Lochry's Defeat

Near what is now Aurora, Indiana, a sharp and one-sided fight unfolded on August 24, 1781, one that history remembers as Lochry's Defeat or, alternatively, the Lochry massacre. It formed a small piece of the larger American Revolutionary War, a struggle that ran from 1775 to 1783 and had started as a dispute between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies before expanding into the frontier regions of the west, where various American Indian nations threw their support behind the British cause. What took place was over quickly and left little doubt as to its outcome: roughly a hundred warriors drawn from nearby tribes, under the command of Joseph Brant, a Mohawk leader who happened to be in the region at the time, caught an equivalent number of Pennsylvania militiamen off guard. Those militiamen answered to Archibald Lochry. By the time the ambush ended, Brant's warriors had killed or taken prisoner every one of the Pennsylvania men, while suffering no losses themselves.

Lochry and his men were meant to join a larger force that Brigadier General George Rogers Clark was assembling for a strike against Detroit, the seat of British authority in the region. As the leading American commander on the northwestern frontier, Clark had been coordinating with Virginia's governor, Thomas Jefferson, to plan an assault aimed at seizing Detroit, an effort they believed would choke off British backing for Indian military operations. Clark set out from Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania during early August 1781 with a company of about 400 men, traveling by boat down the Ohio River. Lochry and his contingent followed several days behind, pushing hard to close the gap.

On the other side, Brant commanded a portion of a joint British and Indian force that was being organized specifically to blunt Clark's advance. His numbers were not sufficient to take on Clark directly, but fortune favored him when he managed to intercept correspondence passing between Clark and Lochry. Through those captured messages, he discovered that a smaller detachment under Lochry was trailing behind the main body. The opportunity came when Lochry brought his men ashore to rest and feed both themselves and their horses, at which point Brant struck with devastating effectiveness. Since Clark had already fallen short of gathering the numbers his campaign truly required, the destruction of Lochry's unit proved fatal to the entire venture, forcing its abandonment.

Background

Along the Ohio River valley, the conflict pitted settlers living south and east of the river, in what is today Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky, against native tribes and their British partners situated to the north, in territory now part of the Midwestern United States. British forces operating out of Detroit organized and equipped native raiding parties to strike at American settlements and fortifications, an effort meant to pull American troops away from the main eastern front while also binding native nations, along with the profitable fur trade, to British interests. Native groups inhabiting the Ohio Country, chiefly the Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, and Wyandot, aimed to push settlers out of Kentucky entirely and win back hunting territory they had forfeited under the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768 and through Lord Dunmore's War in 1774.

For their part, settlers worked to maintain their foothold in Kentucky and strengthen their claims to the land through occasional strikes against native villages across the Ohio River. Among them was George Rogers Clark, who served as a Virginia militia officer stationed in Kentucky. Clark held the conviction that seizing Detroit would ultimately decide the border conflict in favor of the settlers. Toward that end, he took the British post at Vincennes in 1779 and took prisoner Henry Hamilton, the lieutenant governor who commanded British forces at Detroit. Clark remarked that this action would nearly bring the Indian war to a close. He then made plans to move against Detroit itself, both that year and again in 1780, yet on both occasions he was forced to abandon the campaign due to a shortage of troops and provisions. He later expressed regret that Detroit had been lost simply for lack of a handful of men.

Indian and British preparations

British officials and their Indian allies learned of Clark's planned expedition as early as February, a result of their effective intelligence network. A council convened at Detroit that April to organize a defense. Major Arent DePeyster, who had replaced Henry Hamilton as commander at Detroit, answered to Sir Frederick Haldimand, Governor of the Province of Quebec. To coordinate military efforts between the British and their native allies, DePeyster relied on Indian Department agents Alexander McKee and Simon Girty, men who maintained close ties with the Indians of the Ohio Country.

An Iroquois delegation attended the Detroit gathering, led by Joseph Brant, also known as Thayendanegea, a Mohawk military leader within the Six Nations Confederacy. Though only a minor war chief at the war's outset, Brant rose to prominence among the British because he spoke English and cultivated relationships with their officials. During a 1775 visit to London to raise Mohawk land grievances, colonial secretary Lord George Germain gave Brant a vague assurance: if the Iroquois backed the British cause, native grievances over land would be addressed once the rebellion was crushed. Upon returning home, Brant urged the Iroquois, most of whom lived in upstate New York, to join the British side of the conflict. Eventually, four of the Six Nations tribes did so.

As the war progressed, Brant proved himself a capable partisan leader, commanding roughly 100 men known as "Brant's Volunteers." Most of these volunteers were actually white Loyalists rather than Indians, since established Iroquois leaders viewed Brant as an upstart with overly tight British connections. Though he attracted more native followers as time passed and may have been the sole Indian ever commissioned a British captain, Brant never held the position, sometimes attributed to him, of head war chief among the Iroquois. In 1777 he participated in a combined British-Indian push into New York, an effort that culminated disastrously for the British at Saratoga. He subsequently conducted many raids along the frontier, both before and after the enormous American invasion of 1779 that ravaged Iroquois territory.

By April, with New York's frontier lying in ruins, British authorities relocated Brant to Detroit. Officially, his presence was needed to rally native support against Clark's expected campaign. Unofficially, it seems Brant, ordinarily a moderate drinker, had been sent away following a drunken brawl with an Indian Department officer at Fort Niagara. The Western Indians native to the Ohio Country and the Detroit region held uneasy relations with the Iroquois, yet they accepted Brant's assistance, albeit warily.

During the Detroit council, DePeyster urged the assembled Indians to unify and dispatch a force against Clark. Come May, Indian Department officials and native leaders started assembling warriors at the Wyandot settlement of Upper Sandusky with this goal in mind. By mid-August, Brant and George Girty, brother of Simon, marched toward the Ohio River accompanied by roughly 90 Iroquois, Shawnee, and Wyandot fighters along with a handful of white men, even as McKee and Simon Girty kept gathering additional reinforcements.

Lochry follows Clark

In early August, Clark shifted his troops by boat down the Ohio toward Wheeling, the point where he intended to meet up with Lochry's force. When Lochry failed to appear on schedule, Clark held his position for five extra days beyond the original plan. Desertion had become a serious problem, though, and Clark judged that pushing the men farther from home would make them less likely to abandon the campaign, so he finally pulled out of Wheeling without Lochry. Lochry did not arrive until August 8, only to discover that Clark's boats had pulled away just hours before.

Lochry quickly wrote to Clark, explaining that he had reached the post and found no boats, no provisions, and no ammunition waiting for him. He noted that he had dispatched a small canoe to catch up with Clark and ask for instructions, adding that if the missing supplies were sent back along with word of where to catch up, his men, numbering over a hundred and including mounted troops, would press onward.

Clark answered from Middle Island on August 9. He expressed deep regret that after such a long wait he had departed only a day before Lochry showed up, and said neither man was truly at fault for missing the rendezvous at Wheeling, since ongoing desertion among his militia forced him to keep moving rather than settle in one spot. He promised to advance slowly for that reason and urged Lochry to move with all possible speed, noting that Lochry could not pass them without their knowledge. Clark closed by saying his recent troubles had been eased somewhat by Lochry's encouragement.

After constructing boats of their own, Lochry's men departed Wheeling in pursuit of the main expedition. Clark, meanwhile, had stationed Major Charles Cracraft with supplies and a handful of soldiers on Camp Three Island to wait for Lochry. Farther along the river, Clark halted briefly at the mouth of the Kanawha, but once again chose to press on to discourage further desertions, leaving behind a note nailed to a pole directing Lochry to keep following his trail.

On August 14, Lochry informed Clark by letter that his men remained in fine spirits and fully willing to follow orders wherever they led, and mentioned that he had captured sixteen men who had deserted from Clark's own ranks and was bringing them along under guard. The following day, Lochry located Major Cracraft on Camp Three Island; Cracraft handed over a large horse boat before setting off by canoe to catch up with Clark's main body. On August 16, Lochry sent Captain Samuel Shannon along with seven soldiers bearing another letter for Clark, in which he requested additional provisions, since his flour supply was running low and he wished to avoid the delay of sending hunters out for food. Despite this, Lochry sent two men out hunting the next day, and neither of them ever came back.

Aftermath

Following the fighting, the Indian warriors and rangers were reluctant to press directly against Clark's main body of troops. Brant took the prisoners northward along the Miami River, and on August 27 he joined forces with roughly 300 Indians under McKee and about 100 of Butler's Rangers commanded by Captain Andrew