delaware/Lenape, c. 1720-1805)) See entry by John Sugden, “Buckongahelas” in ANB; and Sugden, John. Blue Jacket, Warrior of the Shawnees, pp. 25-36; Weslager, C.A. The Delaware Indians – A History; Calloway, Colin G. The Victory With No Name – The Native American Defeat of the First American Army, p. 102.
(page 88, par. 1) “They would make slaves of us if they could, but as they cannot do it, they kill us.” As quoted in Calloway, Colin G. The Indian World of George Washington, Op. cit., pp.382.
(page 88, par. 2, line 2) “the most noble in appearance of any Indian I ever saw” as quoted in Calloway, Victory with No Name, Op. cit., p. 101 and endnote 25: Quaife, The Captivity of O.M. Spencer, pp. 89-92; and Sugden, Blue Jacket, Op. cit., pp. 118-120. Blue Jacket’s legacy has been overshadowed by later fame of Little Turtle and Tecumseh.
(page 87, par. 4) [Blue Jacket] “slept in a curtained four poster bed” Calloway, Victory with No Name, Op. cit., p. 101 Captives during the Revolution. endnote 24.
(page 88, par. 5, lines 3-5) “pretend to cede to America what was not his own to give” as quoted in Calloway, Colin G. The Victory With No Name, Ibid, Ch. 13, note 5.
(page 89, par. 4, lines 7-8) joint stock enterprises like the Ohio Land Company, would pay the government large amounts of money for prime tracts and in turn make a handsome profit by retailing those lands to settlers. That rosy vision is what the land company entrepreneurs promoted to federal officials eager to reduce the national debt. After deductions for bad lands, surveying, and especially depreciation of Continental currency, the actual cost to investors such as the Ohio Land Company was 8.5 cents per acre, mere “pennies on the acre” as described by Calloway, Ibid, p. 51. Hurt, Ohio Frontier, p. 157. Linklater, Measuring America, pp 80-81, estimates that land speculators paid 12 cents per acre on average.
(page 89, par. 5, lines 7-8) “just and lawful wars authorized by Congress” Calloway, Ibid, p. 51.
(page 90, par. 4, lines 4-6) “protect the convoys of provisions from the deserters” Denny, Ebenezer. Military Journal, p. 20.
(page 91, par. 2, lines 3-5) “a horrid appearance; armed with tomahawk and scalping knife” Ibid, pp. 70-71.
(page 91, par. 4, lines 3-4) “did not allow the Seneca to revoke their approval” Ibid, p. 55.
(page 91, par. 5, line 6) “Lord knows when we’ll get rid of these creatures” Ibid, p. 76. Another labelled the Fort MacIntosh treaty proceedings as the “last act of the farce“ in Calloway, Victory With No Name, Op. cit., p. 58.
Bowes, John P. Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal. Bowes contrasts the dynamics of westward removal of lower Great Lakes Indian nations with the Cherokee experience of the 1830s. He asserts that the antecedents of removal policy preceded the formal Removal Era by decades.
See McCullough, David, Pioneers, p. 28-30, for an exposition of Manasseh Cutler’s role in passage of the Northwest Ordinance, and the document’s vision for institutionalizing the rights of individuals, supporting public education, forbidding slavery.
(page 92, par. 2, line 1) “raiding parties audaciously included the U.S. Army” Thornborough, Outpost on the Wabash, p. 174, and Calloway, Ibid, p. 60.
(page 93, par. 4, line 5) General Josiah Harmar Military superiors were concerned that Harmar was too fond of drinking to aggressively pursue the Indians. At this point they chided him gently to be moderate when imbibing “a convivial glass [of hard liquor]” Draper ms 2W:324-326 as quoted by Calloway, Ibid, p. 382.
(page 94, par. 1, lines 1-2) “visitor to Kekiongo was impressed with the extensive fields of corn, beans, and squash” Heckwilder’s description of Kekiongo. Denny, Ebenezer, Op. cit., p. 145.
(page 94, par. 4, line 7) “the next best thing to killing them” Josiah Harmar to Arthur St. Clair October 17, 1790.
(page 94, par. 5, line 4) “militia fled without firing a shot” Denny, Ebenezer, Op. cit., p. 141.
(page 95, par. 2, line 1) News of the defeat I discuss the impact of Harmar’s defeat on President George Washington and Secretary of War and Indian Affairs Henry Knox. They would need to contend with anxious settlers like those fellow Revolutionary War veteran officers recently planted at Marietta. Investors in Western lands perceived the threat not only to the lives of American settlers, but to the very rationale of their business model and its hoped-for linkage to the United States national debt. Retired General Rufus Putnam, a leader of the Ohio Land Company and prominent resident of Marietta, Ohio, wrote ruefully in January 1791 to his former comrades in arms George Washington, Henry Knox, and congressman Fisher Ames. The latter two had stakes in the Ohio Land Company:
“Our prospects are much changed… A horrid savage war stares us in the face; the Indians instead of being humbled by the destruction of the Shawnee towns and brought to beg for peace, appear determined on a general war, in which our settlements are already involved.”
Putnam demanded and pleaded for more Federal troops and a more effective campaign to quash the Indian threat,
(page 96, par. 2, lines 5-8) “render those mistaken people a great service” Fitzpatrick writings of GW, 31: 31:179-184, 197-199.
(page 96, par. 3, line 4) “send their women to fight us with sticks instead of guns” Winthrop Sargent to Arthur St. Clair, Aug 17, 1790, Ohio State Library, Arthur St. Clair Papers; Territorial Papers:301, as quoted by Calloway, Op. cit. Indian bellicosity was noted far afield, for example: “Indians in America seem to be forming a Grand League and Covenant” Times, London, Aug 22, 1791, p.2, col. 2, as quoted by Calloway, Indian World of George Washington.
(page 97, par. 4, line 5) artillerymen to attempt to desert to the enemy Denny, Ebenezer, Ibid p. 162, 163.
(page 97, par. 6, line 2) purification rites to prepare themselves Calloway, Victory with No Name, Op. cit., p. 112.
(page 98, par. 1, line 4) “can do nothing unless assisted by our Great Father above.” Calloway, Ibid, p. 113, note 75.
(page 99, par. 2) “The road for miles was covered with firelocks, cartridge boxes and regimentals.” The Indians continued killing after they achieved a complete victory. See: Calloway, Ibid, pp. 120-125. Calloway cites instances of comparable mayhem following early modern European battles. He seems to be defending the Indians’ murderous behavior at the conclusion of St. Clair’s Defeat with an argument of moral equivalence.
Aside from arguments rooted in European cultural values and the then-unwritten rules of war, I believe the excessive effusion of blood and atrocities committed on the defeated Americans constituted a grave error on the part of Northwest Indian Federation. More humane actions following their victory would have yielded many more hostages, for ransom and resulting leverage, than did the wholesale slaughter. It extinguished potential sympathy among those East Coast American thought leaders, ascribing to conceptions of the noble savage, to favor recognition of Indian territorial rights. Most damaging of all, it fed a growing anti-Indian racist belief system in the West among settlers and frontiersmen that advocated blanket dispossession of Indians and subsequent actions bordering on genocide.
An eyewitness account asserted that thew exposed skulls of scalped American dead “looked like so many pumpkins through a cornfield” as quoted by Calloway, Ibid., pp. 121-122, note 34. Jacob Fowler recalled the events 55 years later as an 82-year-old, in Howe, “St. Clair’s Defeat” in Historical Collections of Ohio, Vol. 2, 227.
(page 99, par. 2, lines 1-2) “The road for miles was covered with firelocks…” Denny, Op. cit., pp. 166-167.
(page 99, par. 3) Little Turtle called off the slaughter Calloway, Op. cit., p. 125. Some later writers credited Little Turtle with calling a halt to the slaughter as testimony to the then-famous chief’s humanity. Calloway judges this implausible.
(page 99, par. 6, lines 6-8) Captured official papers Calloway, Ibid p.125 note 51.
(page 99, par. 4, lines 1-3) Colonel Sargent, St. Clair’s chief adjutant, though himself twice wounded, “took upon himself the burden of everything, and a very troublesome task he had,” according to fellow army officer Ebenezer Denny.
Winthrop himself opined that the defeat would “blacken a full page in the future annals of America” Diary entry for Nov 4, 1791, Winthrop Sargent Papers, Boston: MHS. Boston. Congressional inquiry in American State Papers, Military Affairs I, pp. 36-39; Annals of Congress , 2nd Congress, 2nd session c. 493, 602, 877. St. Clair Papers II, pp. 286-301.
Immediately after the disaster, the twice wounded Winthrop Sargent expressed the gravity of the situation:
“[T]he fortunes of this day have been at the cruelest tempest to the interests of the country and this army, and will blacken a full page in the future annals of America… more than one-half of the army are either killed or wounded. The whole amount of our private baggage, with the artillery, military stores, provisions and horses have fallen into the hands of the enemy, and the shattered remains of our forces are coming into Fort Jefferson this evening at seven o’clock, after the precipitous flight of twenty-nine miles since nine o’clock in the morning.”
Denny bewailed that he and fellow survivors had to endure “every idea of the slaughter and defeat” Denny, Ibid, pp. 175-176. Similar sentiments are in Sargent’s diary entry for December 19, 1791.
(page 100, par. 2, line 4) [President Washington] in a rare and brief rage Calloway, Ibid, p. 140, based on Washington’s secretary Tobias Lear’s recollection. See also Chernow, Ron Washington, pp.665-668.
(page 100, par. 3, lines 4-5) “butchered with the most savage barbarity” Calloway, Ibid, note 77.
(page 101, par. 3, line 1) Influential regional Indian trader Alexander McKee (1735-1799) Indian traders like McKee and Croghan, who often were conversant in both Indian and colonial cultures, and had lived among Indians, were enormously influential at critical junctures in the history of the West. Two recent biographies of McKee: Wulff, Frederick. Alexander McKee: The Great White Elk, British Indian Agent on the Colonial Frontier; and Nelson, Larry L. A Man of Distinction among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754–1799.
(page 101, par. 6, lines 1-2) “defend ourselves to the last” Calloway, Ibid. The description of the Glaize conference succinctly summarizes its dynamics with evocative quotes. See p. 146, note 75 on Cornplanter; note 78 on Red Jacket.. Alexander McKee, an American who changed sides early in the Revolutionary War to become an active Indian and British ally, is a compelling character who figures into the Glaize conference and many other episodes in the early West. See: Nelson, Larry L. 1999. A Man of Distinction among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754–1799.