VAN WERT COUNTY OHIO - HISTORY: County history, Chapter 1 - WAYNE'S SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN (part 7) *********************************************************************** OHGENWEB NOTICE: All distribution rights to this electronic data are reserved by the submitter. Reproduction or re-presentation of copyrighted material will require the permission of the copyright owner. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. *********************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Submitted by: Email: 1whitedove@home.com Date: August 5, 1999 *********************************************************************** from History of Van Wert County, Ohio and Representative Citizens Edited and compiled by Thaddeus S. Gilliland Van Wert, Ohio WAYNE'S SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN Gen. Anthony Wayne was then placed in command and on the 7th of October started on the march. An account as given by John M. Scott will be interesting, as showing the difference between general Wayne and the two former commanders: "October 7th. Our first day's march, was great considering that the army had not got properly into their gears. I think it was about 10 miles. Our second, the 8th , was greater; it reache Fort Hamilton. Many of the men were exceedingly fatigued, and it was pretty generally believed hard marching, though the General though otherwise, and it must be so. 9th. Our third day's march was to the five-mile spring. advance of Hamilton, observe we fortified our camp every night, and were very vigilant. or ought to be so. 10th Our fourth day's march we camped about the seventeen-mile tree, and nothing extraordinary happened. excepting that our line of march extended for five miles. owing to the rapidity of the marching and the badness of the roads for our transportations, superaddding the straggling soldiers, worn down with ftigue and sickness, brought up by the rear guard, whom they retarded considerably. 11th. We proceeded on the twenty-nine mile tree, fortified as usual and occupied a find commanding ground. And nothing of consequence happened here. 12th. The roads were very bad and some of our wagons broke down, but as the General's orders declared there should be no interstices the line of march was not impeded and we mad say 10 miles this day. 13th We advanced by tolerably quick movements until we camped within a mile or so of Fort Jefferson and this day furnished a good deal of sport for as the devil would have it Colonel Hamtramck was maneuvering his troops and had a sham fight, which was construed by the whole army as an attack upon our advance guard or flankers. It really frightened a good many, but we all said "let them come" or "we are ready for them". We had marched hard this day and I think were not so well prepared. However, it was at length discovered to be a sham fight, and everybody knew it then. Oh, it was Hamtramck's usual practice, they say. But it was all in my eye; they never thought of Hamtramck. 14th We marched past Fort Jefferson without even desiring to look at it, indeed some of us turned our heads the other way with disdain and it has been threatened (as report says) to be demolished entirely. This day's march brought us to where I am now sitting writing to my friends. We fortified our encampment very strong and feel secure. 15th The wagons were sent back to Fort St. Clair for stores, provisions & c.. with an escort of two subalterns and between eighty and ninety men, and nothing happened extra this day. 16th The devil to pay! Colonel Blue with near twenty of the cavalry went out to graze the horses of the troops and after some time Blue discovered something crawling in the grass, which he at first though was turkeys but immediately found them to be two Indians, and ordered a charge, himself , tow sergeants and a private charged the rest ran away, the consequence the two Indians killed the two sergeants, Blue and the private escaped. The leader the rascal who behaved so cowardly, was immediately tried and condemned, but pardoned the next day. 17th Lieutenant Lowery and Ensign (formerly Dr.) Boyd, with the escort of ninety men guarding the wagons, were attacked by a pair of thirty or forty Indians, who rushed on with savage fury and yell, which panic struck the whole party( excepting the two officers and fifteen or twenty men, who fell a sacrifice to savage barbarity) and they all fled and have been coming into Fort. St Clair, by two and threes ever since. The Indians plundered the wagons and carried off with them sixty-four of the best wagon horses in the army, killing six horses at the wagons in the defeat. Colonel Adair pursued the Indians and found several horses dead, which he supposed had been tired and they killed them a proof that their flight was very rapid. " In this attack we lost two promising, worthy and brave officer, and about twenty men, mostly of Captain Shaylor's company, for his and Captain Prior's formed the escort and are both ow rather in disgrace. Late in October, General Wayne established his winter headquarters about six miles north of Fort Jefferson and there erected Fort Greenville, the present site of the county seat of Darke County. On Christmas Day a detachment reoccupied the ground where General St. Clair had been defeated three years before and called it Fort Recovery. A reward was offered for every human skull, and 600 were gathered and buried beneath one of the blockhouses. During the early months of 1794, General Wayne kept himself well posted by the services of numerous spies, and was aware that he was surrounded by a powerful enemy in the surrounding country. The government had already sent five different commissions to offer generous terms to the Indians, but to no avail. The Indians, urged on by the promise of assistance by the British and French, and elated by their former victories, would not listen to the pleading and promises of the commissioners. In June 1794 a detachment, which had acted as escort of provisions from Fort Recovery, fell into an ambush of Indians about a mile from the fort and were driven back with great loss, the victors following the fugitives to the gates of the fort and attempting to enter the fort with them. The siege lasted two days and General Wayne states that there were a number of white men, speaking the English language in the rear urging the Indians on to the assault.they had their faces blackened And there were a number of ounce balls and buckshot lodged in the fort, these being suited to the British arms. It was evident that during the siege they were looking for the artillery abandoned by St. Clair and hidden by the Indians in the fallen timber, but this had been recovered by the soldiers, and was being used in defending the fort. On July 26th reinforcements of 1,600 mounted troops, from Kentucky joined Wayne and he started on the 28th to follow the line of retreat of the Indians. He halted at Girty's lone enough to build Fort Adams on the bank of the St. Mary's from here he was able to arrive unobserved almost in sight of Auglaize the headquarters of the Indians, of which he took possession without opposition. The Indians abandoned their villages in great haste having been informed by Newman the deserter of the strength of Wayne's army . The treachery of the deserter Newman enabled the Indians to escape punishment, but at the expense of all their property, with extensive, cultivated fields and gardens. Here General Wayne took possession and erected a strong fort with four blockhouses at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee and called it "Fort Defiance." This fort might well be called "Defiance" from its construction. Outside of the fort and blockhouses there was a wall of earth , eight feet thick, and sloping upwards and outwards, supported by a log wall on the side of the ditch, which was 15 feet wide and eight feet deep, surrounding the whole fort, except on the side towards the Auglaize. What a difference between this precaution and that observed by Harmar and St. Clair. *************OH-FOOTSEPS Mailing List***************************