Ohio History Journal

PROCEEDINGS OF THE

MAUMEE VALLEY INTERNATIONAL

HISTORICAL CONVENTION,

SEPTEMBER 27-29, 1940

EDITORIAL

By HARLOW LINDLEY

Because of the uniqueness of the Maumee Valley Interna-

tional Historical Convention, organized to commemorate the place

of the Maumee Valley in American history, it seems eminently

proper that its records should be permanently preserved, and since

the heart of the valley is within the limits of the State of Ohio

it is logical that the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical So-

ciety whose function is to preserve Ohio's history should perform

this service. We present here historical material relative to the

Convention and all the addresses given at the public meetings.

The success of the Convention excelled the fondest hopes of those

who were responsible for it. Two results of it are already notice-

able, one the new and increased interest in local history, and the

other a desire for going forward along lines brought into view by

the Convention. The latter has taken form in an organization

named the Anthony Wayne Memorial Association, devoted to the

national recognition of the final conquest of the Old Northwest

which culminated in the withdrawal of the British from Detroit

in 1796. The objectives of this new association are the promotion

of historical celebrations commemorative of this period; the en-

couragement of research in the history of the Old Northwest and

the possibility of the publication of the results; the developing of

a program for the selection and proper marking of historical sites,

parkways and routes pertinent thereto; and the promotion of a

program of education disseminating information concerning An-

thony Wayne and the Old Northwest.

The annual historical pilgrimage of the Society of Indiana

Pioneers and the Indiana Historical Society was arranged to coin-

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2     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

cide with the Convention and their representatives participated in

the programs at Fort Wayne and Defiance.

The William L. Clements Library at the University of Michi-

gan issued for the Convention a 22-page illustrated booklet, The

Maumee Valley through Fifty Years, 1763-1813, and the J. L.

Hudson Company of Detroit donated the attractive programs,

while the Lucas County Plan Commission, Toledo, furnished

the copies of the map which was enclosed with the program and

which is reproduced in this issue of the QUARTERLY.

THREE CENTURIES OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY

By M. M. QUAIFE

The name "Maumee" is a variant of Miami, and comes from

the Miami Indian tribe. When the French first came into the

Northwest they found the Miami living in eastern Wisconsin.

Following LaSalle's advent in the Illinois country they moved

southward around Lake Michigan and for many years (c. 1690-

1702) one of their important towns was located in the present-

day Chicago Loop. Eventually they journeyed eastward to the

Maumee, with villages at Fort Wayne, Defiance, and other points,

and their name became permanently identified with the beautiful

river and valley they had appropriated.

In the era when wilderness was king and practically all travel

was by water, the Maumee and Wabash rivers constituted one of

the chief highways of travel between the Great Lakes and the

Mississippi River system. For this reason the Maumee Valley is

associated with the earliest activities of the French in the western

country. Over its possession red race and white, and French,

British, and American nations for generations contended. Before

the white man arrived the lovely valley, "fair as a garden of the

Gods," was the highway of uncounted war parties from the Great

Lakes journeying southward to wage against the southern tribes

the long warfare which made of Kentucky a vacant wilderness

and won for it a name which means "the dark and bloody ground."

In 1749 the French army of Celoron from distant Montreal, re-

turning from its mission of warning the English out of the Ohio

Valley, descended the Maumee from Fort Wayne to Lake Erie

and Detroit, and a memorial of this expedition still remains in

the name of Celoron Island, lying in the mouth of Detroit River.

In 1752, young Charles de Langlade led his Ottawa warriors from

Mackinac up the Maumee on his mission of vengeance against

Pickawillany, and the chief, Old Britain, for the crime of showing

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OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

friendship to the English, was "put in the kettle" and literally

boiled and eaten. In the Pontiac War and for many weary years

following the opening of the American Revolution, armies red

and white, too numerous to mention, traversed the valley. Daniel

Boone and Simon Kenton were but two of hundreds of Kentucky

and Virginia captives carried northward to Detroit. Governor

Hamilton ascended the Maumee in 1778 going to ignominious sur-

render at Vincennes, and his conqueror, George Rogers Clark, ate

out his heart in bitterness because he could never achieve the re-

turn campaign to Detroit, the goal of all his endeavors. The

Detroit armies of Captain Bird (1780) and Captain Caldwell in-

flicted grievous blows upon Kentucky, and that commonwealth

still annually solemnly mourns the destruction of her manhood by

Caldwell at the Blue Licks in 1782. British redcoats garrisoned

Fort Miamis, above Toledo, from 1794 to 1796, and President

Washington sent three armies in succession (1790-95) northward

from Cincinnati with the Maumee as their objective; General

Wayne built and named Fort Defiance and defeated the red man

at Fallen Timbers; and when the British yielded the northwestern

forts to the United States in 1796, it was a detachment of soldiers

from the Maumee that first raised the Stars and Stripes over

Detroit.

The War of 1812 opened in the Northwest, and the Maumee

again resounded to the tramp of contending armies. General Hull

pressed northward to disgrace and a coward's doom at Detroit.

General Winchester led his Kentuckians to another mournful de-

feat at the River Raisin. General Harrison built, and British

General Procter twice besieged Fort Meigs; and Harrison and

Perry together achieved victory and military fame at Lake Erie

and the Battle of the Thames. American rule in the Maumee

Valley was thenceforth permanent and undisputed.

But peace has her achievements no less notable than those of

arms. In 1816, the British and American governments entered

upon that policy of border disarmament and peaceful diplomacy

which, despite many strains, has endured for a century and a

quarter. Michigan lost her Toledo Strip to Ohio, but losing,

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS            5

gained instead the Upper Peninsula. The canal connecting Lake

Erie with the Ohio, whose abandoned ruins add much of present

charm to the Maumee Valley, represents a great peacetime achieve-

ment whose solid glory was early obscured by the advent of the

"iron horse." In 1837, the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad was put

in operation between Toledo and Adrian. It was the first railroad

in the Northwest, built when Toledo was still Port Lawrence, and

the entire population of Michigan was less than that of Grand

Rapids in 1940. Today, fur trade and canal, red men and massa-

cres are but dim memories; at either end of the Maumee are busy,

prosperous cities, whose manufactures are distributed throughout

the earth to make possible an easier and better way of life. Still,

as of old, winter snows and summer sunlight refresh the beautiful

valley; still the noble forests offer their restful shade to the way-

farer; still the dancing waters press onward toward their goal in

the bosom of the Atlantic.

THE STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY INTERNA-

TIONAL HISTORICAL CONVENTION

By M. M. QUAIFE

Several years ago, Mr. George Macdonald of Windsor, Ont.,

and the present writer attended the joint historical conference of

the New York and Ontario historical societies, held at Niagara

Falls, N. Y., and Niagara Falls, Ont. The conference was a great

success, and we came home imbued with the desire to bring about

a similar gathering in Detroit and vicinity, of the historical socie-

ties and other agencies of Michigan and Ontario. Thus was

developed the Michigan-Ontario Historical Convention held June

9-11, 1938, with sessions at Detroit, Windsor, Dearborn, Amherst-

burg, and Ann Arbor. Several hundred people attended the ses-

sions, and, as earlier at Niagara, the unanimous verdict seemed

to be that the convention had been a highly pleasant and profitable

affair.

One of the hundreds who attended was Mr. Harlow Lindley

of Columbus, Secretary of the Ohio State Archaeological and His-

torical Society. In conversation with the writer of these lines the

desire was expressed that the historically minded people of Ohio

might participate with their northerly neighbors in staging an-

other historical convention on some suitable future occasion.

From this seed was developed the Maumee Valley Interna-

tional Historical Convention of Sept. 27-29, 1940. At a prelimi-

nary conference in Toledo, held in December, 1939, attended by

representatives from Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan, it was deter-

mined to undertake the holding of a joint historical gathering in

the autumn of 1940. The Ontario Historical Society cordially

accepted our invitation to participate in the enterprise, which thus

assumed international dimensions.

Only actual participation in the planning and execution of

such an undertaking would disclose to the reader the many prob-

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MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS            7

lems encountered and the numerous difficulties mastered. Four

great commonwealths, representing two distinct nations and in-

volving dozens of committees and cultural or other organizations,

and the wholly volunteer cooperation of hundreds of individuals

must be enlisted for the enterprise. Even the relatively simple

matter of fixing upon the date for holding the Convention necessi-

tated numerous earnest discussions. In the midst of the planning,

in the spring of 1940, Herr Hitler, without bothering to consult

the committee in charge, suddenly turned the European sitzkrieg

into a blitzkrieg. This development caused a material curtailment

of Ontario's participation in the Convention and sadly confused

the plans of the American participants.

Blitzkriegs notwithstanding, and with nations crashing almost

daily, preparations for the Convention went forward. The gen-

eral plan of organization provided for four state committees, each

of which would supervise the activities within its own state, while

all four united would comprise the General Committee responsible

for organizing and directing the entire Convention. The writer

was made chairman of this committee. From the vantage point

of this conning tower he observed the entire enterprise from be-

ginning to end. Its successful execution constitutes a gratifying

testimonial to the ability of hundreds of individuals and dozens

of local communities and organizations scattered from Toronto to

Indianapolis to combine their efforts, wholly without thought of

individual reward, in a patriotic and cultural enterprise designed

to promote the common good.

The Maumee Valley is rich in scenic beauty and crowded

with historical associations. Here runs one of nature's great high-

ways, connecting the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes and the Missis-

sippi River systems. Here French and British, Indian and Amer-

ican armies have contended for supremacy. Here was constructed

one of the last great canals and one of the earliest railroads of

interior America. Here today centers one of the richest agricul-

tural areas on earth, while within easy one-day automobile drive

lie several of America's greatest cities and the homes of over

20,000,000 people. Here, finally, stretches a rich and colorful his-

8      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

torical past which is the joint possession of the four great com-

monwealths participating in the Convention.

In short, everything conspired to make the affair a "natural,"

and even the weather proved ideal. It is not my purpose to recite

the details of the series of programs which were prepared, but

rather to supply behind-the-scenes comment upon the Convention

as a whole. The feature which overtopped all others was the

willing and unpaid contribution of time and effort by so many

and diverse individuals and organizations. Space is lacking to

mention them all by name; to describe their respective services is

out of the question. Illustrative is the repeated journeys of mem-

bers to attend the sessions of the General Committee at Toledo;

the speakers on the several programs, who contributed gratis both

their service and their travel expenses as well; presidents, pro-

fessors, and students of half a dozen universities and colleges--

Wayne, Michigan, Bowling Green, and Toledo universities, and

Defiance, Oberlin, Concordia, and Michigan State Normal colleges

--prepared historical radio dramas or rendered other comparable

cooperation; the state historical societies and commissions of the

four commonwealths, the Allen County-Fort Wayne, Detroit, and

Northwestern Ohio local historical societies contributed money,

sponsorship, and other services; the chambers of commerce of

Toledo, Defiance, and Fort Wayne; the newpapers of the several

cities in the area, and Radio Station WSPD of Toledo.

The foregoing list is not all-inclusive; it omits the contribu-

tions of Governor John W. Bricker and Adjutant-general Light

of Ohio, of Mr. W. J. Cameron of the Ford Motor Company, of

the J. L. Hudson Company of Detroit which furnished the beau-

tifully printed Convention programs, of the William L. Clements

Library of Ann Arbor, which honored the occasion by printing

and distributing the booklet, The Maumee Valley through Fifty

Years, 1763-1813. It omits also, the patient and painstaking work

of the several local committees in planning for and ministering to

the instruction and entertainment of those in attendance upon the

several Convention programs.

These were of an uniformly high order of excellence. In

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS            9

fact, the writer did not note a single deviation from this charac-

terization in three days of program listening. Dr. Lindley, who

has been attending both popular and professional historical gath-

erings for almost forty years, observed that in all his experience

none had been marked by a greater degree of historical interest

or of scholarly excellence than the one to whose description these

lines are devoted. To single out one program or address for in-

dividual commendation, from a field where all were excellent,

would be both ungracious and invidious; yet it will not seem

improper to express appreciation of the gracious and inspiring

words at the Toledo dinner of our guest from Ontario, Mr. Louis

Blake Duff of Welland, as of the indispensable services of Mr.

Brown Cooper, chairman of the Fort Wayne Local Committee,

Mr. Charles E. Hatch, chairman of the Toledo Local Committee,

and Mr. Ralph W. Peters, chairman of the Defiance Local Com-

mittee, and director of publicity for the entire Convention.

COMMITTEES

General Committee:

M. M. QUAIFE, General Chairman, Detroit

WILLIAM F. LAWLER, Treasurer, Detroit

Indiana Committee:

BROWN COOPER, Chairman, Treasurer Allen County-Fort

Wayne Historical Society

CHARLES N. FULTZ, President Indiana Society of Pioneers,

Indianapolis

THOMAS J. KELLY, Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce

Louis M. SEARS, Purdue University

Louis A. WARREN, Director Lincoln National Life Founda-

tion, Fort Wayne

Ohio Committee:

HARLOW LINDLEY, Chairman, Secretary Ohio State Archaeo-

logical and Historical Society

CHARLES E. HATCH, Secretary Maumee River Scenic and

Historical Highway Association, Toledo

10 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

STANLEY GROVE, Executive Manager Toledo Chamber of

Commerce

RALPH W. PETERS, Editor Defiance Crescent-News

A. J. TOWNSEND, Dean University of Toledo

CARL F. WITTKE, Dean Oberlin College

ERWIN C. ZEPP, Curator of State Memorials Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Society, Columbus

Ontario Committee:

JAMES J. TALMAN, Chairman, President Ontario Historical

Society

J. McE. MURRAY, Secretary Ontario Historical Society

Louis BLAKE DUFF, Welland

M. A. GARLAND, University of Western Ontario

GEORGE F. MACDONALD, Windsor

MISS PEARL WILSON, Secretary Kent County Historical

Society

Michigan Committee:

M. M. QUAIFE, Chairman, Detroit Historical Society

R. CLYDE FORD, President Michigan Historical Commission

F. C. HAMIL, Wayne University

W. F. LAWLER, President Detroit Council on Local History

L. G. VANDER VELDE, University of Michigan

GEORGE N. FULLER, Secretary Michigan Historical Com-

mission

PROGRAM

Friday, September 27

Toledo

6:30 P. M. Dinner, Commodore Perry Hotel Ballroom.

PHILIP C. NASH, Chairman, President University of Toledo.

Announcements: M. M. QUAIFE, Detroit.

Address: "Good Will on Ancient Battlefields," by CARL F.

WITTKE, Dean Oberlin College.

Address: "Good Will in Fields of Peace," by LOUIS BLAKE

DUFF, Welland, Ontario.

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS         11

Saturday, September 28

Fort Wayne

10:30 A. M. Centennial Celebration of City of Fort Wayne

Charter, 1840-1940, City of Fort Wayne and Allen County-

Fort Wayne Historical Society cooperating.

12:30 P.M. Luncheon of Historical Societies, Women's Club

Room, Chamber of Commerce Building.

CHRISTOPHER B. COLEMAN, Chairman, Indianapolis, Secre-

tary Indiana Historical Society.

Welcome to Guests, by MRS. MYRON R. BONE, Fort Wayne,

Member of Indiana Pioneers' Association.

Response, by GEORGE F. MACDONALD, Windsor, Past Presi-

dent Ontario Historical Society.

Address: "Our Glamorous History," by R. CLYDE FORD,

Ypsilanti, President Michigan Historical Commission.

2:00 P.M. Historical Pilgrimage, directed by BROWN COOPER,

President Allen County-Fort Wayne Historical Society.

Pilgrimage stops:

Grave of Johnny Appleseed: Address, by ROBERT C. HARRIS,

Fort Wayne.

Three Rivers Park: Description of Historic Spots, by BROWN

COOPER.

Concordia College Campus: Military pageant.

Lincoln National Life Foundation Museum and Library.

Allen County-Fort Wayne Historical Museum: Reception by

Board of Directors.

6:30 P.M. Harmar Sesquicentennial Dinner, Women's Club

Room.

LOUIS A. WARREN, Chairman, Director Lincoln National Life

Foundation, Fort Wayne.

Harmar Campaign Symposium:

Address: "Lieut. Thomas Morris, a Forerunner of Harmar,"

by HOWARD H. PECKHAM, William L. Clements Library.

Ann Arbor.

Address: "The Indians Who Opposed Harmar," by OTHO

WINGER, President Manchester College, North Manchester,

Ind.

12    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Address: "The Harmar Expedition of 1790" (Illustrated),

by RANDOLPH G. ADAMS, Director William L. Clements

Library, Ann Arbor.

Sunday, September 29

Defiance

JOHN W. CLAXTON, Chairman, President Defiance College.

9:00 A. M. Tour to Historic Sites in Defiance and Vicinity.

10:40 A. M. Band Concert, Defiance High School Stadium.

11:00 A. M. Music by Defiance College A Capella Choir.

Invocation, by W. H. SHEPFER, President Defiance Ministers

Union.

11:15 A.M. Address: "Historic Defiance," by FRANCIS P.

WEISENBURGER, Ohio State University, Columbus.

11:30 A. M. Address: "Religion and the Westward March," by

WILLIAM W. SWEET, University of Chicago.

12:20 P. M. Picnic Lunch on High School Grounds.

1 to 3 P. M. Tour to Fort Meigs Following Route Taken by

General Wayne's Army in 1794.

Sunday, September 29

Fort Meigs

GROVE H. PATTERSON, Chairman, Editor Toledo Blade.

1 to 3 P. M. Military Parade from Toledo to Fort Meigs, Ad-

jutant-general GILSON D. LIGHT of Ohio National Guard,

Commander. Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, Tank, and Music

Units of the National Guard from Toledo and Other

Points in Northwestern Ohio Represented.

3:00 P. M. Address: WILLIAM J. CAMERON, Ford Motor Com-

pany, Dearborn.

3:40 P. M. Address: "Ohio's History in the Place of Our Na-

tional Development," by JOHN W. BRICKER, Governor of

Ohio, Columbus.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

By PHILIP C. NASH

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

It is my very great pleasure and honor to declare open the

sessions of the Maumee Valley International Historical Conven-

tion.

It was 146 years ago that the Battle of Fallen Timbers was

fought, and all the events that we are commemorating in this

Convention occurred more than a century ago.

There has been an orderly and gradual development of civili-

zation in this neighborhood and in this country ever since those

days, until we find here in 1940 a free people living in a peaceful

democracy, joining with their neighbors across the Lake not as

with persons from a foreign country but as with friends from the

next town to celebrate the reunion, and to bind more securely

the ties of friendship.

It is unfortunately true that just as those Indians and fron-

tiersmen of a century and a half ago were to some extent the

pawns of a chess game played in far away Europe, so our meet-

ing tonight is influenced by a threat to civilization itself that has

sprung up in Europe. One immediate effect is that our country

in its defense preparations has thought it necessary to require a

passport for entrance from Canada, not because we have any fear

from the Canadians themselves but because of fifth column ac-

tivities, and so it has been hard for some of our Canadian friends

to be with us tonight. I greatly regret this red tape and fervently

hope that soon all persons may cross our mutual boundaries again

with the brief and inconsequential formalities that I have experi-

enced in my many visits to Canada.

It is the function of the historian, in mulling over the events

of the past, to better prepare himself and his contemporaries to

meet the problems of the present and the future. I hope that

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14    OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

this may be our function at this Convention. Especially may

we recall that ten short years ago many of us thought that world

organization had developed to the point where perhaps interna-

tional wars in the world had disappeared. Mankind was under-

taking a wonderful experiment in complete government of the

whole world. The League of Nations was truly the hope of the

human race.

Alas, how disillusioned we have been. The tragic mistakes

of our country and the other democracies in not taking some of

the risks of peace, in giving only lip service to the ideals of

world organization, are having terrible consequences. The peoples

of the earth must learn, at what awful price I do not know, that

Benjamin Franklin's advice to the early patriots, "We must all

hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately," applies to

nations as well as to persons.

We of this country are not in the actual conflict for the

survival of freedom and democracy. But as all freedom and

justice, and decent human respect is being lost in Germany, Poland,

Austria, Czechoslovakia, and now Norway, Denmark and Holland,

we are rapidly coming to see that we have a vital stake in events

and we are giving more and more help to Britain. Where the path

will lead us in the months and years to come, no one can foretell,

but the human spirit has always longed for the liberty and justice

of democracy and eventually, even if it be after a hundred or

even five hundred years of conflict and despair, eventually

democracy will be the way of life of the human race.

GOOD WILL ON ANCIENT BATTLEGROUNDS

By CARL WITTKE

In Dr. Quaife's announcement of plans for the Maumee Val-

ley International Historical Convention, I found the title and the

theme for my address this evening. The purpose of the Conven-

tion, in the words of its general chairman, is "to cultivate and

deepen our pride in the historical heritage which is the common

possession of . . . four great commonwealths . . ."; and "to

assemble in pleasant association men and women of good will, rep-

resenting the two great North American democracies, on the

scenes of their ancient battlegrounds, there to strengthen the ties

of peace and concord which now for a century and a quarter have

maintained inviolate the world's longest unguarded frontier."

We meet on historic ground. The area to be traversed by

the historical pilgrimage which begins here in Toledo tonight was

one of the ancient battlegrounds in the long struggle between

Britain and France for possession of the interior of America.

Long-standing enmities, arising from the rivalries of European

diplomacy, were transferred in the 18th century to the New World,

where the interlocking and overlapping of colonial claims furnished

new causes for conflict. More than two centuries ago, the French

founded posts and settlements on the Wabash and along the

northern tributaries of the Ohio, and by the 1740's, they claimed

the whole Ohio and Great Lakes basin. In their birch canoes,

French fur traders floated down these lakes and forest streams

and established supply bases at such strategic points as Detroit

and developed little farms near-by to furnish pork and beans and

corn-meal for the French voyageurs. British fur traders, on the

other hand, tried hard to divert the fur trade of the Great Lakes

region from Montreal and Quebec to British posts, and the fur

trade, with all its attendant advantages and evils, became an im-

portant factor in the deadly rivalry between the English and

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16     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

French for the interior of North America. French plans in-

cluded a chain of forts from the head of the Maumee down to the

Wabash in order to protect the vital line of communications be-

tween Louisiana and Canada and to counteract English influence

in the Ohio country, and throughout the 18th century, French and

English rivalry centered along this Maumee-Wabash route.

In 1763, France, by the arbitrament of war, lost her claims to

the area east of the Mississippi. The rivalry between the French

and the English had always been marked by Indian wars and

massacres, in which it would be difficult to apportion the respon-

sibility fairly. But now, the transfer of sovereignty over the

Indian country to the British increased the anxiety of the Indians

to such proportions that it finally burst forth in the famous

Pontiac's Conspiracy, in which many of the chief events were

enacted in this section of the Northwest.

The end of the French regime foreshadowed the end of the

beneficent rule of the king of France over his dusky forest chil-

dren. As the tribes' kindly father, he had sent them priests and

presents. It was not difficult to contrast the red flag of Britain,

as a symbol of ruthless power, with the white lilies of France.

Control of Detroit gave the English command of the passage from

Lake Erie to the upper Lakes; the Indians could not fathom the

meaning of such startling changes of policy, and the British soldier

had little talent for explaining the new situation to the puzzled

Indians. When Major Robert Rogers started west with 200 men

in fifteen whale boats to effect the transfer of the northwestern

posts from the French to the British flag, his route carried him

along the south shore of Lake Erie. On November 29, 1760, the

white flag of France was hauled down at Detroit and Major Henry

Gladwin was left to defend the newly acquired British post.

The bewildered and rebellious Indians found a leader in

Pontiac, an able chieftain who had fought Braddock, and under

the French flag with Montcalm. Presently the frontier was ablaze

with Pontiac's Conspiracy and within a few weeks, every post

west of Niagara in the Great Lakes country, with the exception

of Detroit, fell before Indian treachery or Indian attack. The list

included Fort Sandusky, commanded by Ensign Paully, and Fort

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS           17

Miami, on the Maumee, commanded by Ensign Holmes. But the

tribesmen were eventually pacified and forced to accept British

sovereignty. Pontiac's Conspiracy marked the end of another

protest of the backwoods against intruding civilization and, inci-

dentally, provided one reason for the British ministry's decision

to keep a standing army in America and to impose taxes on the

colonies for its support.

In 1774, the region where we meet today, became a part of

the French-Canadian province of Quebec, to be administered

thereafter as part of Canada. From Quebec, nearly a century

earlier, had gone such French explorers as Marquette and Jolliet

and La Salle to claim this West for France and to scatter little

French settlements throughout the Ohio Valley. The Quebec Act

of 1774, from the British standpoint, was a masterpiece of states-

manship, for it saved Canada for the British during the American

Revolution.  Because "sedition and treason, like tobacco and

potatoes," in the words of a British attorney-general, were "the

peculiar growth of the American soil," England was eager to sat-

isfy the French Canadians and retain their loyalty to the British

connection at a time when the thirteen seaboard colonies were

seething with discontent. The Quebec Act was passed "with an

eye to Boston." American colonials denounced it as one of the

worst of the "coercive" and "intolerable" acts leading to revolu-

tion, for it deprived them of their claims to the trans-Appalachian

region and established Roman Catholicism and autocratic govern-

ment at their very back doors. Nevertheless, the Quebec Act, in

the words of the late Professor Alvord, was "one of the few states-

manlike measures of the ministry." For all its denial of an elective

assembly, the act "embodied a new sovereign principle of the

British Empire: the liberty of non-English peoples to be them-

selves." Canada remained loyal to the Empire during the Ameri-

can Revolution. The Quebec Act kept Canada British by allowing

it to remain French. Thus, it legally recognized and perpetuated

that French nationalism which to this day is a vital factor in

almost every phase of the life of the Canadian Dominion.

In 1783, as a result of the American Revolution, the North-

west was transferred from British sovereignty to the United States.

18     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

What influence the daring exploits of George Rogers Clark at

Vincennes and elsewhere had on this transfer need not concern us

here. Historians are still debating the issue, but none deny that

Clark's exploits will remain one of the most romantic episodes in

American history. For twelve years after the United States was

recognized as an independent nation, the new Federal Government

was engaged in controversy with the British over the ownership

and control of the Northwest posts. England refused to surrender

them and justified her failure to observe the Treaty of 1783 by the

countercharge that the United States had violated its provisions

concerning the loyalists and British debts. As a matter of fact,

the international boundary fixed by the Treaty of 1783 had no

political meaning until thirteen years later, and little economic

significance for even longer. Michigan, to take but one example,

was for decades merely a part of a great commercial and economic

system to which the St. Lawrence River was the key, and its local

history had little meaning in these early years unless related to this

international and transcontinental system.

The British commander at Detroit worked hard to retain con-

trol of the fur trade of the Maumee Valley and the upper Wabash,

and to maintain peace among the Indians so that there might not

be a second frontier tragedy like Pontiac's Conspiracy. The Amer-

icans regarded British policy as an attempt to incite the Indians

against the American frontiersmen, and for several decades, the

record of British-American relations is one of mutual distrust.

There is little doubt about the desire of Canadian leaders for an

Indian barrier south of the Lakes and north of the Ohio. Lord

Dorchester, governor of Canada, held an Indian council at the

Maumee Rapids to preserve peace among the Indians, and Colonel

John Graves Simcoe, of Upper Canada, had similar plans to

mediate in Indian affairs to prevent the American advance down

the Maumee Valley, and at one time actually proposed that the

United States cede Detroit to Canada.

Tomorrow you will travel over some of the ground made

famous by the ill-fated expedition of St. Clair, the first governor

of the Northwest Territory, against the Indians, and you will visit

the scene of Anthony-Wayne's invasion of the Maumee country

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL. PROCEEDINGS    19

and his famous victory over the Indians at Fallen Timbers. When

Wayne marched northward f from Fort Recovery to build Fort

Defiance, he might easily have proceeded to attack a new fort

recently erected by the British on the Maumee. Wayne defeated

the Indians at Fallen Timbers and demanded the surrender of the

British fort, but finally refrained from attacking it and moved on

to build Fort Wayne in the Wabash Valley instead. In August,

1795, Wayne concluded the famous Treaty of Greenville. Re-

cently, an "Altar of Peace" to symbolize the kindling of the

council fire at Wayne's headquarters was dedicated at Greenville,

Ohio, in commemoration of the treaty which closed forty years

of warfare with the tribes in the Old Northwest and opened the

floodgates to western immigration. In 1796, the British evacuated

the Northwest posts and Wayne's army advanced to accept the

transfer of Detroit from British to American control. Malden, in

Canada, now became the rendezvous for large numbers of Ameri-

can Indians who went each year from the Wabash villages to deal

with British and Canadian fur traders.

Peaceful relations between the United States and Canada were

again interrupted by the War of 1812, one of the most unsatisfac-

tory episodes in the long story of Anglo-American relations. The

war was not desired by the British; it was unpopular with a large

element in the United States; it began after its alleged causes no

longer existed; it ended with a peace treaty that made no reference

to these causes; and the one respectable American military victory

was won after peace had been concluded. Neither British nor

American historians can point with much pride to the events of

the war, but Canadians cherish its memories because of their heroic

and successful defense of their long frontiers against the invader

from the south. American imperialism, as manifested in the

desire for territorial expansion at the expense of Canada, comes

nearer to explaining the war than any other cause.

Here, in this general neighborhood, the year before war was

declared, William Henry Harrison fought Tecumseh's Indians at

the Shawnee village of Tippecanoe on the Wabash. At Detroit,

General Hull surrendered after a long march from Urbana through

the Maumee country and across the border into Canada. The next

20    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

year, General Harrison, whose army had been assembled at Fort

Meigs on the lower Maumee and on the Portage and Sandusky

rivers, successfully fought the British and the Indians at the Battle

of the Thames after Commodore Perry had won control of the

Lake, and thus brought peace to the Ohio, Indiana and Michigan

frontiers.

The war was a terrible blunder, unnecessary and avoidable.

But Canadian victories became the "title deeds of Canadian

nationality" and "the blood pledge of the birth of a nation." The

development of modern Canadian nationalism in a real sense be-

gins with Canada's experiences in the War of 1812. The War

gave the United States one more lesson that British North America

was not for sale, and that Canada did not propose to change her

allegiance at the call of a foreigner, even when the invader was

a blood brother from the south. The war had one laudable after-

math. Almost before the smell of powder had disappeared along

the Canadian-American boundary, England and the United States

concluded the famous Rush-Bagot disarmament agreement of 1817

inaugurating an era of peace along three thousand miles of un-

defended frontier. After more than a century and a quarter, that

agreement stands more secure than ever, as a glorious lesson in

the practical benefits of real disarmament based on mutual good

will.

In 1837, Canadians experienced a brief, abortive rebellion in

their struggle for responsible government. The rebellion was the

result not so much of a deliberate, tyrannical policy of England,

but rather of misgovernment and corruption by local cliques in

Quebec and Toronto. For several years, the border remained in

an uproar. So-called "Hunters' Lodges" sprang up along the

frontier from Vermont to Michigan and tried to impose repub-

licanism upon Canada from without. Rebel sympathizers appeared

in the Middle West to incite American Republicans against British

rule in Canada and several boats were captured, laden with sup-

plies and muskets, taken from the Detroit jail. Two invasions of

Windsor from Detroit ended in failure, but as late as December,

1838, four hundred "Hunters" marched through Detroit, and

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS         21

crossed over to the Canadian side where they set fire to some

Canadian shipping.

Almost simultaneously, Ohio and Michigan were fighting their

famous, if ludicrous, Toledo War. We meet on bloody ground

tonight, for near this spot, a little more than a century ago Ohio

and Michigan mobilized their forces to settle a boundary dispute

which was the product of a bad map drawn in 1755, and which

involved a strip of land seven miles at its western and eleven miles

at its eastern end, stretching across Ohio from its present western

boundary to Lake Erie. Governor Lucas of Ohio mobilized 10,000

militia to defend this area, and the "boy governor" of Michigan

announced he would welcome them to "hospitable graves." Bad

maps have produced a lot of history. The Ohio militia encamped

at old Fort Miami, but the fighting was mainly confined to the use

of fists in "The Toledo War" over "The Black Swamp" of the

Maumee basin. The excitement spread to Vistula, Port Lawrence,

Tremainsville and Monroe, and the files of the old Toledo Gazette,

the Michigan Sentinel, and the Detroit Free Press tell the story in

all its gory details. Ohioans were denounced as "nullifiers" by

their Michigan opponents, while Governor Lucas' paper thundered

that "Michigan must be taught to understand that even the lion,

in the nobleness of his nature, can be provoked to the assumption

of his rights."

Thanks to the politicians, the controversy was settled by com-

promise on the eve of a national election, when, as John Quincy

Adams said, the air was "perfumed" with electoral votes. And

so it was that Ohio got the four hundred square miles of disputed

territory, including the outlet of the Maumee, and Michigan re-

ceived 9,000 square miles in the Upper Peninsula, which Detroit-

ers at the time described as a region so "sterile" that it was

"destined by soil and climate to remain forever a wilderness."

Early in 1837, Detroit celebrated the admission of Michigan

as a state, with a "grand illumination," consisting of a tallow

candle set in every window of the Michigan frontier town. Toledo

celebrated her victory in the Ohio-Michigan boundary controversy

eight months earlier with a parade and a tremendous dinner at

22     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

the old Mansion House, featured by twenty-six toasts, after the

virile and bibulous fashion of our ancestors.

I pass over other incidents in the history of the Maumee Val-

ley, and in the long story of Canadian-American relations, includ-

ing several foolhardy attempts by misguided enthusiasts in the

United States to lure Canada from her British allegiance, in order

to consider one final incident, the American Civil War in its effect

upon the relations of these neighbor states.

The Civil War preserved the unity of the American Republic.

It also helped build the Canadian confederation, and thus it made

nations of both the United States and Canada.

Within a few months of the outbreak of the American Civil

War, Canada's attitude had changed from one of friendliness and

sympathy for the North to one of suspicion, fear, and anger. This

was partly due to the strained relations that had developed between

the United States and Great Britain as a result of controversies

over neutral rights, blockade, shipping, contraband, and the rec-

ognition of southern belligerency by the British Government.

Another reason was the bluster of American politicians and the

jingoism of American newspapers who advocated that the losses

due to southern secession be balanced by the annexation of Canada.

As the war progressed, Confederate agents and refugees

gathered on Canadian soil to plot attacks upon the northern border.

Confederate agents operating in Canada financed various ventures

to burn shipping on the Great Lakes, to free the Confederate

prisoners on Johnson's Island near Sandusky, to raid various Lake

ports, to capture steamers on Lake Erie, to seize the U.S.S.

Michigan at Sandusky, and to sink shipping in the Detroit River.

Rumors spread in 1863-1864 that a hundred Confederates had left

Toronto for a raid across the Detroit River, and thousands were

ordered to man the Lake steamers for action against Confederate

agents. A fourteen pounder was shipped from Guelph, Upper

Canada, to a port in Michigan in a box marked "potatoes," and

Confederate agents plotted to get the support of the Copperheads

who were especially strong in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

The Civil War was followed by a long period of controversy

in Anglo-American relations, by the repeal of the Canadian-

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS         23

American reciprocity agreement of 1854, by the threat to end

disarmament along the border, and by an actual invasion of Canada

by Irish-Americans who thought they could advance Ireland's

independence by twisting the tail of the British lion in Canada.

The Chicago Tribune, in January, 1866, regretted that Canada

had not been taken during the last war with England and an-

nounced that if the chance ever presented itself again, she would

"be snatched up by this Republic as quickly as a hawk would

gobble a quail." Radical Republicans, such as Chandler of Michi-

gan and Stanton of Ohio, favored annexing Canada. The former

introduced a resolution in 1869 to the effect that "the true solu-

tion of all the controversies between Great Britain and the United

States will be found in a surrender of all British possessions in

North America to the people of the United States," and represen-

tatives from Ohio and Illinois argued that it was "fated," "under

heaven," "that the American flag shall wave over every foot of

this American continent in course of time."

The Civil War made Canada fear the United States and look

to her defenses, particularly in her undeveloped western areas,

which were already being drawn within the economic orbit of

San Francisco, and were in danger of being overrun by American

immigrants surging westward across the prairies. It was fear of

the United States, as well as the example of the United States,

which stimulated the formation of the present day Canadian

federation, and decisively affected its form.

After 1874, a calm unknown for a quarter century descended

upon Canadian-American relations. The United States was busy

with hard times and political scandals; Canadian confederation

was accepted as an accomplished fact, and annexation ceased to

be advocated, at least in responsible quarters.

May I close these remarks, I hope not altogether inappropri-

ately, by commenting briefly on present day Canadian-American

relations now that Canada is again involved in a great Empire

War. It was Andre Siegfried who said that all of North American

life is the result of the struggle against two axes--the North--South

axis of geography, and the East-West axis of history. This is

particularly true of Canada, whose allegiance to the mother coun-

24     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

try is deep and genuine, but many of whose interests are with the

United States. Fear and dislike of the United States, at least in

past years, have been the foundation of her national feeling.

Canada's anomalous position has at times made her hard to live

with, both for Great Britain and the United States. Her loyalties

pull in one direction; her interests often in another.

The Canadian Dominion has achieved a recognized sovereign

status internationally by developing her national sovereignty, not

in complete isolation, but within the British Commonwealth of

Nations. To a large measure, her fear of being absorbed or domi-

nated by her powerful neighbor to the south has been responsible

for this choice. At the same time, American and Canadian cul-

ture, existing side by side in these days of rapid and complete

intercommunication, is bound to make these two peoples more

alike.

There are many Canadians who still feel a certain mortifica-

tion because the United States and Canada are not equals in power

and influence, and these people sometimes seek compensation for

their inferiority feeling by pointing out, with considerable justifica-

tion, the superiority of Canadian judicial procedures over Ameri-

can "corrupt" judges, "shyster" lawyers and "sentimental" juries,

or by stressing Canadian superiority in all the primary virtues, such

as honesty, religion, and morality.

Unfortunately, there is a Canadian stereotype of Americans,

perhaps largely due to American newspapers, magazines, and films,

from which it is easy to infer that the United States is a boastful,

erratic, and irresponsible nation of racketeers, tree- and flag-pole

sitters, dance marathoners, bridge hounds, and seekers after pub-

licity. If Canadians frequently give little recognition to the great-

ness and generous qualities of the American people, Americans

contribute to the super-sensitiveness of Canadians by their colossal

ignorance of Canadian history, and their boastful comments upon

everything that is "bigger and better" in the United States.

It is conceivable that Canada's importance may so increase in

the years ahead that she may well become the heart of the British

Empire. Nature has made Canada a liaison nation between the

United States and Great Britain. Our Monroe Doctrine, in times

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS           25

of international crisis, is a guarantee of Canadian nationhood.

Canada's almost inevitable participation in Europe's wars, even

though it be by her own free choice, makes isolation for the United

States so difficult that the Monroe Doctrine may well become, in

this sense, an entangling alliance for the United States. Canada

has remained and will remain British. At the same time, she is

steadily becoming more North American. Will she eventually

join the Pan-American Union, and thus merge the Pax Britannica

into a Pax Americana?

For more than a century and a quarter, we have been at peace.

It has been a "peace with friction," but mutual good will and

common sense have always triumphed in the end. In the routine

of every-day life, the international boundary has been practically

non-existent, and as the flow of population proceeded from East

to West, pioneering was far more important than politics. Before

1837, swarms of Americans crossed the boundary to settle down

and seek a livelihood in British North America; since 1837, popu-

lation flowed southward from Canada into the United States, and

Canadians joined with American pioneers in settling the Mis-

sissippi Valley. Canada had no Middle West of her own because

the inhospitable Laurentian shield deflected the tide of Canadian

settlement to the south of the Lakes into the United States, and so

Canadians shared in clearing the forests of Michigan, in turning

the prairie sod of the Mississippi states, and in building the rail-

roads running into Chicago. In every period, from the days of the

Loyalists of the American Revolution to the recent American

invasion of the Dominion's western wheat belt, Americans have

likewise shared in the building of the Canadian Dominion. Indeed,

there are some North American families that have changed

political allegiance once every generation since 1750. Not until

1933, as a result of the war and the depression, was any systematic

effort made to curb the free interchange of population between

Canada and the United States, and we may assume that present

restrictions will be only temporary.

"Good fences make good neighbors," but better than fences

is the spirit of mutual respect and good will which motivates the

relations of the two great self-governing nations that have devel-

26    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

oped from common Anglo-Saxon origins on this North American

continent. The spirit of our peoples springs from an unshakable

devotion to the principles of human freedom and democratic living,

and in the words of Matthew Arnold, "What attaches people to

us is the spirit we are of, not the machinery we employ."

GOOD WILL IN FIELDS OF PEACE

By Louis BLAKE DUFF

We hear in these September days the clock of destiny click,

the clock of your destiny, the clock of Canadian destiny, the

clock of world destiny. A momentous month draws to a close.

In it your role and ours has been changed. By one stroke there

has been made a new relationship and may no evil fate ever dis-

turb it. There sprang up, overnight almost, a new doctrine that

the defense of the North American continent is one single defense,

and cannot be divided into a defense of Canada, and a defense

of the United States. Of the immediate practical value of fifty

destroyers to Great Britain (by the way we Canadians peeled

off half a dozen of them as they passed through), it is not

necessary to say anything. It is so self-evident. It is more

profitable to assess the moral gain. It was no mere bargaining

of bases for bottoms. It was a new, a most powerful, a most

striking symbol of the essential unity of the English-speaking

peoples. Proof again that though we travel each in our own way

it is to the same goal, guided by the same eternal stars of liberty,

of human freedom, of truth, of justice.

The greatest of all Britishers the other day made comment

on this new relationship of ours and yours. He did not view

the process with any misgivings. He had no wish to stop it.

"No one," he said, "can stop it." Like the Mississippi it "just

keeps rolling along."  Let it roll. Let it roll on in full flood,

inexorable, irresistible, to broader lands and better days. In those

words speaking for every son of Britain, for every Canadian, for

every citizen of the wide Empire he put the seal upon our new

relationship. We are all on the note. Long ago when he was

a young man the prime minister wrote a motto for his country.

It is so like him and so like his country! "In war--resolution;

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28     OHIO ARCAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

in defeat--defiance; in victory--magnanimity; in peace--good-

will."

"In defeat--defiance!"

The disaster in Belgium, the emergence behind the German

wolf of the Italian jackal, the debacle in France--disaster fol-

lowed fast and followed faster, but the spirit of Britain came to

its full flowering in the citadel of Calais and on the beaches of

Dunkerque, and lo! the spiritual glories of the Elizabethan age

were back again. What other race on earth, well aware of the

odds and the gravest danger, isolated to fight, would utter a great

sigh of relief that all had abandoned it, and say to itself, "Well,

thank goodness for that; now we know where we are"? And the

British spirit rose from that day. "God be thanked that He has

matched us to His hour." Drake's drum was heard again. "We'll

drum them up the channel as we drummed them long ago." Brit-

ish wings took the air, and Canadian wings, yes and United States

wings--and the Teuton tide was stopped. No man has ever wisely

doubted the British navy.

* little land of England,

* Mother of hearts too brave,

Men say this trust shall pass from thee

Who guardest Nelson's grave.

Aye, the braggarts yet shall learn

Who would hold the world in fee

That the sea is God's

And England, England shall keep it free.

Keep it free with the great help of fifty American destroyers,

equipped to the last scuttleful of coal.

Of the airforce Churchill said, "Never in the world's history

have so many been indebted to so few." It is a growing force,

growing in personnel (it could never grow in valor), growing in

machines. It is in this regard that I make mention of my country,

your neighbor at war. I tell you we aim to confront the beast

though it takes the last man and the last dollar. Three hundred

and forty-two million raised last week in a war loan; nearly as

much raised in January of this year. No small nation, I think,

was ever before slated to play so large a role.

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS         29

There has been established as you know, 120 air training

schools in Canada, where is being trained an air army from

Canada, from Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia. I have

not mentioned all the countries represented. One day this week

a group of American publishers on tour of Canada to see into

our war effort, met at one school a group of 35 flight lieutenants

who are citizens of your country. I knew from the beginning

the fighting airforce, its purpose and aims so well known, would

make its appeal beyond the borders of our country. Whole cities

have been built up about three training centers. Overnight they

grew; overnight they were populated-and with what result?

By January next, the graduates will be double the number in the

original estimates. Canada is heartened. Britain is heartened.

You, I know, are heartened too. Canadians have already shown

their skill and mettle in that war that rages above the greatest city

in the world. In two weeks the Canadian air squadron has brought

cown in the London fight over one hundred German planes. That

is a certainty. Probabilities bring the score to one hundred and

seventy-five.

Free men rallied from every quarter of the globe to aid the

brotherhood (for the Empire is a brotherhood) in its hour of

grave peril. That is the answer to those who see in British rule

an oppressive yoke. The British Empire is not an Empire in the

old Asiatic or even the Roman sense. It is a brotherhood of free

men and states united in various stages of complete independence

by the belief in liberty under law. Among free men the loathing

of war is the most powerful, the most general, the most constant

of political emotions. We are fighting not in spite of our hatred

of war but because of it. We are not fighting in obedience to the

orders of our government; our government is fighting in obedience

to our orders. We shall continue to fight until the job is done or

we are. Fighting for what? To preserve a way of life that we

value above life. The nature and quality of that life can be

stated simply--good faith, tolerance, loyalty to our stars, mercy

to the weak, equal justice for all, the ordinary decencies and

humanities. There you have the essence of it. So too is the

30     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

freedom to speak freely one's own thoughts, to obey one's own

conscience, to do one's duty as one sees it; to live under a gov-

ernment which one has a voice in making or unmaking.

And finally--as to relations between states. Free men build

them to be friendly and frank, honest and stable, that men and

women may live, work, bring up their families, make their con-

tribution to the common human heritage without the risk that

some criminal or neurotic, seizing the controls of the frightful

machine of war, may scatter in an hour all they have spent their

lives in building. This democratic ideal is the noblest political

vision known to man. It assumes the worth and dignity of the

human personality as an end in itself. Its struggle has been long,

for the battle of brute force against the conscience of mankind

began the day that conscience was born.

But Freedom's battle, once begun,

Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,

Though baffled oft, is ever won.

A great American said a few weeks ago that no one could

conceive the blotting out of a nation that had given the world

such prophets as Shakespeare, and Milton, Shelley and Keats

Dickens and Thackeray, Goldsmith and Yeates, Burns and Scott.

I caught this in a broadcast by Duff-Cooper: Britain has made

two great gifts to the world--the spirit of freedom; books. One

nourishes the other; both have nourished free men the world

over.

"The battle of freedom is ever won."

The spirit of freedom is unquenchable, eternal. That is why

I do not believe, Herr Schickelgruber, that a monstrous wrong,

a colossal lie, a gigantic murder, is to have an ultimate and per-

manent success.

OUR GLAMOROUS HISTORY

By R. CLYDE FORD

A long time ago Pericles once said in a memorial day ad-

dress outside the walls of Athens that it was fitting to remember

the dead who had fallen on the fields of battle, but also Athenians

must never forget by what principles of action and deeds of valor

Athens had risen to power and become great. When we turn to

our own history we can discover principles of action, and deeds

of valor to defend them, that stir our souls. It's that thrill that

constitutes the glamor of our history.

I have been reading anew the story of our Revolution, and

I have felt as never before that our emergence from that struggle

as a free and independent people is one of the miracles in the

long, long narrative of human progress. And I am afraid that

in the teaching of the history of that period and of later times,

also, we have turned away from any real glorification of our

achievements, as if to display such enthusiasm was unscholarly

and unscientific. We have even leaned so far over backwards

in that attitude that some of our historians have displayed more

zeal in debunking trifles than in magnifying greatness. Under a

worked-up feeling of disillusionment following the outcome of

the Great War, plus the havoc of the lean years of the Great

Depression, speakers, teachers, preachers, writers have been in-

clined to lament how capitalism, poverty, lack of opportunity

were robbing us of our birthright as a free people. Our books

of history, civics, and political and social economy were quick to

reflect this and were streaked with pessimism, not to say social-

ism and radicalism. To own up quickly to being a Son of the

American Revolution was regarded as naive, for the causes of

that struggle were now discredited; our War of 1812 was unneces-

sary and ill-advised, and a retired admiral has recently said that

we lost it; and one may hear from the pulpit that before we pour

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32     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

out our wrath on Hitler for the rape of Poland, or on Japan for

her war on China, we should go back to our own Mexican War

which was also an offense against civilization. We must not be

too proud, either, of our ancestors who starved at Valley Forge,

or fought with Perry on Lake Erie, or stormed Chepultepec, or

took their covered wagons across the plains and mountains to the

Pacific. No! Forget the past, and turn our faces toward the

future where all wrongs are to be righted!

Well, in my opinion that attitude is both foolish and fatal.

As a people, young though we are, we have a proud heritage, and

it should not be reserved for Fourth of July orators alone to

recall it. We, and our children and our children's children,

should be nurtured in it. What is better calculated to awaken a

feeling of pride in ourselves as citizens of a great republic than

to be reminded till we everlastingly remember how our fore-

fathers on this continent struggled and carried on till they won

through? Softness won't get us anywhere. Stamina, courage,

high resolve, unceasing vigilance and toil are the qualities which

exalt and save a nation. As Walter Lippman says, "The con-

sciousness of greatness can be preserved only by the memory of

greatness." That is why we are lauding the memory of General

Anthony Wayne throughout the length of the Maumee Valley and

in this city of Fort Wayne which, let us hope, will be a monument

to his name forever.

The setting up of the Northwest Territory by our Federal

Government was an event of far-reaching consequences in our

expansion westward beyond the Alleghenies. Let me for a mo-

ment recall the salient historical facts connected with the found-

ing of this empire, or better, maybe, of this great province of an

empire, for the vague region called the Northwest occupied the

valley of the Ohio and that expanse of country northwards to

the remotest confines of the Great Lakes. The French had owned

it to begin with, and understood its strategic importance, and

dotted over it were posts and forts which they had planted. When

French supremacy and sovereignty were surrendered at the close

of the French and Indian War by the Treaty of Paris in 1763,

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          33

the vast region became British and was occupied, in part at least,

as early as 1760. A British fort was located here at the forks of

the Maumee in that year, but it was captured in 1763 by Pontiac's

Indian allies and was never reestablished. However, British in-

fluence gradually penetrated and dominated the country and won

over the allegiance of the Indian tribes. From the settlement of

Miami villages on the site of the city of Fort Wayne, Miami

Town, as the English called it, war parties set out to harry

the western border all through the period of the Revolution. In

that conflict the only bright spot in the history of the Northwest

was George Rogers Clark's taking of Kaskaskia and Cahokia,

climaxed by the spectacular capture of Vincennes, and along with

it, of Governor Hamilton, the "Hair Buyer." Up to date, no

one, as far as I know, has attempted to whitewash the record of

Governor Hamilton and argue that his hair-buying zeal was only

a scientific interest in the various types of the American coiffure.

When the Revolution was over in 1783, and the second

Treaty of Paris gave us the entire Northwest extending to the

Mississippi and Lake Superior, our difficulties commenced in

earnest. The advancing tide of settlement was irritating to the

Indians, and the British refused to withdraw from the country,

taking refuge behind what they claimed were the vague pro-

visions of the treaty. Detroit, their western capital, and their

trading posts on the Maumee, and Fort Miami on the river near

present-day Toledo, toward the end of their occupation, were a

spearhead of influence in the Indian country. Their propaganda

was effective: the Ohio River ought to be the boundary between

the Americans and the Indians of the Northwest. This was

welcome support, for the Indians had long made this their con-

tention.

As I have said, the Revolution ended in 1783, and the Con-

tinental Congress began at once to toy with the troublesome ques-

tion of how to administer this vast region. In 1780 Congress

pledged that if the various states would renounce their territorial

claims founded on their old charters, these lands should be dis-

34     OHIO ARCAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

posed of for the common good, and be admitted into statehood

on an equality with the original thirteen states.

In 1784 Jefferson proposed a fantastic plan of government,

cutting up the Territory like a checker-board by meridians and

parallels. The resulting areas were to be states for which he had

devised "highfalutin' " classical names. I wonder if you know,

ladies and gentlemen, that your city of Fort Wayne is located

somewhere near the interlocking corners of Assenisipia, Illinoia,

Mesopotamia and Saratoga?

But Jefferson was not alone in his whimsy of names. Our

University of Michigan is a successor of the Catholepistemiad, or

University of Michigan, where the professors were called didac-

tors, and a chair of learning a didaxia. A man who taught

literature was a didactor of Anthropoglossica; if it was historical

science, he was professor of Diegitica. If he was a little more

ambitious, he might hold the chair of Ennoeica, "embracing all

epistemiim or sciences relative to the mind of animals, to the

human mind, to spiritual existences, to the deity, and to religion,

the didactor of which shall be vice-president of the institution."

With all the personified learning that has come to the Uni-

versity of Michigan, no one has yet been found to qualify for

that position.

In 1785 Congress made a provision to survey the lands of

the Territory and at once settlers began to move in.

But it was the famous Ordinance of 1787 which gave a

practical constitution of government to the Northwest Territory.

Our Declaration of Independence was a great document; the

Constitution, as written in blood and iron, was an immortal docu-

ment; but we must not forget that the Ordinance of 1787 "set

forth for the first time in unified form the essence of American

thought as to the relations of our government to the rights of

man--the crystalized expression of what America had fought for

--the principles under which the people willed to live."

For temporary government the whole Territory was to be

regarded as one district, with a governor, a secretary, and three

judges appointed by Congress. Until a legislature could be

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          35

elected, these officials were to set up a body of laws adopted

from the eastern states, subject to the approval of Congress.

When 5000 male votes were registered in the Territory, a legis-

lature was to be called into existence. In October of 1787 Gen-

eral Arthur St. Clair was made first governor, and in July of

that year came on to Marietta, the seat of the Territorial gov-

ernment.

Washington entered upon his second term   as President,

March 4, 1793. His first term had been successful, but he had

had his troubles at home and abroad. Not the least of his worries

centered around the turbulent conditions which existed in the

Northwest Territory. More and more settlers were venturing

into the valley of the Ohio; the British still held the border

posts and were constantly irritating and obnoxious; and the

Indians were vindictive and war-like, encouraged by the British

and provoked by the Americans. As an example of the way we

fell upon our knees and then upon the aborigines, as Macaulay

says, a hundred frontiersmen in 1782 cruelly butchered a whole

village of Christian Indians in the Ohio country west of Pitts-

burgh. The next year the Indians retaliated by defeating Colonel

Crawford and burning him at the stake. Things went on from

bad to worse, and Washington, not unmindful of the rights and

grievances of the tribes, still felt in duty bound to repress them

in the interest of the whole country. There could be no success-

ful colonization in the new Territory without it. And another

thing: he feared that the governor of the Territory, General St.

Clair, lacked those qualities that a proconsul should have on the

border marches of a republic. He had no real genius for ad-

ministration of Indians or white men.

It is the fateful year of 1791 and Governor St. Clair, who is

also commander-in-chief of the army of the United States, is

leading his troops into the Indian country toward the head of the

Maumee Valley. His mission is to subdue the defiant Indians

once for all. Only the year before they had defeated General

Harmar on this very spot, and then Scott, and then Wilkinson,

and now General Arthur St. Clair is to retrieve these disasters.

36     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

He is encamped with 1400 men on a branch of the Wabash some

fifty miles or so from where we are today. The Indian onslaught

began on the 4th of November, and when the attack was over

650 of St. Clair's men were dead. Thirty women, too, out of

two hundred, for his army "had taken along as many women

as cared to sleep on the snow-covered ground among a host of

border hoodlums." (Boyd.)

It was the worst defeat our armies have ever suffered at

the hands of the Indians, not excepting even the battle of Little

Big Horn.

When the news of the disaster reached President Washing-

ton, he burst into a fury compounded of anger and humiliation,

for he had expressly warned St. Clair against surprise. Some of

what he said has been recorded, some has been left to the imagi-

nation. But since the day he addressed General Lee at the Battle

of Monmouth, when, as a bystander reported, he swore like

an angel from Heaven, historians have always believed that he

had an adequate command of language for any occasion.

We have now reached the situation where General Anthony

Wayne comes into the history of the Northwest. It was high

time something was done. If the region was ever to open to

settlement in any permanently successful way an end must be

put to these Indian troubles, first by force, and then by con-

ciliation.

General St. Clair resigned as commander-in-chief of the

army, retaining, however, the governorship of the Territory.

Washington began at once to cast around for a successor and

immediately Wayne's name came up for consideration. He was

about the last of the distinguished generals of the Revolution

whose reputation yet endured. His rivals and enemies said he

was still "Mad" Anthony Wayne, which meant that he was im-

petuous, dashing, confident, a little difficult for superiors, but

at the same time admired by fighting men. After a good long

discussion of his merits and demerits, Congress finally confirmed

his appointment as head of the army in April, 1792. Everybody

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS        37

knew that his job was to bring order into the forests of the

Northwest.

He said good-bye to wife and children in the old manor at

Waynesboro near Philadelphia, and within two months was at

Pittsburgh beginning the building of an army. The material

was worse than he had had to deal with in the Revolution. The

men carroused and slouched around; and his under officers were

quarrelsome and insubordinate. When winter came he moved

out of Pittsburgh thirty miles away and at a camp which he

called Legionville, he began the hard task of licking his con-

glomerate Legion into shape. Work with axe and cross-cut saw,

and drill, drill, drill with musket and spontoon under his watch-

ful eye did it. His men were toughened into soldiers at last.

Mindful of President Washington's desires Wayne tried to

hold a friendly council with a few neighboring chiefs, but the

only result was a firm declaration from them that the Ohio

River must always be the boundary between them and the Amer-

icans.

Spring came and with it more volunteers from the seaboard

states, then in May of 1793 a flotilla of a hundred barges and

flatboats moved his army of more than a thousand men and

officers down the Ohio. He landed at Fort Washington on the

site of modern Cincinnati, and waited for a last word from fur-

ther negotiations with the northern tribes. It came in the sum-

mer--the Ohio River must forever remain the dividing line be-

tween the red man and the white. At once he moved northward

into the forest, slowly, deliberately, cautiously, but always for-

ward.

By middle of October the Legion, as his force was called,

had reached a prairie a few miles beyond Fort Jefferson, seventy

miles north of the Ohio, and here it was that Wayne decided

to spend the winter. His men, handy now with both axe and

musket quickly built a log fort and stockade which he named

Fort Greenville after dead Nathaniel Greene, a comrade in arms

of the Revolution whom he loved like a brother. There was a

38     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

man for you after his own heart, a man who could smell powder

and not get sick!

In the meantime the Indians were ever prowling like wolves

on the trail and flanks of the Legion, ready to pick off stragglers

or a straggling convoy. But they perceived that the leader of

this expedition was not a Harmar or a St. Clair. Had not their

keen-eyed scouts seen him making the rounds of his camp at

all times of day and night? He was the fox who never slept.

Twenty-five miles beyond Fort Greenville was the scene of

St. Clair's Defeat, and the bones of the slain still bleached there

in the weather. In late December Wayne sent eight companies

forward to the spot, scraped away the bones, pitched a camp and

proceeded to build Fort Recovery, defended by the same six-

pounders that St. Clair had lost.

Such an outpost was a humiliating threat to the Indians and

a deputation of chiefs and warriors went down from the Maumee

Valley to hold a council with the invader. Both sides were full

of fine talk. The Indians were tired of war, they desired nothing

so much as peace; and General Wayne--he, too, wished that

peace might settle down over the Ohio country. If the tribes

would bring in all their American prisoners, he would treat with

them. Like the man of the Scriptures, the warriors went away

sorrowful and did not return. Instead, they decided to take his

Fort Recovery. They made the attempt and failed.

On July 26 (1794) a thousand mounted men from Kentucky

arrived, and two days later the army was again in motion, with

no straggling, no lack of caution. It was not unusual for Wayne

himself to turn up at a sentry-post at three o'clock in the morn-

ing, as the Indians had discovered. No guard dared to go to

sleep--there were the Indians outside, and this devilish martinet

inside!

By the 8th of August the Legion was where the Au Glaize

pours its muddy waters into the Maumee, and in the midst of

Indian settled country. Their clearings stretched up and down

the valley--cornfields waved green in the summer sun. It was

a lovely view and strategically the place for a fort. He would

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          39

build one here in the very heart of the Indian country, and give

it a good name, too--Fort Defiance. It took him only a week.

And then he made another offer of peace to the tribes, but

refused to delay for long drawn-out negotiations, and advanced

on the alert along the north side of the Maumee to the head

of the rapids. A few miles below, the Indians under Blue Jacket

had taken their position behind the barricade of windrowed tim-

ber which a cyclone had levelled. Here they would await the

enemy whom they had lured to sure destruction.

On the night of the 19th of August a council was held in

Wayne's tent and a young aide by the name of William Henry

Harrison presented a plan for the ensuing battle that was imme-

diately adopted. This was the same William Henry Harrison

who defeated the Indians at Tippecanoe in 1811, and the British

and Indians on the Thames in 1813. Being along with General

Wayne was a good way to learn how to fight.

The Indians too, went into council that night. Chief Little

Turtle, a clever general himself, who was largely responsible for

the defeat of General Harmar and later of General St. Clair,

advised prudence and submission. He said:

We cannot expect good fortune to be with us always. The Americans

are now led by a chief who never sleeps. Day and night are the same to

him. During all the time he has been marching on our villages, notwith-

standing the watchfulness of our young men we have not been able to sur-

prise him. Think well of it. Something whispers to me that it would be

well to listen to his offers of peace.

But his advice was not heeded.

The morning of August 20 dawned bright, with a little pall

of haze overhanging the valley. General Wayne was freshly

barbered and powdered, wearing his best uniform and his pistols.

His leg which had been wounded by a bewildered sentry in the

campaign around Yorktown hurt him terribly, and it was steadily

getting worse. The army was ready and in motion; the baggage

and camp equipment was stacked in a hastily prepared camp

under the guard of Captain Zebulon Pike.

It is interesting to note the men, young and old, whom

Wayne had with him who were in the line of coming fame:

40     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Zebulon Pike, soldier and father of the explorer; William Henry

Harrison, soldier, statesman and President of the United States;

William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, empire-builders and ex-

plorers beyond the Rockies; and George Washington Whistler,

army engineer and grandfather of Whistler, the artist.

But to go back to the 20th of August and the Battle of

Fallen Timbers, a most important and conclusive action in the

history of the Northwest Territory. It is not necessary to go

into detail. Wayne's legionnaires did their duty with musket and

pike; and the fierce Kentucky militia did well, too, on that bloody

day and rode down the enemy wherever they could get at them.

It was a new kind of fighting for the Indians, for the initiative

was no longer with skulking warriors behind trees. And the

leader of the Long Knives was as crafty as themselves--he was

not like Harmar or St. Clair. "If I fall," he said, "remember the

standing order is, 'Charge the damned rascals with the bayonet'."

The Indians were routed, and they fled down the valley

behind them toward Fort Miami where floated the flag of their

allies, the British. But they found the gates barred against them

--their old friends had let them down. They never gave the

English their entire confidence again.

The real campaign was about over. Wayne and his Legion

turned back to Fort Defiance which he put into shape to stand

any sort of siege, even that of winter. Then he moved on west-

ward to the little prairie of Ke-ki-on-ga between the forks of

the Maumee where the streams, St. Joseph and St. Mary, meet.

Here was the famous Miami Town, the Indian capital, the cross-

roads of the wilderness, and here he proceeded to build another

fort to show the Indian world, and the British, and all the French

and half-breed traders that the Americans had come to stay.

At the suggestion of Colonel Hamtramck the fortress was

named Fort Wayne. The drums beat, the troops defiled in

parade, the chaplain preached from the text, "If the Lord be

for us, who can be against us?" Then Hamtramck took over

command with six companies of infantry and two batteries, and

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS         41

a week later the Legion departed with creaking baggage train

on its way back to Fort Greenville to go into winter quarters.

The closing events of Wayne's campaign in the Northwest

were climaxed by the famous Treaty of Greenville which was

signed, August 3, 1795, by ninety-odd chiefs of the Ohio and

Michigan Indians. It is safe to say that no more able and dis-

tinguished assemblage of savage leaders ever engaged in treaty

making with the United States, and no more important treaty

was ever signed.

The council fire had been lighted the middle of June, and

there was much ceremonial and parade as the preliminary dis-

cussions got under way. Some of the Indian chiefs were slow

to appear. Blue Jacket, the unyielding, who had suffered defeat

at Fallen Timbers, held off sullenly, but came in on the 18th

of August. However, Little Turtle who had been the undoing of

Harmar and St. Clair appeared early and that was a good augury

--perhaps.

As in all such councils there was much talk, much wise talk

even, though the Indians knew that the end of such palaver was

usually submission, cession of lands, solemn promises that the

white man was the first to break. After much debate in which

Little Turtle more than held his own, he finally signed on the

last day of the council, saying, "I am the last to sign the treaty,

and I shall be the last to break it."

He kept his word to the day of his death.

When the council was over the 1100 Indians dispersed,

sad and disappointed in spite of the double allowance of rum

as parting gesture of good will. They had lost all but a third

of their lands above the Ohio, and even this remainder was

patched over with cessions of little tracts here and there. Twenty-

thousand dollars' worth of trade goods, and annuities promised

them forever, were not sufficient "appeasement," to use a very

common word now.

Perhaps it is appropriate to pause here and say a kindly word

for the Indian who had figured so largely in our history. The

42      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

white man's scheme of government and politics confused him,

and those to whom he gave his confidence often betrayed him.

The frontiersmen and the pioneers regarded him as a cruel sav-

age, fit only to be exterminated. Still he had many noble and

heroic qualities.  Chief Little Turtle whose body rests within

the confines of Fort Wayne was called by those who knew him

a brave warrior, a man of ability and character. One reads with

much sympathy his answer to Count Volney who asked him why

he did not accept the invitation of the Quakers and settle per-

manently in Philadelphia:

Yes, I am pretty well accustomed to what I find here. I think this

dress [he was wearing white man's dress] is warm and comfortable. These

houses are good to keep out wind and rain, and they have everything con-

venient. This market [he was looking down on Market Street] gives us

everything we want without the trouble of hunting in the woods. All things

considered, you are better off than we are. But here I am deaf and dumb;

I do not speak your language; when I walk the streets I see everybody

busy at something; one makes shoes, another hats, a third sells cloth, and

all live by their work. I can make a bow, catch fish, kill a deer, and go to

war, but none of these things is done here. To learn to do what you do

would take much time, be very difficult, and be uncertain of success. And

meanwhile, old age hurries on. Were I to stay with the whites, I should

be an idle piece of furniture, useless to myself, useless to you and to my

people. What must be done with useless lumber? No, I must go back.

Listen to Francis Parkman's appraisal of the Indian:

Some races of men seem moulded in wax, soft and melting, at once

plastic and feeble. Some races seem like metals, and combine the greatest

flexibility with the greatest strength. But the Indian is hewn out of rock.

You can rarely change the form without destruction of the substance.

Races of inferior energy have possessed a power of expansion and assimi-

lation to which he is a stranger; and it is this fixed and rigid quality which

has proved his ruin. He will not learn the arts of civilization, and he and

the forest must perish together. The stern unyielding features of his mind

excite our admiration from their very immutability; and we look with deep

interest upon the fate of this irreclaimable son of the wilderness, the child

who will not be weaned from the breast of his rugged mother. And our

interest increases when we discern in the unhappy wanderer, mingled among

his vices, the germs of heroic virtues--a hand bountiful to bestow as it is

rapacious to seize and even in extremest famine imparting its last morsel

to a fellow sufferer; a heart which, strong in friendship as in hate, thinks

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          43

it not too much to lay down life for its chosen comrade; a soul true to its

own ideas of honor and burning with unquenchable thirst for greatness

and renown.

General Anthony Wayne left for the East soon after the

great council at Greenville.  Back in the ancestral home at

Waynesboro a partial feeling of contentment came over him.

Congress had bestowed upon him and his army the thanks of

the Nation, and his vindication as a leader in the field and before

the council fire was complete. And his friends and neighbors

were glad to see him back after four long years in the wilderness.

Only one sorrow weighed upon him--his wife was dead, she had

died while he was away on campaign.

On the 30th of April, 1796, Congress approved Jay's Treaty

which he had negotiated with England to settle all questions of

border occupation, and some other difficulties as well. Wayne

was now ordered to return at once to the regions beyond the

Ohio and take over the disputed posts, which command, of course,

was to be regarded as a mark of the country's confidence and

admiration. And so he journeyed westward again.

He floated down the Ohio in the same barge that had taken

him with his army three years before. He landed as before

at Fort Washington and immediately headed northward to the

Maumee, past Fort Recovery and Fort Defiance. Things out-

wardly had not changed much; the same unbroken forests

stretched across the land, and Indian cornfields were ripening in

the sun. But the American flag now floated over Ft. Miami

below the rapids where the Union Jack had greeted him after

the Battle of Fallen Timbers. He visited the battlefield and felt

a glow of pride as he reviewed the happenings of that historic

day. Three days later he was in Detroit and saw the American

flag flying at last over that stronghold on the Lakes, thirteen

years after a solemn treaty had ceded it to the United States.

Through the rest of the summer and autumn of 1796 he

remained at Detroit, hard at work adjusting military matters con-

cerned with the American occupation of the country. And then,

late in the season, he heard rumors that General Wilkinson who

44     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

had been in command of Fort Greenville was preferring charges

against him to the secretary of war--he did not know for what.

He had only one desire now, namely, to get back home and meet

his accuser face to face. By God, he had faced one court-martial

in the Revolution with honor, and he'd be only too glad to meet

Wilkinson before another!

He left Detroit on the sloop Detroit and had a tempestuous

voyage across Lake Erie to Presque Isle. His leg was causing

him intense agony--something malignant was the matter with it.

He was carried ashore and put to bed in the fort. A few weeks

of suffering went by and it grew to be mid-December. And

then came the end. He died on the morning of December 15,

1796, at the age of fifty-one. His last words were, "Bury me at

the foot of the flagstaff, boys," which spot, as his sympathetic

biographer, Thomas Boyd, says, was as close home to him as if

he had died in the old stone house of his fathers.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

and the temples of his gods?

Such is the glamorous chapter in our history that we are

calling to mind on this occasion, a chapter full of courage and

adventure, of pioneer endeavor and struggles with the wilder-

ness; full of great deeds, great hopes, great adversities; full

of ideals and belief in ourselves as a people destined to found a

new nation under God on this western continent. May we not

forget those principles of action and deeds of valor by which we

have risen to power and become great.

ADDRESS AT THE GRAVE OF JOHNNY APPLESEED

By ROBERT C. HARRIS

Here in the Archer graveyard at the north edge of Fort

Wayne, Indiana, is the grave of Johnny Appleseed whose real

name was John Chapman, born September 26, 1774, died March

18, 1845.

Johnny Appleseed won renown by a few simple and helpful

acts:

1. He was a peacemaker between the Indians and white

settlers.

2. He was a missionary for the church of New Jerusalem,

founded by Emanuel Swedenborg.

3. Perhaps the most important of all, was his distribution of

apple trees to the early settlers. He came to this locality

about the year of 1830 and spent the most of the last 15

years of his life in and around Fort Wayne.

He would secure permission to use a small patch of ground

where he would plant apple seed. Later he would return, give

some of the trees to the owner of the ground and then distribute

the rest to other settlers.

Johnny Appleseed owned property of his own. His estate

papers which are on file in the county clerk's office in Fort Wayne,

Indiana, show that he owned four pieces of real estate: forty

acres of land about 10 miles northwest of Fort Wayne, forty-two

acres on the Maumee ten miles down the river from Fort Wayne,

eighteen and one-half acres at Ox-Bow Bend near the Ohio-

Indiana line, forty acres one-half mile from the Indiana-Ohio line

on the Maumee. There was another 74 acres of land in Jay

County on the Wabash River one-half mile west of the Indiana-

Ohio line. These properties were along rivers, canals or main

highways.

The oldest account of Johnny Appleseed is an article pub-

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46      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

lished in Manchester, England, by the Swedenborg Church Janu-

ary 14, 1817:

There is in the western country a very extraordinary missionary of

the New Jerusalem. A man has appeared who seems to be almost inde-

pendent of corporal wants and sufferings. He goes barefooted, can sleep

anywhere, in house or out of house, and lives upon the coarsest and most

scanty fare. He has actually thawed the ice with his bare feet.

He procures what books he can of the New Church; travels into the

remote settlements, and lends them wherever he can find readers, and some-

times divides a book into two or three parts for more extensive distribution

and usefulness. This man for years past has been in the employment of

bringing into cultivation, in numberless places in the wilderness, small

patches (two or three acres) of ground, and then sowing apple seeds and

rearing nurseries.

These become valuable as the settlements approximate, and the profits

of the whole are intended for the purpose of enabling him to print all the

writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and distribute them through the western

settlements of the United States.

This article gives a very definite and logical reason for the

service of Johnny Appleseed.

Markers and memorials to the memory of Johnny Appleseed

are located at: (1) Copus Monument, Ashland Co., near Mifflin,

Ohio; (2) Mansfield, Ohio; (3) Ashland, Ohio; (4) Swinney

Park, Fort Wayne, Indiana; (5) Apple Trees, Thatcher Woods,

Chicago; (6) Springfield, Mass.; (7) Leominster, Mass.; (8)

Jr. High School, Mansfield, Ohio; (9) Apple tree planted by

Johnny Appleseed at Defiance, Ohio.

The iron fence which surrounds his grave here was a gift of

Stephen Fleming of Fort Wayne. The granite boulder at the head

of his grave was placed there by the Optimist Club and James

Menefee of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Johnny Appleseed played a very important role in the settle-

ment of the Maumee Valley. What could be more fitting to his

memory than to plant apple trees in our roadside parks, and se-

lected places along our highways? These trees would add to the

beauty and usefulness of our highways. In the spring they would

supply beauty and fragrance, later shade and finally apples in

season. This would be a living memorial which I feel sure Johnny

Appleseed would approve.

A HARMAR SESQUICENTENNIAL SYMPOSIUM

By Louis A. WARREN

The program this evening has been arranged in the form

of a symposium in memory of the 150th anniversary of General

Joseph Harmar's expedition against the Miami Indians here at

Fort Wayne in 1790.

We are pleased indeed to have three able speakers who can

speak with authority on the various phases of the expedition.

You will observe on your program that the subjects to be dis-

cussed will approach the general subject from different points

of view: "Captain Thomas Morris, a Forerunner of Harmar"

by Dr. Howard H. Peckham, William L. Clements Library, Ann

Arbor; "The Indians Who Opposed Harmar" by President Otho

Winger, Manchester College; "The Harmar Expedition of 1790"

(Illustrated), by Dr. Randolph G. Adams, director, William L.

Clements Library, Ann Arbor.

The symposium is not just as we had planned it, and we

are disappointed that one phase of the Harmar story will have

to be omitted, although the Program Committee made an earnest

attempt to complete the symposium as originally outlined.

We do not have with us a prominent Kentucky historian

whom we had hoped would speak on behalf of the Kentucky

settlers who were primarily responsible for the Harmar expedi-

tion. Rather than allow this phase of the story to be entirely

overlooked, it seems obligatory for me to make some very brief

references to the Indian massacres in Kentucky and the reaction

toward these massacres which found expression in the expedition

against the Indians by General Joseph Harmar.

The Miami Indians, or the Indians of the upper Wabash

as they were often called, were the most aggressive tribe which

confronted the pioneers moving into Kentucky, and they were

continually sending out marauding bands which kept the Ken-

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48     OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

tuckians in continual terror. The grandfather of President Lin-

coln was one of the victims of these surprise attacks.

It is not strange that the Kentuckians, with whole families

massacred and kinsmen forever lost, began to seek revenge for

these casualties. All red men looked alike to them and they did

not stop to learn whether or not one belonged to a friendly or a

hostile tribe before sending him to the "happy hunting ground."

It did not take them long to learn where most of these scalping

parties originated and they pointed in the direction of the Miami

village.

CAPTAIN THOMAS MORRIS ON THE MAUMEE

By HOWARD H. PECKHAM

In any historical celebration of the Maumee Valley, Captain

Thomas Morris may justly claim a brief mention. He was the

first British officer to ascend the Maumee River. I say "officer,"

because it is possible that one or two Pennsylvania traders may

have penetrated that far into Ohio in the 1740's or 1750's. But

Morris did something else, too. He has left us two accounts of

his Maumee adventures--one a day-by-day diary, the other a nar-

rative based on his diary and written in later years.

Not a great deal is known about Morris although he achieved

enough subsequent fame to be found in the Dictionary of National

Biography. He was born in 1732 in Carlisle, England, the son of

a retired army officer and song writer. He attended Winchester

College and then, early in 1749, joined the British army as ensign

in the 17th Regiment. In December, 1755, he was promoted a

lieutenant. His regiment was sent to America in 1758 at the

height of the French and Indian War and was employed at the

siege of Havana in 1762. It then returned to continental America

and remained here under General Thomas Gage, the new com-

mander-in-chief.

You will recall that 1763 was a momentous year in this region.

The British had won the West by conquest and had garrisoned all

of the former French posts in 1760 and 1761 except Fort Chartres

on the Mississippi. Hostile Indians barred the way to British

soldiers seeking to reach the Illinois post, and Pontiac's uprising

set back the day of English occupation another year. In the sum-

mer of 1764, General Gage sent out two expeditions to quell the

rebellion of the western tribes.  One under Colonel Bouquet

marched into southern Ohio. The other, under Colonel John

Bradstreet, was sent to relieve Detroit and to chastize Pontiac's

immediate allies. Thomas Morris, now a captain, was one of the

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50     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

officers accompanying Bradstreet. This expedition sailed from

Niagara and coasted along the south shore of Lake Erie. At

Sandusky a stop was made for an Indian conference, by which

Bradstreet was lulled into the belief that the Indians regretted

their uprising and were reconciled to having the English in their

midst. He therefore resolved to send an officer across country to

Fort Chartres as advance agent for a garrison which would be sent

later.

Three other factors also prompted Bradstreet to take this

premature step. First, he was at the head of an all-water route to

the Mississippi by way of the Maumee and Wabash rivers. Sec-

ondly, he had found a Canadian able and willing to act as guide

and Indian interpreter to the destination. Lastly, he had in Captain

Morris an officer who could speak French and was daring enough

to undertake the mission.

Accordingly, on the afternoon of August 26, 1764, Captain

Morris, two Canadians, two servants and 19 Indian escorts started

in canoes from Cedar Point and crossed Maumee Bay. At the

same time Bradstreet's force moved northward to Detroit. Owing

to its late start, Morris' party encamped that night near the mouth

of the Maumee River. Next day the canoes made good progress

up the river to the rapids (in the vicinity of Fort Meigs), where

he stopped at an Ottawa village. The great chief Pontiac, whose

village was on a near-by island, came out to meet him and greeted

him with an unfriendly speech, saying briefly that all English men

were liars and that the French king was not yet defeated.

Morris was unharmed, however, and was allowed to occupy

a cabin in the village. Here he met a French trader and former

soldier named St. Vincent, who befriended him and accompanied

him on his journey. The next day Morris addressed a council

of chiefs and told them that the French king had ceded this terri-

tory to the British king. This news the chiefs received with con-

tempt and disbelief. That night one of Morris' Indian escorts, a

Mohawk, ran away after stealing most of the captain's effects and

selling his two barrels of rum to the Ottawas. Consequently, the

village blades got roaring drunk and decided to kill Morris, who

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          51

was obliged to slip out of his cabin in disguise and take refuge in

a cornfield across the river.

The next day, August 30, Morris received a surprise. The

local chief brought him some melons--and a volume of Shakes-

peare, which Morris bought for a little powder. Now I am aware

of the proud literary tradition of Indiana, and I am reluctant to

point out that this incident occurred in Ohio. If the savages of

Ohio were reading Shakespeare in 1764, I'm afraid Indiana must

bow to its neighbor, although you Indianans may argue that the

Ohio Indian probably got the volume from some Miami Indians

of Fort Wayne who had read it so often they were tired of it.

Of course, if Ohioans admit this possibility, they may then counter

with the assertion that anyway here was the beginning of the

rental library business. However, I shall leave that controversy to

be settled in my absence and go on to quote from an essay which

Morris wrote in after years lauding the dramatic ability of a

French actress, one Mademoiselle Du Menil. In one place he re-

marks: "If the world ever afforded me a pleasure equal to that

of reading Shakespeare at the foot of a water-fall in an American

desert; it was Du Menil's performance in tragedy."

On August 31, Morris again set out up the river, assured by

some Miami warriors that he would be welcomed at their village.

Because the river was so shallow here, he bought three horses and

used the canoes only to carry the baggage. His party of 17 Indians

had been reduced to 12, and he had sent back one of his servants

with a letter to Bradstreet. They followed the shore of the river

up to a second Indian village and encamped. The next few days

were spent in easy marches, the canoes being dragged along in

shallow water. Morris was finding game very plentiful. He was

eating fish, venison, turkey, duck and raccoon, besides Indian corn.

One day his party managed to get away with two deer, ten turkeys,

some ducks, raccoons, corn, etc. Morris restrains himself to ob-

serving only, "I never saw such hearty eating before."

On September 7, the party reached "Miamis fort," on the

site of the present city of Fort Wayne. Morris relates that he

was "met at the bottom of the meadow by almost the whole village,

who had brought spears, bows and arrows, and tomahawks to

52     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

dispatch me." And how did Captain Morris receive this Hoosier

welcome? He mentions in his diary that he took to a canoe and

paddled out into the middle of the river, which I can well believe.

In his narrative he embroiders the story a bit and asserts that he

remained in his canoe, "reading the tragedy of Anthony and

Cleopatra, in the volume of Shakespeare." Morris had attended

college, and college men sometimes read at unexpected moments,

but I submit to you whether any person in Morris' circumstances

would use a book other than as a shield.

The chief of the Miami village was Pacanne, who was cer-

tainly not the village idiot, although he can hardly avoid being

called the village nut. He had just received a visit from a dele-

gation of Shawnees and Delawares, and these visiting firemen had

declared that they would never make peace with the English and

urged the Miamis to kill Captain Morris when he arrived or make

him return. Morris was surprised to learn of this attitude on the

part of the Shawnees and Delawares, because it indicated his

superior, Colonel Bradstreet, had been deceived in believing the

friendly protestations of the Indians.

Morris was taken to the fort, where the few French families

lived, but after a short time two warriors seized him and took him

across the river to their village. They stripped him of his clothes,

bound his arms and put him in a cabin. His Canadian guide and

Pontiac's nephew spoke to the village elders for Morris' release,

and the local chief untied him. He was then chased out of the

village and returned to the fort. For the next two days Morris

had to hide in the garret of one Monsieur L'Esperance.

Meanwhile the Miamis held a council and decided that the

Englishman should not go farther westward. Morris was deter-

mined to push on down the Wabash to Ouiatenon (Lafayette,

Indiana), but two Frenchmen came in from St. Joseph (Niles,

Michigan) and reported that the before-mentioned delegation of

Shawnees and Delawares were waiting at Ouiatenon to kill Morris

on his arrival. Morris decided that Fort Wayne's welcome should

not be outdone by Lafayette's and prepared to turn back.

On September 10, at noon, Morris and his party set out down

the Maumee, leaving his baggage behind with Monsieur Capucin.

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          53

(By the way, has anyone ever located that baggage and found the

Shakespeare volume?) The third day out they met a squaw from

the Ottawa village at the rapids who said there were 700 Shawnees

and Delawares at her town preparing to burn Detroit. Morris

was sure the news was false, but it scared his Indian bodyguard.

They wished to avoid the village and hurry on to Detroit by them-

selves, confident they would make better time without the white

men. So Morris and his Canadian, and two Indians, were left

to go by themselves through the woods, circle northward around

the Ottawa village and reach Detroit.

Morris' route cannot be traced exactly. It was northeast, of

course, through woods and meadows, and Morris said the direct

distance was 150 miles. On the 16th he crossed the trail running

from the Maumee rapids to Detroit. He avoided it and kept to a

by-path until he reached the Potawatomi village in lower Michi-

gan. The next day, September 17, Morris walked into the fort

at Detroit, and it gave him great satisfaction that he had reached

it ahead of the Indians who had deserted him.

Morris returned to the East that fall, and in 1767 went back

to England. He resigned from the army, married and settled

down to a life of writing. He published four volumes of poetry,

essays, biography and a novel. He also composed a few songs,

popular in his day. He was still living in 1806, and the date of his

death is not known.

I have spoken of the two accounts of his Maumee Valley

adventure. Until recently only one was known--the published

version. It was supposed that this was written from memory, or

from a diary in Morris' possession. But in going through the

General Gage papers in the Clerents Library, a considerable

correspondence between Colonel Bradstreet and Gage was uncov-

ered. In one of his letters Bradstreet enclosed a report of Morris'

mission up the Maumee. The report turned out to be Morris'

original diary, which he sent on to Bradstreet without taking time

to copy. For the same reason Bradstreet forwarded it to Gage.

On the cover is a note to Bradstreet's aide-de-camp, asking him to

make a copy and return it to Morris. Undoubtedly he did so, and

that is all that Morris ever retained. About 1791 he wrote up his

54     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

adventure and published it in a volume called Miscellanies in Prose

and Verse (London, 1791). That in itself has become a rare book,

but I am glad to say that the Clements Library owns a copy, along

with the original manuscript diary in Morris' handwriting, on

which the narrative is based. There is not a great deal of differ-

ence between the diary and the narrative, although the latter is

longer. He added one interesting paragraph at the end of his

published narrative: observing that the Miami Indians which had

held him prisoner were still making trouble for white men in that

region and that they had just defeated an American expedition

sent against them. With this reference to General Harmar, having

brought matters up to date, I step aside to let the following

speakers continue the story. Thank you.

THE INDIANS WHO OPPOSED HARMAR

By OTHO WINGER

We have a few original sources of information about the

Indians of the Northwest in and about Kekionga, now Fort

Wayne, at the time of Harmar's expedition in the fall of 1790.

George Croghan in 1765 traveled the length of the Wabash to

Kekionga and gave an excellent report to his superiors in the East.

In the winter of 1789-90 Henry Hay, representing British mer-

chants in Detroit, visited Kekionga and kept a diary of his stay

in the Miami village, and of his visits roundabout. In the spring

of 1790 Colonel Hamtramck, commander at Vincennes, sent

Antoine Gamelin, a Frenchman, with a message of good will to

the Indians along the Wabash and to Kekionga. One of the finest

of recent histories reviewing all this and adding much information

is the book, The Land of the Miamis, by Judge Elmore Barce.

The leading tribe was that of the Miamis, with several divi-

sions. Their chief town and capital, if it may be so called, was at

Kekionga. There were strong divisions of this tribe along Eel

River and the Mississinewa, called Eel Rivers and Mississinewas,

the Weas at Ouiatenon near the present Lafayette, and the Pianka-

shaws near Vincennes. The Miamis, who once claimed all of

Indiana and western Ohio as their ancient domain, still held the

Wabash and the strategic center here at the junction of the St.

Mary's and the St. Joseph. To the north in the Michigan penin-

sulas were the tribes composing "The Three Fires," the ancient

Chippewa with their kindred, the Ottawa and the Potawatomi.

The Potawatomi had spread over northern and western Indiana,

where they were closely connected with the Kickapoo from Illinois.

The Ottawa had spread over northwestern Ohio, north of the

Maumee. The Hurons, or Wyandots, were masters of the land

east of the Auglaize and south of Lake Erie. South of them were

the ancient Delawares. The Shawnees, having been driven from

their former homes in the South, had settled chiefly in southern

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56     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Ohio, where their great chief, Tecumseh, was born on Mad River

about 1770. There were general, but not absolute, boundary lines

between the tribes. At one time or another various tribes had

villages around Kekionga.

Antoine Gamelin, on his visit in the spring of 1790, found

much opposition to the Americans and much sympathy for the

British in all the villages. Here at Kekionga, besides the Miamis,

he found both Shawnees and Delawares. The Shawnee chief,

Blue Jacket, and the renegade Girty brothers among the Delawares

prevented any friendly response. The number of warriors in these

villages was not given. The secretary of war, General Knox,

estimated that the number of warriors on the Wabash would be

more than fifteen hundred, but some think that number was too

large. One writer, James Smith, said there were not more than

three thousand Indian warriors in all, west of Pennsylvania.

Gamelin's report of conditions here in Kekionga was about

the same as George Croghan reported twenty-five years earlier,

and similar to the conditions reported by Hay the year previous.

There were a few French and British traders here, among whom

was John Kinzie, noted for his connection twenty years later with

Fort Dearborn and the massacre there. Trade was at a low

level. Whiskey was already beginning to have its terrible effect

upon the Indians.

H. S. Knapp, in his history of the Maumee Valley, tells of

seven villages here at the time of Harmar's expedition. First of

all, there was the main Miami village at Lakeside at the junction

of the St. Joseph and Maumee. There was another Miami village

across the river between St. Mary's and the St. Joseph with thirty

houses. Two miles down the Maumee was the Shawnee village,

Chillicothe, with fifty-eight houses. Across the river was another

Shawnee village with eighteen houses. There were two Delaware

villages two miles up the St. Mary's with forty-five houses and

another Delaware village three miles up the St. Joseph. The total

number of houses, or cabins, in all these villages was given at one

hundred eighty-five, although the original number was not known,

for the Indians had burned many of their houses before Harmar's

army arrived.

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          57

From all these accounts, it would seem that the number of

Indians here varied from time to time and was never very large.

Those who fought Harmar were largely the Miamis in and about

Kekionga and from Eel River.

Little Turtle, the Miami, was by far the most important op-

ponent of Harmar. The Little Turtle village was on Eel River

about sixteen miles northwest of Kekionga. Here his father, the

great Chief Aquenacque, had made this an important Indian

center. Here Little Turtle was born. Two miles up the river

from this village was the famous Eel River trading post, where

furs were collected by the traders to be transported to Fort Wayne

by portage.

The first battle with Harmar's forces occurred on Eel River

eleven miles northwest of Fort Wayne on the old Indian trail that

led to Fort Dearborn. It is now known as the Goshen Road, or

U. S. Route 33. While some of Harmar's men thought the forces

were very large, others had put the number of Little Turtle's army

at only about a hundred. But whereas Hardin's division of

Harmar's army was poorly made up and poorly equipped, they

were opposed by some of the finest of all Indian warriors, com-

manded by the greatest Indian general who ever opposed the

white man. Although outnumbered two to one, Little Turtle

annihilated Hardin's forces by strategy unequaled for cleverness

of conception and efficient execution. Thomas Irvin, one of the

soldiers in that expedition, wrote that Little Turtle had prepared

the ambuscade "as neatly as one sets a trap for a rat."

Three days later Little Turtle and these same Indians set a

similar trap at the Maumee and annihilated the regulars under

Captain Willys and so crippled the entire force of Harmar's army

that he returned at once to Fort Washington. Although Harmar

reported victory over the Indians, most historians believe he was

defeated by the superior generalship of the Miami chief, Little

Turtle. Theodore Roosevelt, in Winning of the West, Vol. I,

page 91, wrote, "The net result was a mortifying failure." It is

true that the troops were poor specimens of soldiers and poorly

equipped and that the brave but rash Hardin was at odds with the

inefficient Colonel Trotter, but Roosevelt criticizes Harmar for

58     OHIO ARCH EOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

allowing divisions among his men and subordinate generals and for

keeping his main army inactive only seven miles away while the

brave Willys and other brave men were being cut to pieces in

small, uncoordinated divisions.

These conflicts with Harmar gave excellent training for Little

Turtle and his Indians to meet the combined forces of St. Clair

one year later on the Wabash at what is now Fort Recovery, Ohio.

Harmar's expedition plainly showed Little Turtle that a large

army would soon be sent against Kekionga, "the glorious gateway

of the West."  Warriors came from all the chief tribes of the

Northwest to be trained by Little Turtle for the coming conflict.

With a thousand warriors, well trained, this "Napoleon of the

Red Men" met a much larger force under St. Clair on November

4, 1791. Little Turtle outgeneraled and outfought St. Clair, who

had the largest and best equipped army ever sent against the In-

dians, and inflicted upon them the greatest defeat the white men

ever suffered at the hands of the Indians.

After all, Little Turtle, with his genius and greatness, was

worth a whole army of either whites or Indians and was the

chief explanation of the defeat of Harmar and St. Clair. He de-

feated more white armies than any other Indian, but his greatness

is not shown by that alone. After he had done all he could to

protect the land of his fathers, he made peace with Wayne at

Greenville and spent the remaining seventeen years of his life as

the friend of the Americans and tried to get his people to adopt

the best ways of the white man's civilization.

At Wayne's suggestion, he visited President George Washing-

ton, who received him as a great warrior and patriot and conferred

upon him the highest honors possible. Little Turtle later visited

Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in the interests of

the Indians. He endeavored to introduce among his people tem-

perance, agriculture, vaccination for smallpox, and the arts of

peace. That fine monument on the battle field of Fallen Timbers

has a worthwhile suggestion for us all. While it gives due credit

to General Wayne for his great ability and his service to the

Northwest and similar praise to the hardy pioneers who supported

General Wayne in his conquest, there is also generous praise for

MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          59

Little Turtle, who bravely defended the land of his fathers against

the conquering white men. We shall all be glad to see a fine

monument erected here in Fort Wayne to that great general after

whom the city is named. But some day we shall also recognize the

greatness of Little Turtle and either here or somewhere along his

native Eel River, the Ke-na-po-co-mo-co, we shall erect a suitable

monument for him also.

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.

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MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS         61

finally at Fort Washington (Cincinnati, Ohio). It was from this

last named post that, in the year 1790, he led his expedition of

about 1400 soldiers into the Maumee country. Among his papers

we find the various instructions from the then seat of govern-

ment of the United States, in Philadelphia, mostly by Secretary

of War Henry Knox, in which Harmar is directed to conduct

the campaign. We also find his own records and reports of the

campaign, and the documents which were produced at and in

connection with the military court which enquired into the con-

duct of the campaign of 1790. When a general is not wholly

successful, or when he is defeated, he is apt to leave behind

much more complete documentary records than if he had been

completely victorious. He needs to work up, and to preserve, such

documents in his own defense.

The expedition which Harmar gathered at Cincinnati in

September of 1790 consisted of only 300 regular United States

army troops and about 1100 militia from Pennsylvania, Ohio and

Kentucky. The troops were ill-equipped, ill-disciplined and with-

out a proper equipment of staff officers. Harmar had trouble

with the militia from the outset, as there were quarrels between

the state militia leaders as to precedence. He got his expedition

started rather too late in the season, but managed to attain his

objective, which was the series of Indian villages at the con-

fluence of the St. Mary's and the St. Joseph's where they meet

to make the Maumee. This is the site of the modern city of

Fort Wayne. He found the Indian settlements deserted. By this

time, all kinds of ills had developed in the army, mostly the result

of the inadequate military preparations indicated above. This

group of Indian villages were for a few days, the headquarters

of Harmar's force. From this point he sent out one detachment

of several hundred troops, who promptly walked into an Indian

ambush and were cut to pieces. However, since he had attained

his objective, he decided to withdraw to Fort Washington. But

hardly a day's march south of the Miami villages he sent back

another detachment to defeat any Indians which might have

returned to reoccupy the ruined villages on the Maumee. This

detachment was also badly defeated. He then resumed his march

and got back to Cincinnati.

62     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Besides ruining the Indian supplies, and burning their flimsy

huts, the expedition accomplished practically nothing. The con-

duct of the army was so severely criticized that a military court

was held and the whole matter investigated. What was divulged

may be seen in the Harmar papers. It was a typical American

military effort, ill-conceived, ill-conducted, with troops which

were ill-disciplined, and with supply services utterly inadequate.

In theory, I suppose, we are supposed to be celebrating the

150th anniversary of General Harmar's expedition which "cap-

tured" "Fort Wayne" for the Americans. As a matter of fact it

is one of the best possible illustrations of General Marshall's

point that American military history from the popular standpoint,

has not been well written or well taught.

We have a notion that the United States has been engaged

in a number of wars, all of which it has won. While this seems

to be the net result, the cost at which we have won them, and

the mistakes we have made are well worth study, and the Harmar

papers provide really excellent clinical material on which one

story at least can be worked out. For a hundred years after

our independence, most of our popular military history was a

glorification of our victories. With the coming of the "economic

historians" in the twentieth century, less and less emphasis was

laid on military history. More recently, we have moved into

a period of so-called "social history."

A collection such as General Harmar's papers provides an

opportunity for the study of a military episode. There are his-

torians who believe that the reaction to the old martial and heroic

history has gone too far. At this time we are, as a nation, con-

fronted by a great international crisis, the nature of which we are

utterly unprepared for, and which we don't even seem to under-

stand. Two immense oceans still give us a brief respite in which

we may learn. But if we continue to prattle about "economic his-

tory" without realizing that war makes and unmakes economic

forces, if we continue to prate about "social history" without

knowing that war is the most appalling social phenomenon which

society has produced, then all our collecting of historical data will

not do much good.

INVOCATION

BY REV. W. H. SHEPFER

GRACIOUS GOD, OUR HEAVENLY FATHER, acknowledging our

weakness and our sinfulness, we invoke thy divine blessing upon

us as we have come together to recall the heroic lives and sac-

rifices of our forefathers in this section of our great country.

Through the Spirit of Truth give us, O God, wisdom and

understanding.

We acknowledge Thee, Dear Father, as the Giver of every

good and perfect gift. Thou art the Source from whom all our

blessings flow.

We acknowledge Thee as the God of Nations. We trace Thy

hand in our history. When we recall the successful struggles

against great odds of our pioneers for civil and religious freedom

we are constrained to exclaim, "This is the finger of God."

We thank Thee, O God, that in Thy good Providence this

new land became a refuge for the oppressed peoples of the earth.

Help us to remember with grateful hearts the great sacrifices even

unto death made by our God-fearing forefathers in their battles

for the principles of civil and religious freedom upon which our

great Nation has been founded.

May we learn again as a nation Thy admonition that

"righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any

people."

Strengthen us and guide us, O God, in these terrible, troublous

times when our liberties and way of life are being threatened by

irresponsible tyrants of the earth.

Oh, Righteous Father, direct us and help us to prepare our-

selves both materially and spiritually to defend the civil and

religious freedom for which our forefathers fought so that govern-

ments "of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish

from the earth."

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64     OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Hear us, O God, and answer the song prayer of our people

as they sing throughout the land, "God bless America."

"Lord God of hosts be with us yet lest we forget, lest we

forget."

We ask it all in His Name,

AMEN.

DEFIANCE IN HISTORY

By FRANCIS PHELPS WEISENBURGER

Today we stand in the heart of the historic Maumee Valley.

Long before any written records chronicled the story of the region,

French traders moved up and down the river in the long journey

between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Basin. To the

French, the site of Defiance was known as Au Glaize or Grand

Glaize. Among the Indians it was the site of the Tu-en-da-wie

village of the Wyandots and the En-sa-woc-sa of the Shawnees.1

Here, too, according to the tradition handed down by the great

chief, Richardville,² was the birthplace of Pontiac, the masterful

leader of the Ottawas.³

During the eighteenth century, when France and Great Britain

were struggling for control of the region west of the Allegheny

Mountains, Celeron de Blainville was sent to claim the Ohio coun-

try for the King of France. In 1749 he buried leaden plates in the

Ohio Valley as a means of asserting the rights of the French king.

On the return journey, Celeron's French army traveled down the

Maumee on its way to Detroit.       The chaplain of the expedition

tells us in his journal that as the troops came through the Defiance

region (about October 1, 1749) "at almost every instant we were

stopped by beds of flat stones, over which it was necessary to drag

our pirogues by main force. I will say, however, that at intervals

were found beautiful reaches of smooth water, but they were few

and short."⁴ Three years later (1752) Charles de Langlade, rep-

1 Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (Norwalk, 1896), I, 542.

2 Jean Baptist Richardville or Peshewah, was the son of a French trader and

Tecumwah, sister of Little Turtle. Born in the vicinity of Fort Wayne about 1761,

he died there in August, 1841. From 1812 until his death he was head chief of the

Miamis and apparently one of the richest Indians in North America. Bert J. Gris-

wold, ed., Fort Wayne, Gateway of the West, in Indiana Historical Collections. XV

(Indianapolis, 1927), 29-30.

3 Horace S. Knapp, History of the Maumee Valley (Toledo, 1876), 585.

4 Reuben G. Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 1610-1791

(Cleveland, 1896-1901), LXIX. 191.

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66       OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

resenting unofficially the French interests, led an army from

Mackinac to the vicinity of Piqua (Pickawillany), where they

killed the Miami chief, La Demoiselle or Old Britain.⁵ The journal

of the expedition has disappeared,⁶ but undoubtedly they passed

through the Defiance vicinity on the journey.

George Croghan, commonly called the "King of the Traders"

because of his numerous trading posts among the Indians,⁷ visited

the site of Defiance (which he referred to as "the Forks") in

August, 1765.8 During the period of Pontiac's Conspiracy (1763)

and the period of the American Revolution, armies of both the

Indian and the white man traversed the Maumee Valley. One of

these armies, under the British commander at Detroit, Henry

Hamilton, passed by the site of Defiance in October, 1778, on its

way to Vincennes, which Hamilton later surrendered ignomini-

ously to George Rogers Clark.⁹ Likewise, a force of British and

Indian warriors under Captain Henry Bird came from Detroit and

up the river to the present Defiance during the summer of 1780.

Bird's expedition continued up the Auglaize and terrorized Ameri-

can frontier settlements in Kentucky.¹⁰ The famous Moravian

missionary, John Heckewelder, recorded that after the massacre

of the Christian Indians at Gnadenhutten in 1782, some of the

surviving native converts took refuge in the Maumee Valley,11

probably at Defiance.

Perhaps the first account of a meal served at what is now

Defiance was recorded by Henry Hay, a traveler who stopped here

on December 13, 1789. He wrote:

Left this place [what is now Damascus, Henry County] this morning

about 8 o'clock and proceeded to Glaize [Defiance], w[h]ere we arrived

about 1/2 past 3 o'clock--we were received very graciously by Mr. McDon-

5 Louise Phelps Kellogg, The French Regime in Wisconsin and the Northwest