The nation was young and there was so very much to do. One of the most pressing issues was the role of the army. Not a large standing army, because even His Excellency President George Washington had come to the conclusion that such a thing was not only un-American (and carried the same decidedly imperial scent of the yoke that had just been cast off), but the nation could not afford it. That “necessary evil” is how one American government official described the army, and suggested that “[T] he distribution of our little Army to distant garrisons where hardly any other inhabitant is to be found is the most eligible arrangement.”  Send the ruffians where they can do no harm and make sure that they are gainfully employed in settling the wilderness. That sentiment prevailed well into the 19th century.

The truth was that by 1791 many of the finest and most experienced officers, after finding the prospect of a livelihood in the struggling United States army was practically impossibility, resigned their commissions. The heady days of the Revolution were long gone, replaced by the unglamorous drudgery of maintaining frontier posts. Garrison life was nothing more than unending manual labor, punctuated by issues of whiskey or rum and an occasional campaign that at least broke the monotony of unrelenting servitude.  Officers and men felt themselves abandoned by an indifferent government who called on them only when necessary. In early spring, 1791, it became necessary.

Arthur St. Clair, Governor of the Northwest Territory was summoned to meet with President Washington in Philadelphia. St. Clair was well known to Washington from his service at Trenton and Princeton during the Revolution, and despite criticism over his command of Fort Ticonderoga, maintained the president’s confidence. St. Clair studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh but gave it up to become a soldier. Portraits of St. Clair show a confident man with intelligent eyes that glare defiantly at the observer. Perhaps it is the look of a man who feels that he no longer has to explain his actions. He was charged, according to a lengthy document prepared by Secretary of War Henry Knox, with establishing a military post at the Miami Indian village of Kekionga, just inside the eastern border of what is now Indiana. His line of march was to take him from Fort Washington (the present-day Cincinnati) up to Fort Recovery, and then on to his destination.  This was the second attempt to establish the post. General Josiah Harmar’s column was defeated the previous year by a Miami force led by Michikinikwa—Little Turtle. Like St. Clair, Michikinikwa was a veteran soldier. Both men fought the French, both were intelligent, and both had achieved fame among their respective peoples.
The Governor who would become a general, encountered difficulties when he first assumed command of Fort Washington prior to leading his invasion of Indian territory. He was from the east and was, to the hard-bitten Scots-Irish inhabitants of the region, not one of their kind. Colonel James Wilkinson was a westerner who knew how to handle Indians. He had taken over 500 mounted troops up to the Indian town of L’Anguille and burned it to the ground in August. He also burned over 400 acres of corn and brought back a handful of captives; all this while suffering just two soldiers killed. The village belonged to the Eel River Miamis, Michikinikwa’s sub-tribe. The victory was minor but the ramifications for St. Clair would be disastrous.

The general also had to assemble a force capable of invading hostile territory and over-awing the Indians.  There was less than a full company of regulars at Fort Washington so St. Clair pulled troops from other garrisons until he had just over 400 regulars. Enlistment quotas were filled slowly; $3.00 a month for a private, even with a $6.00 bounty, was not an enticement to join the army. Good men could make better wages doing virtually anything else on the frontier. A soldier was never certain that he would receive his pay, clothing, food, or necessities as promised, and so often those men who could not find Employment elsewhere signed on.

Unfortunately for the general, many of his officers were as inexperienced or as incompetent as their men. His forage-master managed to lose 70 horses in less than 24 hours, and apparently thought scattering their feed on the ground was sufficient. Those animals that did not sicken or die from eating the grain laced with rocks and dirt injured one another fighting for food. The army’s quartermaster managed to deliver a smattering of supplies; the civilian contractors were inept; St. Clair’s second-in-command, General Richard Butler, barely spoke to St. Clair; and the poor man who was responsible for the success of this expedition suffered from gout. This was not an auspicious prelude for a campaign.

In September 1791 St. Clair’s column left Fort Washington, a sturdy palisade and blockhouse structure within musket shot of the broad Ohio River. The leaves were just beginning to turn and there was a touch of cool air in the early morning. The general’s command was imposing in numbers if not in reality. He led over 2,300 men, not counting militia, and several hundred camp followers. The latter was given no official standing and many of them were the wives and children of soldiers.

The column moved north at a glacial pace, cutting its way through the thick forest to allow the passage of its train of wagons, carts, artillery, and those pack horses that had survived the debacle at Fort Washington. St. Clair stopped the column long enough to build Fort Hamilton on the Great Miami River. When the army moved on it traveled no more than six miles a day, hampered by the baggage train and the throng of camp followers. Almost immediately it became apparent that St. Clair’s army was slowly being reduced by desertion—men just disappeared. Even the appearance of Lieutenant Colonel William Oldham with a band of new enlistments did little to inspire confidence. Oldham’s men were, according to one of St. Clair’s officers, the “off-scourings of large towns and cities, enervated by idleness, debaucheries, and every species of vice.”
Forty-five miles north of Fort Hamilton, St. Clair stopped his army and built Fort Jefferson, leaving 90 men behind to guard the newly created post. It was now nearly the end of October and the cold weather and lack of supplies, not to mention the wanton absence of discipline, was beginning to eat away at the army. Desertions and crime increased. Several men were hanged as examples of what would befall those who failed to do their duty, and a sense of disaster descended on the army. St. Clair had wasted nearly a month in building his two forts, and sending his campaign into the winter months. There was not enough food or blankets, and men were turning sullen.

On November 4, 1791, St. Clair’s tattered army was encamped on the Wabash River. They had settled in late on the evening of the 3rd, dispirited, cold, and hungry, in a low swampy area. There was abundant timber all around the camp; the Wabash offered plenty of water if no protection—it could be easily forded, and there was high ground to the west. There were also, according to scattered reports filtering in to St. Clair, Indians near-by. St. Clair’s response was to establish a nominal defense, throw out pickets, and situate 300 militia on the high ground to the west. The general had his flanks, front, and rear protected but he neglected two important points; his army was virtually an undisciplined mob, and the forest that surrounded his camp offered an excellent means by which the enemy could launch a surprise attack. What Colonel Wilkinson had sewn at L’Anguille, the unfortunate General St. Clair was going to reap on the eastern bank of the Wabash River.

There were ample signs to warn the senior officers of St. Clair’s army that an attack was almost certain. There was more than enough evidence to convince the former medical student that his ill-conceived defense of a poorly situated camp was not enough to prevent potential defeat—if he had cared to take notice of the signs. He did not. The men of the army were untrustworthy, ill-trained, poorly led, cold, hungry, and dejected. The officers were incompetent. The enemy was resolute.

Just before sunrise, the Miami, Delaware and their Shawnee allies attacked. One officer remembered that it sounded like “an infinite number of horse-bells ringing at the same time,” followed by the crash of musketry. The Kentucky militia fired a ragged volley in response and then broke and ran, splashing through the cold waters of the Wabash River and into the main camp. The regulars formed under General Butler and forced the attackers to split to either side of the camp. Using the trees and underbrush for cover, the Miamis and Shawnee began picking off the disorganized troops. There were a thousand Indians, about half the force that St. Clair had available to him, but it was Michikinikwa’s victory from the beginning. Many of the general’s regulars fought well, the men of the 1st and 2nd regiments charging in a vain attempt to drive the Indians from cover. But it was no good—there were too few of them and too many of the enemy.  After several hours of fierce fighting, the camp’s defense virtually collapsed, and the butchery began. Those of St. Clair’s army that did not fall or stand and fight, raced for the refuge of Fort Jefferson, just 23 miles away. St. Clair was finally forced to order a retreat, but it was a maneuver that bordered on a rout. Men, women, and children died in the snow as the remnants of the army fell back to the newly constructed fort.

The retreat did not stop there—St. Clair’s defeated army continued its journey to Fort Hamilton, trailing a pitiful band of stragglers. When a reckoning was made of the loss it was estimated that somewhere between 900 and 1,000 official and unofficial members of General St. Clair’s army died as a result of the battle.

It wasn’t until December 19, 1791 that Secretary of War Henry Knox brought the news to President Washington, dining with friends at his residence in Philadelphia. The old general was stunned. St. Clair had suffered his army to be cut to pieces, the horrified president exclaimed to Knox. “By a surprise, the very thing that I guarded him against! Oh God! Oh God!”