St. Clair's Defeat

Major General Arthur St. Clair led about 2,700 men near Kekionga when nearly 1,000 warriors under Chief Little Turtle launched a surprise attack, resulting in 623 federal soldiers killed — the U.S. Army's worst defeat by Native Americans in history.

People involved

• Arthur St. Clair
• Chief Little Turtle

When this happened

St. Clair's Defeat occurred in 1791, during the early republic period of American history.

Where this happened

St. Clair's Defeat took place in Indiana. Explore the full history of Indiana and primary source records from this era.

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.

Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source: Wikipedia: Northwest Indian War.