196

ARREST OF HAMILTON.

[CHAP. XI. ern Virginia, &c., and repel the rebels from the west. With this view, at the head of a large body of well-disciplined troops, he made his appearance in front of the garrison at Vincennes, which had also surrendered to Clark's orders, and then under the command of Captain Helm. The fort being in a miserable condition for defence, surrendered to Hamilton, but upon such terms as were highly honorable to the Virginia commandant. Clark was, of course, immediately apprized of these movements, and in the midst of winter this remarkable man started for fort St. Vincent, determined, as he expressed it, "That he would have Hamilton, or Hamilton should have him." After great labor and exposure, marching often through ice and water waist-deep, the gallant little army appeared in front of the fort, and demanded an immediate and unconditional surrender. The British governor, unwilling to risk an attack, gave up possession, and allowed himself to become a prisoner of war in the hands of Clark. The capture of Hamilton, and the destruction of British power in the valley of the Wabash, and indeed in the whole west, south of Detroit, was one of the most important achievements during the war. As already intimated, great arrangements had been made by Hamilton for the successful prosecution of a campaign against all the white settlements in the west. The southern, western and northern1 Indians had joined him, and had Clark failed to defeat Hamilton, who can doubt but that the entire west, from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, would have been swept over by the allied forces of British and Indians. But for this gallant body of imperfectly clothed and half starved Virginians, the project of Great Britain, so long one of the darling objects of her ambition, might have been carried out, and the whole current of our history changed.

1 Colonel Stone, in his life of Brandt, says, that distinguished chieftain, with his warlike Iroquois, were to have acted in concert with the southern and western Indians. Vol. i. p. 400.

1784.] RELINQUISHMENT OF INDIAN TITLE.

197

CHAPTER XII.

CLOSING MILITARY OPERATIONS IN THE WEST.

WITH this chapter we close the historical details, by bringing down the settlement of the country to 1795. Some of the chapters immediately preceding, would seem to come more appropriately under the head of PART VI., but constituting as they do, connecting links in the history and settlement of the west, it was deemed inexpedient to separate them; and thus they are given in regular historical and chronological order. That part of our work which we have distinctly classified as "Indian Wars," is designed alone to embrace the incidents of border life in Western Virginia, and the territory immediately adjacent.

By the treaty of Fort Stanwix, concluded October 22, 1784, between the United States and hostile tribes of the Iroquois,' all the claim of the great Northern Confederacy to lands lying west of the western boundary of Pennsylvania became extinguished. It now remained to treat with the Western Indians, to secure the United States' title to the great expanse of country lying west of the Iroquois pos

sessions.

The Commissioners for this purpose were Arthur Lee, Richard Butler, and George Rogers Clark. This Board organized at Fort McIntosh, (Beaver,) January 21, 1785. The Indians represented were the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippeways, and Ottoways, and of the native Commissioners there assembled to treat, was the celebrated war chief of the

1 Of the Six Nations, the Senecas, Mohawks, Onondagos, and Cayugas had joined England; but the Oneidas and Tuscaroras had not.

198

ST. CLAIR'S EXPEDITION.

[CHAP. XII. Delawares, Buckongahelas.' The third article of the treaty agreed upon defined the limits of the country ceded, as follows:

ART. 3. The boundary line between the United States and the Wyandot and Delaware nations, shall begin at the mouth of the river Cayahoga, and run thence, up the said river, to the portage between that and the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum; then, down the said branch, to the forks at the crossing place above Fort Lawrence, [Laurens;] then, westerly, to the portage of the Big Miami, which runs into the Ohio, at the mouth of which branch the fort stood which was taken by the French in one thousand seven hundred and fiftytwo; then, along the said portage, to the Great Miami or Ome river, and down the south-east side of the same to its mouth; thence, along the south shore of Lake Erie, to the mouth of Cayahoga, where it began.

Such were the first steps taken for securing to the United States the Indian title to the vast realm lying beyond the Ohio.

Hostilities still continuing on the part of the Indians, and the west having suffered greatly, Congress authorized the President, September 29, 1789, to call out the militia to protect the frontier, and break the power of the savages. On the 6th of October, President Washington directed General St. Clair, then Governor of the North-West Territory, to draw fifteen hundred men from the western counties of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and proceed directly against the towns of the hostile tribes on the Maumee. In obedience to his instructions, Governor St. Clair called upon Virginia (July 15, 1790,) for her quota, which was furnished in due time; and his army, numbering nearly twenty-four hundred men, marched from Fort Washington (Cincinnati,) in the fall of 1791. On the morning of the 4th of November, the Indians

1 We state this upon the authority of Dawson, (Life of Harrison, p. 82,) as also of Thatcher, Butler, and others.

2 According to the account of Mr. Perkins, "five hundred of the troops ordered out were directed to organize just below Wheeling." Where the point of rendezvous was, we have not been able to ascertain.

1791.]

WAYNE'S VICTORY.

199

attacked him in great force, totally routing the American army, with an immense loss of life and property. General Butler, and upward of six hundred men were killed.

This was a terrible blow to the west; and the savages, inflated with success, overspread the country, sending death into almost every settlement.

WASHINGTON, determined to subdue the savages, now urged forward the vigorous prosecution of the war; but various obstacles prevented a speedy organization of a force sufficient to strike an efficient blow. It was not until the spring of 1794, that an army, strong enough for the purpose, could be organized. This force, consisting of two thousand regular troops, and fifteen hundred mounted volunteers from Kentucky, assembled at Greenville, under the command of General Anthony Wayne, a bold, energetic and determined officer, in whom Washington reposed every confidence.

On the 20th of August, General Wayne encountered the enemy at the foot of the rapids on the Maumee, and after a short, but most deadly conflict, the Indians fled the field with great loss, and in utter confusion.

This brilliant victory brought the savages to terms, and soon after, a permanent treaty was negotiated at Greenville, between eleven of the most powerful north-western tribes, and the "thirteen fires," as these wild men called the United States. This treaty confirmed the boundary established at Fort McIntosh, and extended westward from Loramie to Fort Recovery, and thence south-west to the mouth of Kentucky river. Now terminated the long and sanguinary struggle between the whites and Indians on the western frontier, a war which had raged with almost unabated fury for more than twenty years, involving a sacrifice of life, and consequent amount of misery, scarcely to be comprehended.