War Along the Wabash: The Ohio Indian Confederacy's Destruction of the US Army, 1791
Publisher: Casemate (February 28, 2023)
Hardcover: 320 pages
ISBN: 9781636242682
On November 4, 1791, a coalition of warriors determined to set the Ohio River as a permanent boundary between tribal lands and white settlements faced an army led by Arthur St. Clair—the resulting horrific struggle ended in the greatest defeat of an American army at the hands of Native Americans.
The road to the battle of the Wabash began when Arthur St. Clair was appointed to lead an army into the heart of the Ohio Indian Confederacy while building a string of fortifications along the way. He would face difficulties in recruiting, training, feeding, and arming volunteer soldiers. From the moment St. Clair’s shattered force began its retreat from the Wabash the men blamed the officers, and the officers in turn blamed their men. For over two centuries most historians have blamed either the officer corps, enlisted soldiers, an entangled logistical supply line, poor communications, or equipment. The destruction of the army resulted in a stunned Congress authorizing a regular army in 1792.
This book, the result of 30 years’ research, puts the battle into the context of the last quarter of the 18th century, exploring how the central importance of land ownership to Europeans arriving in North America resulted in unrelenting demographic pressure on indigenous tribes, as well as the enormous obstacles standing in the way of the fledgling American Republic in paying off its enormous war debts.
This is the story of how a small band of determined indigenous peoples defended their homeland, destroyed an invading American army, and forced a fundamental shift in the way in which the United States waged war.
Table of Contents
1 The American World in 1791
2 The Post-War War
3 Land
4 Woodland Indians
5 Arthur St. Clair
6 Futile Attempts at Control
7 Indian Warfare
8 The Indian Confederacy
9 The Annihilation of Native Culture: Alcohol, Demographics and Disease
10 Little Turtle of the Miami; Blue Jacket of the Shawnee
11 Assembling an Army. A chronological Narration of the St. Clair Campaign Between March 1791 to November 1791
Author
Steven P. Locke is a retired curator of history for the Ohio Historical Society. He served in the US Army National Guard, then taught history in the Granville, Ohio, Exempted School District. He studied at both undergraduate and graduate level at the Ohio State University.
Battle of a Thousand Slain: The U.S. Army’s Greatest Defeat: St. Clair’s Battle on the Wabash, 1791
Rick M. Schoenfield
Publisher: Stackpole Books (May 1, 2023)
Hardcover: 368 pages
ISBN: 9780811772693
On November 4, 1791, a force of Native Americans attacked an American military encampment in the Northwest Territory, near what is now the border between Ohio and Indiana. The battle was catastrophic for the Americans: out of a force of about a thousand men, two dozen made it out unscathed, making it the worst defeat in American military history—more deadly, more brutal, and more consequential than the Little Bighorn. In this book, Rick Schoenfield reconstructs this close-quarter but far-reaching clash of arms near the headwaters of the Wabash River, presenting newly uncovered details and offering new interpretations of one of the most important but least understood battles in American history.
In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Britain ceded most of the land east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes to the fledgling United States, but the Northwest Territory became ground hotly contested by the new nation and the native tribes who had long inhabited the region. In 1790, President Washington sent a failed expedition to secure the area, and a year later, he sent another expedition, which ended up uniting the Indian tribes instead of defeating them.
In November 1791, yet another attempt to defeat the native tribes was sent out, this time under Arthur St. Clair, a Scottish-born former president of the Continental Congress. St. Clair encountered logistical and morale problems all along the way, and his force was no match for the Indians who attacked him on the morning of November 4. The Americans were outmatched at every turn, in the center, on the left, on the right—and their desperate bayonet charges failed to turn the tide. After a bitter retreat, two dozen of the thousand-strong American force remained.
It was the worst defeat in American military history: 97 percent casualties among soldiers, 88 percent among officers. Afterward, Washington refused a court-martial of St. Clair, who hoped to clear himself at trial, and instead forced the general’s resignation. The House of Representatives launched an investigation—the first of its kind in U.S. history. The committee requested documents from Washington, who summoned his department heads in one of the country’s first Cabinet meetings—and ultimately refused to provide the material, in the first use of executive privilege. The committee largely exonerated St. Clair, but the full House never took up the committee’s report.
The battle left an opening that neither the Indians nor the British could exploit, and within a few years the Americans secured the Northwest Territory.
Author
Rick M. Schoenfield is a graduate of Northwestern University and Northwestern University School of Law. He has practiced, taught, and written about law for more than forty-five years. He lives in Westchester, Illinois, outside Chicago.