Battle of the Wabash, November 4, 1791

This battle, also known as St. Clair's defeat, after the disgraced American commander, marked the largest and most decisive defeat of U.S. forces by Natives.  It took placed on November 4, 1791, near the headwaters of the Wabash River, where Fort Recovery, Ohio now stands. 

First, the background.  Following the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the British were mandated to leave the Northwest Territory, the area that comprises the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois.  They had ignored this treaty provision.  British leaders hoped to create a Native buffer state of the region, by eventually convincing the United States to give up its claims so that Natives could live there.  This was the first attempt at creating an Indian Territory, but those plans came to not.  Before the Revolution and continuing thereafter, states along the eastern seaboard laid claims to portions of this territory.  So, too, did hundred of Settlers who'd simply squatted on the land and farmed it under the idea that possession is 9/10th of the law.  The federal government, deeply in debt after the Revolution, decided to reclaim the land and sell it to Settlers willing to pay hard money.  To do so, it needed to drive the British, Natives and squatters off the land.  As this process started, matters became more hostile on the frontier, with federal troops, state militias, bands of squatters and bands of Natives all taking reprisals against each other.  The British did not actively join these skirmishes.  They were content to do what they had always done, supply arms and whiskey to the Natives and let them do the fighting. 

Meanwhile, Native leaders tried to work through the mess.  Men such as the Lenape leader White Eyes hoped to work a deal with the Government to allow the Natives to stay in the Ohio Territory.  One such effort, the Treaty of Fort Pitt of 1778, was signed but never ratified and we've seen the tragic consequences already with the assassination of White Eyes and the Massacre at Gnadenhutten.  Other Native leaders, primarily Buckongahelas of the Delaware/Lenape, Blue Jacket of the Shawnee, and Little Turtle of the Miami, believed that the only course open to them was to keep fighting.  The Washington Administration sent against these experienced leaders two men with mixed record, Brigadier General Josiah Harmer and Major General Arthur St. Clair.  Harmer was from Philadelphia and had served honorably throughout the Revolution as a regimental and brigade commander.  St. Clair was from Scotland, had been in the British Army during the Seven Years War (1755-1762), immigrated to America and was in the Continental Army during the Revolution.  The Dictionary of Military Biography assesses him as a decent commander at the brigade level, but lacking the initiative and imagination for higher levels of command.  Initiative and imagination were just the qualities needed in fighting wily Native commanders, who Whites seemed to underestimate again and again.

First it was Harmer's turn.   On October 22, 1790, he and a force of nearly fourteen hundred men met up with a force of eleven hundred warriors led by Little Turtle.  Harmer underestimated the size of the Native force and sent only a portion of his army out to meet the Natives.  When the commander on the ground realized his situation, he requested reinforcement from Harmer, who instead took up a defensive position with his remaining men, ready in case the larger Native force decided to attack him.  Hardin was later court-martialed and white-washed for the affair.  Washington then ordered St. Clair, who was serving as Governor of the Northwest Territory, to mount a larger effort.  

St. Clair's advance was a lesson in Murphy's law.  Everything that could go wrong, did.  Washington was adamant that St. Clair move in the summer months and join battle with the Natives before winter set in.  St. Clair's expedition dithered at Fort Washington, now Cincinnati, Ohio and didn't start moving until October, 1791.  Poorly supplied, with untrained militia, and poor logistics plagued its march.  St. Clair planned to attack the Miami capital at Kekionga, near Fort Wayne, IN.  He had a paper strength of 2000 men, but an actual strength of about 1400, which eventually dwindled to 1100, bogged down by camp followers such as laundresses, the wives and families of the men, and other non-combatants.  Meanwhile, the Miami leader Little Turtle had no intention of allowing St. Clair to reach Kekionga.  He mustered his warriors and summoned his allies, Buckongahelas and Blue Jacket.  Indian forces numbered eleven hundred.  There was no evidence of desertion or lack of discipline in these ranks. 

On the evening of November 3, 1791, St. Clair's force made camp on a high hill near present-day Fort Recovery.  The next morning, as per usual, they stacked arms and paraded to morning mess.  The Native command team commenced battle.  Little Turtle directed his attacks at the inexperienced militia, who were without their weapons.  They fled.  Regular troops were able to grab their weapons and form lines, temporarily halting the Natives' advance, but not for long.  Little Turtle ordered his warriors to flank the Regulars before the artillery on a nearby hill could begin firing.  Native marksmen trained their weapons on the gun crews, and the survivors spiked the weapons and fled.  An American colonel ordered his men to fix bayonets and attack the Natives.  They fled into the woods, encircled the pursuing Regulars and destroyed them.  St. Clair scraped his surviving men together and tried another bayonet charge, intending to break out and head for nearby Fort Jefferson.  Natives pursued the harried Americans for three miles before leaving off pursuit and returning to loot the deserted American camp.  Native losses were about 61 killed/wounded.  American losses were 933, not including any women or children still left at the camp. 

After the battle, the Natives had other concerns.  The last few harvests had been poor, and the warriors needed to hunt before deep winter set in.  They postponed their decision on how to follow up this great victory till the following year.  The British hoped to present their idea of an Indian buffer state to the Americans, but war with France in the wake of the French Revolution back-burnered that idea.  Meanwhile, the Americans went into damage control mode with their public.  While St. Clair and other commanders moved troops and supplied around to buttress the territory against further attacks, George Washington was furious.  He ordered St. Clair back to Philadelphia to answer to him personally.  When St. Clair asked for a court-martial, Washington denied that and cashiered him on the spot, ending his military career.  The House of Representatives ordered a Congressional Investigation, the first Special Committee investigation in the nation's history.  Washington was furious at the intrusion of the House into what he considered his prerogative as Commander in Chief and called a meeting of all his department heads, making this the first Cabinet/National Security meeting.  They agreed that the correspondence and memos between Washington, Secretary of War Henry Knox and St. Clair would not be turned over to Congress, the first exercise of Executive Privilege.  Congress found that the disaster was more due to the War Department's failure to supply St. Clair than to St. Clair's actions on the field, but the report was never voted out of committee.

Meanwhile, Washington said that he believed the United States was in a state of total war with the Natives and he determined not to be caught offguard again.  He began plans to beef up the army on the frontier and bring in more trustworthy commanders, such as Mad Anthony Wayne.  The Natives had won a spectacular success, but Washington and his new commanders were determined that it would be the last

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