The siege of Dunlap's Station was a battle that took place on January 10–11, 1791, during the Northwest Indian War between the Northwestern Confederacy of American Indians and European American settlers in what became the southwestern region of the U.S. state of Ohio. This was one of the Indians' few unsuccessful attacks during this period. It was shortly after the Harmar campaign attacks and unprecedented defeat of U.S. Army forces.
A few months after the siege, the United States Army suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Indians. This small episode, a week after the so-called Big Bottom massacre in what became southeast Ohio, turned into an iconic event: Ohioans believed that Native Americans had tortured innocent American settlers.
During their long and complex history on the North American continent, Indigenous peoples of the northeastern woodlands vigorously adopted every imaginable effort to survive and thrive. However, "By 1690, many of the Native American peoples in the eastern part of the region had been driven out by the Iroquois and their allies." The European American settlers who were encroaching upon Indian territory had either purchased or been awarded titles to plots of land in the Ohio Country, and this brought them into conflict with the Indian tribes in the area.
The Northwest Indian War began after the Revolutionary War, and those living near frontier outposts north of the Ohio were particularly subject to attack by Indians.
Dunlap's Station, later known as Fort Colerain, was on the east bank of the Great Miami River, and established in early 1790 in the midst of what was also called Little Turtle's War. It served three main functions: as a base for American expansion into Indian territory, New Jersey–based land speculation, and a settlement for American farmers with their fields and pastures.
The Northwest Territory had been established in 1787, within which Judge Symmes had organized the Miami Company and then advertised the availability of this land. They hired the Irish surveyor John Dunlap, who led the party of men, women and children.
It was located next to the 2,000-year-old Colerain Earthwork, aka the Colerain Township Group (a lost geometric and hilltop enclosure), and one or more sacred Adena mounds, This prime floodplain site would have attracted the farmers. The natives may have lost the meaning of these older sacred sites, though.
The settlers cleared the land, constructed the station, and grew crops outside during the first summer. The blockhouses were built as a refuge from Native attacks, since this was still primarily Shawnee land. While neighbouring Indians and settlers had managed to share an earlier Christmas feast, naturally an application was made at Fort Washington for a garrison.
The early republic period saw the United States move from the weak Articles of Confederation to the federal Constitution ratified in 1788, with the Bill of Rights added in 1791. George Washington served two terms as president (1789–1797), establishing precedents for executive authority, and the federal capital moved permanently to Washington D.C. in 1800. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the nation's territory for roughly $15 million, opening vast trans-Mississippi lands to American expansion. The War of 1812 against Britain ended inconclusively but produced a surge of American national identity and eliminated most British support for Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi. The Northwest Indian Wars (1785–1795) and the Creek War (1813–1814) broke Indigenous confederacies that had resisted US expansion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily balanced slave and free states as the nation expanded westward, but embedded the contradiction of slavery in every subsequent territorial debate.
This page covers Northwest Indian War — Siege of Fort Hamilton 1791. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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