THE HARMAR EXPEDITION OF 1790*
By RANDOLPH G. ADAMS
At the last meeting of the American
Historical Association
(December, 1939) the chief of the
General Staff of the United
States Army made some very critical
remarks about the teaching
of military history in the United
States. He expressed the wish
that teachers would tell and that
text-books would relate the un-
complimentary and unvarnished truth
about the ineptitude with
which the United States has conducted
its wars.
The Maumee Valley, as we all know, was
for centuries a
highway for traffic between the Great
Lakes and the Mississippi
River. As such, France, Britain and the
United States struggled
for it, among themselves, and with the
Indians. When the valley
came under the jurisdiction of the
United States, through the
Treaty of Peace of 1782-3, the
Indians still held most of the
lands in the old Northwest Territory. By
continued, and illegal
occupation of certain western posts,
such as Detroit, the British
agents encouraged the Indians to resist
the extension of the
power of the United States into the
Maumee Valley. Three suc-
cessive efforts had to be made before
the Indian power was
broken.
The first of these was the expedition of
an army under
General Josiah Harmar, in the year 1790.
At the Clements Li-
brary, University of Michigan, there are
several thousand manu-
scripts which constitute the personal
and military papers of Gen-
eral Harmar. They were acquired some
years ago from a de-
scendant of General Hamar. In these we
may trace, step by
step, the career of that officer, during
his service in the American
Revolution, his trip abroad to carry
back to Paris the final rati-
fication of the Treaty of Peace which
ended that war, his ap-
pointment to service on the western
frontier, first at Fort McIn-
tosh (Pennsylvania), then at Fort Harmar
(Marietta, Ohio) and
* Summary.
(60)