The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783-1900

1: Defeat and Victory in the Ohio Valley

1 “The peacemakers and our enemies have talked away our Lands at a Rum Drinking,” complained one Cherokee leader upon learning of the treaty of Paris, whose provisional terms representatives of great britain and the newly recognized United States had agreed on in november 1782. Another observer described the indians as being “thunder Struck at the appearance of an accommodation So far short of their expectation.” indeed, those who had sided with britain during the war for independence had good reason to be angry, for their presumed allies had concluded a separate peace that paid scant attention to their interests. Moreover, in identifying the Mississippi River as the new country’s western boundary, His Majesty’s representatives had been extraordinarily generous to their former colonists. on paper, the United States now had claim to an enormous empire that contained American indian, british, and Spanish contact zones.1 +on e∂ defeat and Victory in the ohio Valley in the more populated regions along the Atlantic coast, the Revolution had generally followed the customary rules of limited warfare. Colonial, british, and french armies had for the most part avoided the wanton destruction of private property, the killing of noncombatants, or the torture or murder of enemy prisoners. not so the war in the interior, where frequent acts of brutality had marked the conflict. in describing the war in the backcountry South, for example, nathanael greene 2 c h a p t e r o n e Maumee River S t . J o s e p h R i v e r Lake Michigan Lake Huron Lake Erie Lake Ontario O h i o R i v e r KENTUCKY VIRGINIA PENNSYLVANIA NEW YORK Detroit Ft. Miami F a l l e n T i m b e r s F t . D e f i a n c e Harmar’s Defeats The Glaize Miami Villages L’Anguille Ft. Knox Ft. Steuben Ft. Washington Ft. Hamilton Ft. St. Clair Ft. Jefferson Ft. Greenville Ft. Recovery St. Clair’s Defeat Ft. Adams Ft. Harmar Ft. Pitt Ft. Franklin Niagara 75 miles THE WARS OF THE OLD NORTHWEST robert F. Pace defeat and victory in the ohio valley 3 observed that “the whigs and tories pursue[d] one another with the most relentless fury[,] killing and destroying each other whenever they meet.” in 1780, Shawnee, Wyandot, and ottawa warriors had slaughtered two hundred men, women, and children at Ruddle’s Station, Kentucky, reportedly burning alive mothers and their infants. A year later at gnadenhütten in the ohio country, Pennsylvania militia scalped and bludgeoned to death nearly a hundred Delaware indians, many of whom had been seeking protection from the carnage at the mission there. no less a traditionalist than george Washington had warned of the fate that those indians who fought the Patriots could expect: “the Cherokees and Southern tribes were foolish enough to listen to them [the british], and to take up the hatchet against us; upon which our warriours went into their country, burnt their homes, destroyed their corn, and obliged them to sue for peace.”2 for the most part, at the close of the Revolution neither indians nor white frontiersmen were ready for peace. tactically, indians of the eastern woodlands still enjoyed the advantage, as evidenced by victories at oriskany Creek, Cherry valley, and blue Licks. their superb physical conditioning, penchant for concealment and surprise, and willingness to withdraw from unfavorable battlefield situations made them formidable foes. Still, punishing attacks on their villages, farmlands, and trade routes had left the ohio valley tribes increasingly dependent on british arms, ammunition, and even food. for their part, many Patriots on the borderlands were determined to stamp out any challenges.3 to the south and southwest, conflicting international, national, state, and indian goals resulted in what Reginald Horsman has called “a most confused and perilous state.” Here, boundaries between the United States and Spain would remain unsettled for a quarter of a century, and former allies and enemies alike would joust with one another for the loyalties of borderlands residents. Hoping to check U.S. expansion, Spain signed treaties with most major tribes in 1784. Unconquered on the battlefield, Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws claimed sovereignty of their own. Many saw the newly independent confederation as a potentially lucrative trading partner, one they might use to counterbalance european governments and preserve their own independence.4 the northwestern frontier, if perhaps...