Harmar Campaign

In the fall of 1790, the United States Army launched an effort to bring a confederation of Native American nations in the Northwest Territory to heel, viewing them as a hostile presence. General Josiah Harmar took charge of this expedition, which stands out as one of the pivotal campaigns of the Northwest Indian War. Between October 19 and 22, 1790, fighting broke out near Fort Miami and the Miami village of Kekionga, culminating the operation in a string of engagements. Each clash ended in decisive triumph for the Native Americans, and together these losses are often known simply as Harmar's Defeat.

Background

Between 1784 and 1789, brutal clashes flared repeatedly between American settlers pushing into new territory and the Shawnee and Miami peoples across Kentucky, along the Ohio River, and in the handful of American settlements north of that river. Roughly 1,500 settlers lost their lives in these encounters, yet the violence never boiled over into outright war. The British, prior to the Revolutionary War, had hoped to keep this region set aside for Native Americans, but American independence forced them to relinquish control of what came to be called the Northwest Territory. Settlers wasted little time flooding into these newly opened lands.

Henry Knox, serving as Secretary of War, initially pushed back against pressure to launch a military campaign against the Native nations there, since the young country faced dire financial straits and other more urgent concerns. President Washington, in 1789, sent word to Arthur St. Clair, who governed the Northwest Territory, a territory whose authority its Native inhabitants never acknowledged, asking him to gauge whether the tribes along the Wabash and Illinois Rivers leaned toward war or peace with the United States. St. Clair's response was blunt: the tribes "wanted war." He urged that American troops gather at Fort Washington, the site of modern Cincinnati, and at Vincennes, Indiana.

To lead the resulting punitive strike into Shawnee and Miami territory, Washington and Knox turned to Josiah Harmar, a respected officer from the Revolution. The mission aimed both to punish the killing of settlers and travelers along the disputed frontier and to discourage further raids. Harmar carried significant debts, had never actually fought Native forces, and battled ongoing alcoholism, yet nobody challenged his selection for the command.

As 1790 began, American representatives approached tribal leaders, informing them that St. Clair wanted to negotiate peace at Vincennes. The overtures mostly fell flat and only strengthened St. Clair's resolve to strike. Raids by Native fighters persisted through the summer months. Just before the expedition was set to begin, however, a delegation of Miami and Potawatomi negotiators showed up at Vincennes hoping to talk peace. Major Jean François Hamtramck, who commanded the post there, would not meet with them unless every American prisoner held by the tribes was freed first, a condition there was no realistic way to satisfy.

Harmar's campaign centered on wiping out Native villages clustered near Kekionga, a major Miami settlement now the location of Fort Wayne, Indiana, situated where the St. Joseph and St. Mary's rivers meet to create the Maumee. Both St. Clair and Harmar envisioned constructing another fort at this junction. That idea died, though, once St. Clair laid out his plans before Washington in New York during August 1790; the cost was judged too steep for the limited military benefit it would bring. Meanwhile, British troops remained stationed at Fort Detroit, defying the terms of the Treaty of Paris. St. Clair took care to notify the British there that the campaign targeted only the Indian tribes, voicing confidence that they would stay out of it.

Campaign begins

General Harmar assembled a force built around 320 regulars from the First American Regiment, split into two battalions under Major John Doughty and Major John Wyllys, alongside 1,133 militiamen drawn from Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Altogether his command numbered 1,453 men, supported by three horse-drawn 6-pounder cannon organized as a battery. On 7 October 1790, this army set out from Fort Washington, moving north along the course of the Great Miami River.

At roughly the same moment, a separate and smaller column under Major Hamtramck departed Vincennes heading north, made up of 330 First American Regiment soldiers together with Virginia militia. This detachment was meant to draw Wabash Indian attention away from Harmar's main body before eventually linking up with it for the decisive assault. Over eleven days, Hamtramck's men put several villages to the torch, yet the advance stalled once the militia began threatening mutiny rather than press onward. Rather than reaching Harmar, Hamtramck ended up turning his column back toward Vincennes. Meanwhile, by 13 October Harmar's army had closed to within half a day's travel of Kekionga. That same day, patrols from Kentucky seized a Shawnee scout, who, following harsh questioning, revealed that the Miami and Shawnee peoples had opted to abandon their towns rather than risk battle.

News of the approaching Americans sent the inhabitants of Kekionga and nearby settlements fleeing in haste. Hoping to catch the Indians before they completed their withdrawal, Harmar sent Colonel John Hardin ahead with 600 men in the dark hours before dawn on 15 October. By the time Hardin's men arrived at Kekionga, however, the Natives had already gotten away. The soldiers set fire to the town and whatever supplies remained, then made camp just south of the smoldering ruins.

Harmar's main force arrived at other nearby Miami settlements on 17 October, only to discover that the Miami had likewise received advance notice and cleared out, taking what food they could manage to carry. A number of British-connected traders who had been residing among the Miami also fled, making for Fort Detroit with their families and possessions, though not before turning over their stock of weapons and ammunition to the Natives beforehand. Meanwhile, Miami scouts trailed Harmar's army closely, gathering valuable intelligence on troop numbers, strength, and morale. For their part, the Americans plundered Native food stores to supplement their own dwindling provisions, while also destroying Miami cultural sites and artifacts that could never be replaced. On the morning of 18 October, Lieutenant Colonel James Trotter led a mounted patrol toward Kickapoo settlements, during which two Native Americans were spotted, pursued, and killed. One soldier who had wandered from the group stumbled upon a sizable enemy war party, but by the time this was reported back to Trotter, the patrol could not relocate the force before heading back to camp. Frustrated by this outcome, Hardin secured approval to lead another scouting expedition the next day.

Battles

On the nineteenth of October, Harmar advanced his principal force toward the Shawnee settlement of Chillicothe, situated two miles east of Kekionga along the Maumee River. From this position he dispatched a reconnaissance detachment under Colonel Hardin, whose men traveled south of what is today Churubusco, Indiana. This detachment numbered 180 militiamen, joined by a cavalry troop under Major James Fontaine and thirty regulars commanded by Captain John Armstrong. Their purpose was to gauge Indian numbers and strike at the settlement belonging to Chief Le Gris. Nearing Kekionga, the men spotted a lone Indian rider, who bolted along a side path away from the town. Hardin gave chase, though he sent Fontaine's horsemen back to retrieve Captain William Faulkner's company, which had fallen behind. The rider turned out to be bait, luring Hardin's men into a marshy stretch bordered by downed timber and the Eel River, some thirteen miles northwest of Kekionga, a place where the Americans' burdened mounts could neither press forward nor pull back with ease.

By the time Hardin, riding at the front, entered the clearing, his militia column had stretched almost half a mile behind him. This clearing lay close to the settlement of Little Turtle, who had seeded it with tempting trinkets and goods. Lured by greed, the militiamen abandoned their formation and walked straight into a trap. Gunfire erupted first from the right flank, cutting down several militiamen, among them the son of Kentucky militia commander Charles Scott. The Americans shifted leftward only to face further shots fired at close range.

Captain Armstrong managed to form a line of thirty regulars and eight militiamen, though the bulk of his force streamed past him in flight. A separate company positioned behind them declined to enter the fight. After firing a single volley, the regulars were overrun before they could reload; the attacking warriors, largely Miami with some Shawnee and Potawatomi present and led by the white chief Simon Girty, closed in and slaughtered most of the line using axes and blades. Of the thirty regulars, only eight lived through it, Armstrong among them, having submerged himself in the swamp up to his neck, along with Ensign Asa Hartshorne, who took cover under a fallen log. Major Fontaine came upon the scattering militia and Faulkner's missing company along the retreat, and together they established a fresh line that Hardin subsequently joined. Spotting a handful of Miami fighters, they held the position long enough to let the remaining Americans slip past toward safety, then withdrew to the main camp, where losses were tallied at roughly forty militia dead and twelve wounded.

Armstrong reached the camp the following morning, placing blame for the defeat on Hardin and the militia, and insisting the Indian force numbered only about a hundred, roughly matching the warriors available from Kekionga and Le Gris' settlement. Harmar at first denied Hardin's plea to revisit the battlefield, ordering instead that nearby villages be burned before the army prepared its march back to Fort Washington. This engagement of October nineteenth has come to be known at times as Hardin's defeat.

Two days later, on the twenty-first, Harmar declared the mission accomplished and set his troops on the road back toward Fort Washington. After covering roughly eight miles, they pitched camp at the spot they had occupied on the sixteenth. That night, scouts came in with word that some 120 Native Americans had reassembled at Kekionga, though the true figure may have run higher given the influx of Shawnee, Miami, Lenape, Odawa, and Sauk into the town.

Driven by a wish to avenge earlier casualties and to deter attacks on the retreating column, Harmar assembled a striking force under Major Wyllys, made up of sixty regulars, forty mounted men under Fontaine, and 400 militia commanded by Hardin and Major Horatio Hall. This force set out at two in the morning on the twenty-second. At daybreak it halted along the Maumee and split into four

Analysis

Making sense of what actually happened during Harmar's expedition remains a challenge for historians. Those who witnessed the events left conflicting testimony on crucial points, while accounts from the Native American side went largely unrecorded. Deep suspicion divided the regular army soldiers from the militiamen serving alongside them.

Knox had counted on seasoned frontier fighters from Pennsylvania and Kentucky signing up, but this hope went unfulfilled. Prominent militia leaders declined to join the effort, and the pay offered to enlisted men was meager, particularly given that harvest season meant farmers were paying laborers considerably more. Consequently, the campaign attracted few frontiersmen with real experience. Instead, many eligible men simply hired recent immigrants to serve in their stead. Lieutenant Ebenezer Denny described the militia as appearing raw and unfamiliar with either firearms or woodland conditions, and numerous recruits showed up either lacking weapons or otherwise unready for service.

Once the troops gathered in September, time became the enemy. The whole operation needed to wrap up before winter arrived, since the pack horses hauling supplies would have nothing to graze on once cold weather killed off the vegetation. With so little time available, training amounted to barely more than teaching the new soldiers how to load and fire their weapons. Harmar made no secret of his disdain for the militia, and the feeling was mutual, with militiamen accusing him in turn of drunkenness, cowardice, and general incompetence.

Harmar's men also struggled simply to traverse the terrain. No proper roads existed, forcing the Americans to hack their way through the wilderness and burning valuable hours in the process. More than a third of the pack horses leased for the expedition disappeared, lost to carelessness or outright theft. Part of the problem lay in the army's own contracts, which reimbursed owners for horses that perished in service, an arrangement that gave farmers reason to unload weak or sickly animals they had no other use for.

As for Major Hamtramck, his western wing had been compelled to retreat ahead of schedule, leaving him convinced that his portion of the campaign had failed. Only later did he discover that some 600 warriors had been dispatched to hunt him down. Given that his real purpose had been to draw enemy attention away from Harmar's main body of troops, it could be argued that he had actually succeeded in his task.