Fort Miamis Site

About this property

Fort Miami (Miamis) was a British fort built in spring 1794 on the Maumee River in what was at the time territory claimed by the United States, and designated by the federal government as the Northwest Territory. The fort was located at the eastern edge of present-day Maumee, Ohio, southwest of Toledo. The British built the fort to forestall a putative assault on Fort Detroit by Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne's army, then advancing northward in southwestern Ohio. Under the terms of the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War, the region south of the Great Lakes and between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers was assigned to the United States. However, the British refused to evacuate their forts in the region, citing the United States's refusal to comply with portions of the treaty which stated that pre-Revolutionary War debts owed to British subjects by Americans would be paid and Loyalist properties would no longer be confiscated by US authorities. In the early 1790s, the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, made an aggressive effort to aid the "Western Confederacy" of Native American tribes (the Shawnee, Miami, Wyandot, and others) in the Maumee and Wabash River watersheds in their ongoing war with American settlers. His ultimate goal was the establishment of an Indian barrier state in the region, as a way to protect Britain's North American fur trade ventures, and to block anticipated American attacks against British North America. In spring 1794 the British built Fort Miami to forestall U.S. General Anthony Wayne's advance on Fort Detroit, and to encourage the confederated tribes in their war of resistance. The fort was a log stockade, which had four bastions, each capable of mounting four cannon, a river battery, barracks, officers' quarters, supply buildings, and various shops. A defensive ditch, 20 to 25 feet deep, ran along the land side of the fort. In July 1794 General Wayne and his troops marched northward toward Fort Miami from Fort Recovery. Just south of Fort Miami, encountering a barricade erected by the Native Americans and a small party of Canadian militia, he ordered a charge and dispersed his adversaries in the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The Native Americans fled to the fort, but its commander, Major William Campbell, refused to let them enter as he was unwilling to start a war with the United States. Beaten and disillusioned, the Native Americans dispersed and one year later their tribal elders gathered at Fort Greenville to negotiate with Wayne. The Treaty of Greenville opened most of the present State of Ohio and part of Indiana to United States settlement. In 1796, under the terms of the Jay Treaty (1794), the British abandoned Fort Miami – along with their other forts on American soil. Wayne occupied and garrisoned it, but about 1799 it was abandoned.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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