Ohio History Journal

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The Croghan Celebration

The Croghan Celebration.                  75

 

I greet thee! Thou art just in time

To tell of victory most sublime,

Though told in unconnected rhyme;

Thou art welcome in Ohio.

 

But since thou canst thyself speak well,

Now let thy thundering voice tell

What bloody carnage then befell

The foes of great Ohio.

(And then she thundered loud.)

 

PROCTOR'S REPORT OF THE BATTLE OF FORT STEPHENSON.

The following letter, recently unearthed by Col. Webb C.

Hayes in the Canadian Archives at Ottawa, is most interesting

as giving General Proctor's own account of the battle in which

he was so badly worsted. It is addressed to Sir George Provist,

Lieut. General, at Kingston, and reads:

"SIR: It being absolutely requisite for several urgent reasons that

my Indian force should not remain unemployed, and being well aware

that it would not be movable except accompanied by

a regular force, I resolved, notwithstanding the

smallness of that force to move and where we might

be fed at the expense of the enemy. I had, however,

the mortification to find that instead of the Indian

force being a disposable one, or under my direction,

our movements would be subject to the caprices and

prejudices of the Indian body to a degree in which

my regular force was disproportionate to their num-

bers. For several weeks after the arrival of Mr. R.

Dickson, his Indians were restrainable and tractable

to a degree that I could not have conceived possible.

I am sorry to add that they have been contaminated

by the other Indians.

I was, very contrary to my judgment, necessitated to go to the

Miami, in the vicinity of the enemy's fort, where I remained a few days

in the hope that General Harrison might come to the relief of the fort

which was invested in the Indian mode, when finding that the Indians

were returning to Detroit and Amherstberg I moved to Lower Sandusky

where, however, we could not muster more hundreds of Indians than

I might reasonably have expected thousands. The neighborhood of

Sandusky, and the settlement on the Huron river, eight miles below it,

could have afforded cattle sufficient to have fed my whole Indian force

for some time, had they been induced to accompany us. Sandusky is