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· 106 · C H A P T E R T E N  Jacob Smith versus Louis Campau, 1815  B y October 1814, the Territorial Supreme Court was back in session and Jacob Smith served on two juries that acquitted two different men in criminal cases. That month, his mother, Elizabeth Smith, died back in Quebec. She was about 80 years old, according to church records.1 There was still a war on, however, and the United States had been faring poorly in the main theater of the conflict, back in the east. President James Madison needed his forces in the Old Northwest to conduct diversionary action to take the pressure off. At the same time, tensions were again high in Detroit because of the attacks by Indians on area residents. Even though some of the chiefs and head men of the region had agreed to a general armistice a year previously, Cass and other Americans wanted to strike back at those Indians who remained hostile. General Duncan McArthur, the latest commander of federal forces in the Old Northwest, now returned to Detroit to mount a large-scale raid into Canada. But there were few secrets in Detroit. Between the small-town gossip, pro-British residents , and family connections between people on the U.S. and Canadian sides of the river, McArthur knew it would be impossible to keep plans of his raid under wraps. Therefore he engaged in his own campaign of “disinformation” by letting · 107 · Jacob Smith versus Louis Campau it be known that his new operation was going to be mounted against the Indians of the Saginaw area. This was strictly a deception, but it was completely believable and accepted, given the Chippewa attacks that occurred that fall.2 To further his ruse about the real target of the U.S. raid, McArthur used Jacob Smith to lend credence to the notion that the mission was to attack the Indians in villages and camps of the Saginaw Valley. McArthur made his preparations and asked for local volunteers. With the American forces that would make this raid was Col. George McDougall of Detroit and about 20 Michigan Militia and local volunteers serving under his command. Notes taken by someone in the expedition, perhaps McDougall himself, show that directly beneath McDougall in the chain of command was Capt. Jacob Smith, the highest ranking field officer of the Michigan volunteers on the mission.3 And though no name appeared on an account of this raid that was written in Detroit after the fact, there can be little doubt that it was authored or dictated by Jacob Smith. It states: I was called upon by Col. McDougall on the Sixteenth day of October last [1814] to accompany him as a Volunteer under General McArthur to Saguina; he desired me to give him what information I was possessed of regarding that country; we fell to work and sketched out a Map of the various Routs thither, the different villages around, distances and number of those warriors of my company likely to be found there in each; he remarked that the General, finding I was so well acquainted in that quarter, wished me particularly to join him. On the 17th I waited on the General; he remarked that he was desirous of obtaining ten or fifteen young men who knew the country, for the space of eight or ten days, to go to Saguina. I then volunteered my services and assisted in procuring a dozen of active woodmen and faithfully promised them that they should be detained no longer than the time mentioned, relying on the General’s word. No compensation was offered or was any expected. We volunteered with our horses, from the purest motives and zeal, to render service to our country, and I am well convinced that if the General had gone to the place he mentioned, that we would have acquitted ourselves with honor.4 Smith, because of his knowledge of the Saginaw Chippewa, unknowingly became part of McArthur’s effort to deceive British and Indian sympathizers as to the true objective of the raid. The general issued orders implying that the mission · 108 · c h a p t e r t e n on which he was about to embark would be “a short, rapid, and it is believed, a brilliant expedition,” and the men were urged to take special care of their horses. A few days after consulting with Smith—or at least, making a show of consulting with...

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