Ohio History Journal

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The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

 

VOLUME 70 ?? NUMBER 3 ?? JULY 1961

 

 

 

The British Indian Department and

The Abortive Treaty of Lower Sandusky, 1793

 

By REGINALD HORSMAN*

 

 

 

IN THE EARLY FALL of 1792 a general council of the Indian

nations of the Old Northwest was held at the junction of the

Maumee and the Auglaize rivers in what is now northwestern

Ohio. The Indians who gathered there were jubilant, for their

attempts to resist the American advance into the Old North-

west had met with success. Two major American attempts to

destroy Indian resistance had failed. In October 1790 General

Josiah Harmar had suffered humiliating reverses after burn-

ing Indian villages near what is now Fort Wayne, Indiana,

and in November 1791 an army under the command of the

governor of the Northwest Territory, Arthur St. Clair, had

met complete disaster. St. Clair's force was overwhelmed by

an Indian attack some one hundred miles north of Fort Wash-

ington (Cincinnati), and suffered over six hundred killed. The

crushing defeat of St. Clair filled the Indians with confidence,

and the American government was now obliged to pursue two

policies. While on the one hand General Anthony Wayne was

appointed to build an army for the defeat of the Indians, on

the other the government made a number of attempts at con-

ciliation. These attempts served both to divert the Indians

while Wayne prepared, and to convince the eastern public

 

* Reginald Horsman is an assistant professor of history at the University of

Wisconsin - Milwaukee.