The Evolution of Military Strategy and Ohio Indian
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THE EVOLUTION OF MILITARY STRATEGY AND OHIO INDIAN REMOVAL IN THE 1790S A Dissertation Presented to The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Daniel R. Griesmer December, 2015 THE EVOLUTION OF MILITARY STRATEGY AND OHIO INDIAN REMOVAL IN THE 1790S Daniel R. Griesmer Dissertation Approved: Accepted: ________________________________ ____________________________________ Advisor Department Chair Dr. Walter Hixson Dr. Martin Wainwright ________________________________ ____________________________________ Committee Member Interim Dean of the College Dr. Kevin Kern Dr. John Green ________________________________ ____________________________________ Committee Member Dean of the Graduate School Dr. Lesley Gordon Dr. Chand Midha ________________________________ ____________________________________ Committee Member Date Dr. Kevin Adams ________________________________ Committee Member Dr. Michael Shott ii ABSTRACT Under the drives of settler colonialism Ohio became a crucial battleground in the history of American Indian removal. The relentless pressures brought on by settlers and squatters forced the United States to attempt to take control of its new borderlands in the Ohio Valley, but the new federal government and military were woefully unprepared and ill equipped for the task. As a result, the United States suffered two disastrous military defeats by the Ohio Indians, losses that have been obscured in American historical discourse. These setbacks in the early 1790s forced the George Washington administration to turn to new leadership and adopt alternate strategies to try and guarantee American success on the battlefield. Under General Anthony Wayne, the United States professionalized its military forces, employed Native scouts and auxiliary fighters, and adopted counterinsurgency tactics in order to defeat the Ohio Indian Confederation in 1794. Unable to receive meaningful support from the British or the Iroquois Confederation, the Ohio Indians succumbed to the steamrolling effect of American settler colonization and were driven from Ohio, a pattern that would be repeated throughout the West during the nineteenth century. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................v CHAPTER I. DUBIOUS TREATIES ..............................................................................................1 Introduction ...........................................................................................................1 Dubious Treaties .................................................................................................22 II. SETTLING THE OHIO LANDS .............................................................................48 III. HARMAR’S FOLLY ...............................................................................................85 IV. HARMAR’S AFTERMATH ..................................................................................119 V. ST. CLAIR’S DISASTER ......................................................................................147 VI. A MILITARY CHANGE .......................................................................................178 VII. INDIAN KNOWLEDGE AND BATTLEFIELD STRATEGY ............................207 VIII THE EXPECTED AFTERMATH .........................................................................241 IX. INDIAN TRAITORS? ............................................................................................273 X. A REMARKABLE LAND GRAB ........................................................................306 XI. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................338 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................348 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1 Treaty of Greenville................................................................................................307 v CHAPTER I DUBIOUS TREATIES Introduction It was a cold day in November 1791 when General Arthur St. Clair led over a thousand ill-prepared federal troops and militiamen into an engagement against an intractable Indian adversary on an anonymous battlefield in western Ohio. St. Clair’s objective was to defeat the Native soldiers so that American settlers could take their lands and remain comfortably in Ohio. Although St. Clair envisioned victory, what followed instead was the worst defeat ever suffered by an American army at the hands of any Indian fighting force. This armed endeavor lacked systematic planning from President George Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox down through St. Clair, as each of these men proved willing to use untrained and untested American federal combatants against guerrilla bands of Indian warriors fighting on their own terrain. The Americans overestimated their fighting capabilities while underestimating Native military strength and each of these factors presaged disaster for the operation before it even began.1 After the battle Major Ebenezer Denny recalled, “The Indians seemed to brave everything, and when fairly fixed around us they made no noise other than their fire, 1 Ebenezer Denny, Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1859), 164-71; Whenever possible, this dissertation will attempt to apply labels such as Shawnee and Miami Nations to describe the indigenous peoples that resided in Ohio during the era covered in this research. However, through the course of this investigation, the use of terms such as “Native” and “Indian” will be incorporated into this manuscript to describe these diverse populations. 1 which they kept up very constant and which seldom failed to tell, although scarcely heard.”1 Because of this clandestine approach, the indigenous warriors were then able to encircle St. Clair’s troops and cut off any type of retreat. The artillery and the muskets that the Americans procured were of inferior quality and did little good on the battlefield. Denny specifically noticed the fearlessness shown by the Indians as they repulsed every American counterattack. “The battalions in the rear charged several times and forced the savages from their shelter, but they always turned with the battalions and fired upon them back; indeed they seemed not to fear anything we could do, they could skip out of reach of the bayonet and return, as they pleased. They were visible only when raised by a charge.”2 As part of their strategic plan, the Native warriors under the leadership of the Miami war chief Little Turtle targeted the United States officers in order to wreak havoc among the enlisted men. By singling out the higher ranking soldiers, the Natives tried to break the will of their antagonist. After receiving a drubbing for three hours on the field of battle, the Americans began to retreat in earnest as they suffered a humiliating defeat. This loss would haunt the United States government for the next year until they made changes in how they engaged their Native adversary.3 This military fiasco of St. Clair was the result of a flawed American governmental policy in regards to the interactions of their military with the indigenous populations on the western borderlands after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. The difficulties began in 1783 after the passage of the Treaty of Paris. This agreement recognized Great 1 Denny, Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny, 164-71. 2 Denny, Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny, 164-71. 3 Denny, Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny, 164-71. 2 Britain’s cession of a vast area of land to the United States that stretched from the Allegheny Mountains to the Mississippi River. The Americans believed they had legitimate claims to these regions and quickly endeavored to populate some of these areas including the Ohio country with American settlers. A problem the United States government faced was that the Indians already residing there believed that Great Britain had no right to surrender this area because these groups were not consulted during the treaty negotiations. Because of this, several Indian nations including the Shawnees and Miamis, were determined to maintain their landholdings, by force if necessary. The American greed for Native lands in Ohio reflected settler colonialism, a term that refers to a history in which settlers drove indigenous populations from the land to construct their own ethnic and religious communities. Racial hierarchy – the depiction of Native peoples as savage and inferior – inhered in settler colonialism. Settler societies include Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the United States among others. Unlike Australia, where settlers deemed the continent uninhabited despite the presence of “aborigines,” the United States recognized the existence of Indian tribes and therefore sought to secure indigenous lands by means of lawful treaties. That occurred even as several Native groups including the Miami and Shawnee Nations declined to negotiate with the Americans in the 1780s and prepared for the possibility of an armed conflict with the United States.4 The dissertation argues that American covetousness for land in Ohio represented a distinctive form of settler colonialism in the years directly after the American Revolution. 4 Walter Hixson, American Settler Colonialism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1-22; Patrick