Piqua

On August 8, 1780, near the Shawnee settlement of Piqua on the Mad River in what was then western Ohio Country, forces clashed in an engagement remembered under several names: the Battle of Peckowee, Peckuwe, Pekowi, and Pickaway. Kentucky County militia led by General George Rogers Clark faced Shawnee warriors commanded by Chief Black Hoof. The Shawnee were pushed back, and Clark's men set fire to the village and its surrounding cornfields, though the militia paid a steep price in casualties. This campaign came as a direct answer to Bird's earlier invasion of Kentucky that summer, when a joint force of Shawnee, Lenape, and Miami fighters had killed or taken captive hundreds of white settlers.

Background

This engagement formed one piece of a wider push into Ohio Country, part of the Western theater of the Revolutionary War. General George Rogers Clark commanded the operation, and in early August 1780 his force of 970 men forded the Ohio River close to what is now Cincinnati before pushing northward along the Little Miami and Mad Rivers. Their route brought them to Old Chillicothe, a Shawnee settlement lying north of present day Xenia, Ohio, and known to the Shawnee themselves as Chalawgatha. Clark's troops found the settlement empty and set it ablaze on his orders. From there Clark pressed on a short distance further north, arriving at Piqua, the village where the Shawnee had fallen back. This Piqua should not be mistaken for the later town of the same name situated on the Great Miami River. Clark and his men reached the settlement on August 8, 1780. A modest stockade sat at the heart of the village, which at the time served as the Shawnee capital and held a population of no fewer than 3000 people.

Battle

The engagement dragged on for hours, and losses mounted heavily on both sides before it was over. Clark eventually forced the Shawnee to abandon their position by turning artillery on the stockade, firing down from cliffs overlooking the settlement along the river. He is said to have scouted the terrain beforehand from atop a nearby Adena mound. Once the defenders withdrew, Clark's force lingered for two more days, setting fire to the surrounding fields until as much as 500 acres of corn had burned. In his own account, Clark listed 27 men lost, fourteen dead and thirteen injured, though later historians, drawing on the testimony of survivors who witnessed the fighting firsthand, have concluded the true toll ran nearly three times higher. The number of Shawnee dead was never firmly established, though records confirm that at least five of them perished.