XXV
_THE SWORD OF "MAD ANTHONY" WAYNE_
"Another defeat will ruin the reputation of the government," saidWashington, as he sent out "Mad Anthony" Wayne, the uproarious Quakergeneral, with ruffles, queue, and cocked hat, the stormer of StonyPoint in the Revolution.
In vain Wayne sent commissioners to treat with the Indians. Elatedwith recent victories, "The Ohio shall be the boundary," was thedefiant answer.
An Indian captured and brought to Wayne said of the British: "Alltheir speeches to us are red, red as blood. All the wampum andfeathers are painted red. Our war-pipes and hatchets are red. Even thetobacco is red for war."
"My mind and heart are upon that river," said Cornplanter, an Indianchief, pointing to the Ohio. "May that water ever continue to be theboundary between the Americans and the Indians."
Commissioned by Washington First Lieutenant of the Fourth Sub-Legion,on the first of September, 1792, William Clark crossed the Ohio andspent the winter at Legionville where Wayne was collecting anddrilling his army.
"I will have no six months men," said Wayne. "Two years will it taketo organise, drill, and harden them before we think of taking thefield."
"We are certain to be scalped," whispered timorous ones, rememberingSt. Clair's slaughter. Hundreds deserted. The very word Indianinspired terror.
But horse, foot, and artillery, he drilled them, the tremblers tookcourage, and the government, at last awakened, stood firmly behindwith money and supplies.
"Remember, Stony Point was stormed with unloaded muskets. See! Youmust know the use of the broadsword and of the bayonet, a weaponbefore which the savages cannot stand."
At work went "Mad Anthony" teaching his men to load and fire upon therun, to leap to the charge with loud halloos, anticipating allpossible conditions.
"Charge in open order. Each man rely on himself, and expect a personalencounter with the enemy." The men caught his spirit. Wayne's Legionbecame a great military school.
Now he was drilling superb Kentucky cavalry, as perfectly matched asthe armies of Europe, sorrel and bay, chestnut and gray, bush-whackingand charging, leaping ravines and broken timber, outdoing the Indiansthemselves in their desperate riding.
And with all this drill, Wayne was erecting and garrisoning forts. Inthe fall of 1793, Lieutenant Clark was dispatched to Vincennes.
"It appears that all active and laborious commands fall on me," hewrote to his brother Jonathan, in Virginia. "Not only labour, but Ilike to have starved,--was frozen up in the Wabash twenty days withoutprovisions. In this agreeable situation had once more to depend on myrifle."
After several skirmishes with Indians, Lieutenant Clark returned toFort Washington (Cincinnati) in May, to be immediately dispatched withtwenty-one dragoons and sixty cavalry to escort seven hundredpackhorses laden with provisions and clothing to Greenville, a logfort eighty miles north of Cincinnati.
The Shawnees were watching. Upon this rich prize fell an ambuscade ofsixty Indians. Eight men were killed, the train began to retreat, whenClark came dashing up from the rear, put the assailants to flight, andsaved the day. For this he was thanked by General Wayne.
Washington, Jefferson, the whole country impatiently watched for newsof Wayne on the Ohio.
Drill, drill, drill,--keeping out a cloud of scouts that no peeringIndian might discover his preparations, Wayne exercised daily now withrifle, sabre, and bayonet until no grizzly frontiersman surpassed hismen at the target, no fox-hunter could leap more wildly, no swordsmanmore surely swing the sharp steel home. At the sight youngTennesseeans and Kentuckians, Virginians of the border andPennsylvanians of lifetime battle, were eager for the fray.
About midsummer, 1794, Wayne moved out with his Legion, twenty-sixhundred strong, and halted at Fort Greenville for sixteen hundredKentucky cavalry. Brigades of choppers were opening roads here andthere to deceive.
"This General that never sleeps is cutting in every direction,"whispered the watchful Shawnees. "He is the Black Snake."
For a last time Wayne offered peace. His messengers were wantonlymurdered.
The issue at Fallen Timbers lasted forty minutes,--the greatest Indianbattle in forty years of battle. Two thousand Indians crouching in thebrush looked to see the Americans dismount and tie their horses asthey did in St. Clair's battle,--but no, bending low on their horseswith gleaming sabres and fixed bayonets, on like a whirlwind camethundering the American cavalry.
"What was it that defeated us? It was the Big Wind, the Tornado," saidthe Indians.
Matchekewis was there from Sheboygan with his warriors, the BlackPartridge from Illinois, and Buckongahelas. The Shawnees had theirfill of fighting that day; Tecumseh fell back at the wild onset,retreating inch by inch.
William Clark led to the charge a column of Kentuckians and drove theenemy two miles. But why enumerate in this irresistible legion, whereall were heroes on that 20th of August, 1794.
Wayne's victory ended the Revolution. Ninety days after, Lord St.Helens gave up Ohio in his treaty with Jay, and England bound herselfto deliver the northwestern posts that her fur traders had hung on toso vainly.
Niagara, Michilimackinac, Detroit, keys to the Lakes, _entrepots_ toall the fur trade of the Northwest, were lost to Britain for ever. Itwas hardest to give up Detroit,--it broke up their route and addedmany a weight to the weary packer's back when the fur trade had totake a more northern outlet along the Ottawa.
It was ten o'clock in the morning of July 11, 1796, when theDetroiters peering through their glasses espied two vessels. "TheYankees are coming!"
A thrill went through the garrison, and even through the flag thatfluttered above. The last act in the war of independence was at hand.
The four gates of Detroit opened to be closed no more, as thedrawbridge fell over the moat and the Americans marched into thenorthern stronghold. It was Lernoult's old fort built so strenuouslyin that icy winter of 1779-80, when "Clark is coming" was thewatchword of the north. Scarce a picket in the stockade had beenchanged since that trying time. Blockhouse, bastion, and battery couldso easily have been taken, that even at this day we cannot suppress aregret that Clark had not a chance at Detroit!
Barefooted Frenchmen, dark-eyed French girls, and Indians, Indianseverywhere, came in to witness the transfer of Detroit. At noon, July11, 1796, the English flag was lowered and the Stars and Stripes wentup where Clark would fain have hung them seventeen years before.
And the old cellar of the council house! Like a tomb was itsrevelation, for there, mouldered with the must of years, lay twothousand scalps, long tresses of women, children's golden curls, andthe wiry locks of men, thrown into that official cellar in those awfuldays that now were ended.
The merry Frenchmen on their pipestem farms,--for every inhabitantowned his pathway down to the river,--the merry Frenchmen went ongrinding their corn by their old Dutch windmills, went on pressingtheir cider in their gnarled old apple orchards. They could not changethe situation if they would, and they would not if they could. Thelazy windmills of Detroit swung round and round as if it had been everthus. Still the Indians slid in and out and still the British traderslingered, loath to give up the fur trade of the Lakes.
The next year after Wayne's victory the last buffalo in Ohio waskilled, and in 1796 the first American cabins were built at Clevelandand Chillicothe. For the first time the Ohio, the great highway, wassafe. Passenger boats no longer had bullet-proof cabins, no longertrailed cannon on their gunwales. In that year twenty thousandemigrants passed down the Ohio. Astonished and helpless the red mensaw the tide. By 1800 there were more whites in the Mississippi valleythan there were Indians in all North America.